LAS VEGAS—While piracy of content has been a bone of contention with online content producers, it’s only been relatively recently that the issue of suing end users has come into play, despite and perhaps because of some successes and some spectacular failures of similar efforts by the RIAA and the MPAA.
Proponents and opponents of the issue gathered during the first full day of Internext Expo 2011 in the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas for the seminar “The Elephant in the Room: Is Suing End Users a Good Idea?”
Moderated by Quentin Boyer of TopBucks, panelists touched on the increasing number of “John Doe” lawsuits and if and how they should be handled. Jason Tucker, the owner of Falcon Foto, who has never shied away from protecting his original content through legal means, said he was in favor of the process, as long as it was done properly and under certain sets of circumstances.
“I have always believed there is a right way to do things and a wrong way,” he said. “If you do things the right way then you have no need to worry.”
Recently, Tucker noted, lawyers with little or no experience in the adult industry, or even in that area of law, have been filing lawsuits with thousands of John Doe defendants. Often times, judges are dismissing the cases for a variety of reasons, including for too many cases being joined together, and lawsuits being filed in the wrong jurisdictions. That only makes it harder for people to file legitimate lawsuits, he said.
Attorney Gill Sperlein, who has filed John Doe lawsuits on behalf of some of his clients, said clients need to be clear on what they want to achieve with such lawsuits, too. Some cases have been filed simply as intimidation to deter others from engaging in piracy, while others have been used to gain restitution.
But not everyone thinks suing is the right answer all the time. Damien Jennings of Adult Marketing co.uk said that the end users, those who are uploading content onto tube sites or file-sharing sites, are oftentimes fans of the work and sometimes collectors of the content’s stars or themes. Rather than sue, he said, industry professionals could use it as an opportunity to convert them to paying customers.
Attorney Marc Randazza, who was an audience member for the seminar, disagreed, however, noting that, “They may be fans, but they are still thieves.”
Also sitting on the panel was Matt Zimmerman, who is the first person from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to address the controversy from the legal and marketing/business perspective. The organization, he said, does work with defendants in such cases to let them know they have options and rights, especially against unethical lawyers who have filed requests for subpoenas in an effort to use the information for intimidation purposes.
