Saying they abet pirated images online, adult magazine Perfect 10 has sued Visa, MasterCard, and four other financial institutions. The suit also accuses the companies of facilitating unfair competition by processing transactions for Websites that steal Perfect 10's and others' images.
"We've been arguing for quite awhile that we pay for our content and that it's impossible to compete against people who steal theirs," Perfect 10 publisher Norman Zada told AVN.com. The company sued Visa, MasterCard, FirstData Corp. Cardservice International, Humboldt Bank, and Does 1-100 in federal court Jan. 28.
"The defendants in this case... are knowingly providing crucial transactional support services for the sale of millions of stolen photos and film clips worth billions of dollars that belong to Perfect 10 and third-parties," according to the court filing. "Perfect 10 has concluded that the only way to stop the proliferation of such Websites is to go to the top, namely the payment card associations and the primary third-party processor, each of which is knowingly and effectively acting as fences for the sale of billions of dollars of stolen content."
"It's not just our stuff that's being stolen," Zada said. "We can't compete against Webmasters who steal our stuff, Playboy's stuff, the movie stuff, collect(ing) 50,000-100,000 images that are unbelievably valuable. And it wouldn't be possible for those Webmasters to do this without Visa (and the others) processing them. That's contributory liability."
Zada said his magazine has argued "for quite awhile" that when you pay for your content it's impossible to compete against a larger number of people who steal the content.
"We started complaining to MasterCard and Visa around January 2003," he said. "We gave them a list of about 240 Websites that we felt had fairly obvious infringing materials and very often had false registration information… We've been bringing sites to their attention, about five or six times, I've e-mailed them a variety of things I've been complaining about."
Zada said he wants Visa, MasterCard, and the other companies to try a test: Spot-pick a few images from every accused Website and compel their Webmasters to prove they own the rights to the images in question. "If they can't show the rights, they might get one second chance from Visa or MasterCard," he said, "and, then, if they still can't show the rights, they shouldn't do business with them.
"If a guy steals a can of milk to feed his kid, he gets thrown in jail. If a guy steals millions of images, the government isn't doing anything about that," he continued, explaining why Perfect 10 finally decided to sue. "There's very little prosecution for stealing large numbers of images. In the meantime, we have to use whatever means we have and that's basically the civil justice system to require an even playing field.
Zada said the losses to Perfect 10 and other companies whose imagery is being stolen runs into the multiple millions. And he scoffs at those whom he says believe his business model is a failure and thus "he's got to sue" people. "My failed business model," he said, "is that I'm obeying the law. And people who are stealing have a huge advantage over people who are paying for their content."
He acknowledged that one factor behind the lack of government interest in pirated or stolen adult images may well be that the government isn't exactly keen on protecting a business they'd rather see go away.
"But (the content thieves) also stealing the nude clips from the movies and even the clips that aren't nude," he said. "They're stealing the images of Britney Spears and the other celebrities. They're equal opportunity stealers. I can see the government might not have a lot of sympathy for the quote unquote adult magazine, but there are some very legitimate people who nobody would argue about their legitimacy, whose material is stolen en masse."
Zada said his own Visa merchant account was terminated after he was victimized by a computer hacker, an incident in which he was investigated but found innocent of any wrongdoing. "I cannot process Visa for new sites because I'm not a Visa-sponsored merchant," he said. "Meanwhile, they're sponsoring people engaged in all sorts of illegalities. It's also an unfair competition claim. How can you provide critical support to all these people who are doing all these bad things and not provide to Perfect 10?"
Neither Visa nor MasterCard returned queries for comment from AVN.com before this story went to press.
