SAN DIEGO, Calif.—Liberty Media Holdings, parent company of online gay adult content provider Corbin Fisher, successfully shut down the gay content pirate site, Pornilove.net. Now, Liberty Media is offering a $1,000 reward to anyone who can provide concrete identification and whereabouts of the individuals behind this online theft enterprise.
CEO Jason Gibson explained how Pornilove.net ran its theft scam. "They set up a site, upon which he merely provided a link to a blog. That blog would provide links to Hotfile, where all of his stolen content resided. When people went to his hotfile links, they were encouraged to sign up for a premium account—and if they did, Pornilove.net made money off the pirated material. Everyone made money off the deal except the content providers."
After Pornilove.net's initial hosting account was shut down by Corbin Fisher General Counsel Marc J. Randazza in June 2010, Pornilove.net used its Facebook account to direct followers to a new theft host. The Corbin Fisher legal team continued to pursue them from hosting company to hosting company.
Some of the hosting and blogging companies responded quickly to requests to remove copyrighted content and ban Pornilove.net's account. However, some were not as respectful of intellectual property rights, and didn't bother to ban the repeat offender—and thus Pornilove.net was able to rehost under different names with the same hosting service.
"When Pornilove.net figured out that it was Corbin Fisher who kept getting the site taken down, they decided to steal from everyone except Corbin Fisher," said Gibson. "While that was satisfying, Corbin Fisher realizes that when someone steals from one of us, they steal from all of us."
Therefore, Corbin Fisher contacted other online providers like FlavaWorks, Michael Lucas, Titan Media, HazeHim, Out In Public, Its Gonna Hurt, among others, and shared its full legal file on the online thief with them.
"That legal file represented about $10,000 of work, but it was important to give it away to our fellow producers," said Corbin Fisher COO, Brian Dunlap. "This industry is getting killed by these thieves. I don't feel like we 'won' if a site stops stealing from us, just to steal from one of our fellow producers. We all need to band together, because that is the only way we will ever put a stop to this problem."
Once Corbin Fisher provided its file to dozens of other studios, those studios began barraging Pornilove's service providers with numerous takedown requests under the DMCA.
"The DMCA requires service providers to take down infringing content upon notice," said Randazza. "However, it also requires service providers to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers, or the service provider can become liable itself for the infringement."
Randazza explained that many service providers smugly believe that they can continue to make thousands of dollars in hosting fees without any responsibility for repeat infringers. "We educated them on this fact, and rather than face liability for Pornilove.net's theft, they all eventually banned him."
Finally, Pornilove.net was unable to find a hosting service that would support it and ceded control of its website to Corbin Fisher.
"I want to personally thank all of the other online content providers who cooperated with us in concentrating our fire on this thief," said Dunlap. "However, the fight is not over yet."
Corbin Fisher's legal team is dedicated to finding the people behind Pornilove.net and holding them financially responsible. "We spent thousands of dollars in legal fees to shut this thief down," said Dunlap. "Each time he took our content down, he put it back up, then took it down, and put it up, making us play cat-and-mouse with him. We are not content to just chase the mouse away. We want to see him squashed."
To that end, Corbin Fisher announced today that the company will offer a $1,000 reward to anyone whose information provides concrete information that leads to the identification and service of process upon the former operators of Pornilove.net. "We have sent out an armada of subpoenas to every service provider that Pornilove ever did business with," said Randazza.
The company learned, so far, that Pornilove seems to have been run by more than one person. Although it initially originated in Poland, there were operators in New York, Chicago, Orlando, and Washington, D.C.
"We expect that we will get this information for free if we are patient enough—but the Sicilian in me prefers the idea of one of his friends betraying him," said Randazza. "It is much more poetic that way."
Anyone with any information about Pornilove's operator should send an email to [email protected]. If that information proves to be valid and leads to Corbin Fisher getting a judgment against Pornilove, Corbin Fisher will pay the tipster $1,000.
