The Eighth Commandment - that's the one about ripping people off - is sandwiched between "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." It's a simple enough message to understand , touching all of the big injustices, from cheating and dishonesty to fraud and gambling. Although it's safe to assume the scribe of the 10 rules to live by couldn't have imagined the Internet and its machinations, the part of the Eighth Commandment that reads "respect what belongs to others" has become grayed in relation to digital content and those who steal said work of others for their own personal gain.
Copyright abuses of the written word, music, film, and any other material "that constitutes ownership of a verifiable expression of ideas," are protected under Copyright Law of the United States of America. However, the advent of the World Wide Web has created a host of new copyright questions and the search for a modicum of protection. Web-based commerce destinations and/or individual Websites continuously struggle to thwart cyberthieves and their unauthorized use of images and other content.
The Wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: but the righteous showeth mercy and giveth (Ps: 37:21)
A copyright case like Napster versus the music industry grabs headlines with its ready-made storylines for TV news and legal ramifications affecting the pop culture audience of MTV. Yet most cases of cybertheft fly under the radar of mainstream media, especially when a vast number of victims are players in the adult entertainment business. "In the adult world, there's a perception that adult stuff is illegal, even though it isn't," says David Levine, host of the WCOOL.com radio show and president of Convergence Inc., a company that aligns Websites (Sextoy.com, SextoyClub.com, SextoyCatalog.com, and others) designed for affiliate revenue sharing. "But when something is illegal, that might make people that are crooked feel a bit more emboldened or justified to steal it or to create havoc."
Adult DVD Empire (www.adultdvdempire.com) feels that pain. An ecommerce Website that sells DVDs, VHS tapes, CD-ROMs, and adult novelties, AdultDVDEmpire.com has been infringed upon on more than one occasion. "What happens in this industry is any competitor of ours comes out, takes all of our box covers, downloads them, and puts them on their page," says Jeff Rix, president and founder of Adult DVD Empire. "I don't think any of our competitors have entered a synopsis. They just take ours."
"Copy and paste" is how J.T. Smith, the company's marketing manager, sums up the pirating. Thieves can easily swipe material, leaving behind a trail of legal and economic headaches for the victimized company to deal with.
Beyond legal recourse, there are few options for protection, but making an example of pirates in court can be an effective deterrent. "Try to take a few of the biggest offenders to court; that's all you really can do," Rix says, adding that his company has begun watermarking to deter theft and also to make it easier to present evidence against those who have stolen material from their Website.
Of course, cyberpirates are already developing techniques to erase said watermarks. "There's just not much you can do," Rix says.
"I tell people, 'If you're selling our pictures through our affiliate program, then [you] can use the pictures,'" says WCOOL's Levine. He may be relaxed about providing content to program members, but he keeps a close watch on outright theft. "I'm trying to have a system that can not be beaten just by someone copying me. I try to make it where it's just not that simple."
To that end, Rix and his staff at Adult DVD Empire have worked to build a solid infrastructure with a variety of product, good customer service, and a reputation for legitimacy which, they believe, will help to set them apart from knock-off sites that may have stolen content. Nevertheless, a cyberthief can virtually take each aspect of their site in a few months' time and apply it to a new, competing Website.
"We have to put out a cease-and-desist order for just about every competitor that comes up," says Rix. It seems, he says, that nary a week goes by without a phone call to the lawyers. In most of the cases where Rix's team finds infringement, the legal strong-arming does its job. "Most of the people cooperate," says Rix, "but never to the degree we wanted them to."
But Rix also puts the onus of the copyright issue squarely on the adult companies that "set up these morons. The studios don't care that these sites have stolen all our copyright mat- erials and now they're competing with us. They don't care." Rix concedes that there are companies that support his Website's battle against cybertheft, but by his estimate, "80 percent of the companies couldn't care less."
So what about the other 20 percent?
"We just don't take anybody who comes to us from off the street to do business with," says Harry Weiss, director of publicity for Metro Home Video. "But if one of our customers told us that their site was pirated by someone we were doing business with, then I would definitely investigate it. And if it's true, stop doing business with that person who pirated it." Having said that, Weiss believes "nobody is such a genius that they're going to come up with an idea that nobody else could possibly have ever come up with."
Though noting the difficulty of weeding out sites with stolen content, Weiss clearly supports legit Websites and their struggle against piracy. "To just blatantly steal somebody else's idea or their product and call it your own - well, I have no sympathy for somebody like that.
"We have a company full of employees and stockholders," Weiss adds, "whose interest we have to protect. We spend a lot of money to produce our product and, of course, we're going to protect our interests."
Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work (Jer. 22:13)
How can Webmasters protect against infringement? "The Net is such a large place that it can be very difficult to protect your copyrights," says Sex.tv CEO Jason Tucker. "If it can be stolen, eventually it will be.
"The only real protection you have is to market yourself and your content better than the thief; hopefully the thief has a smaller audience than you do. Seek the advice of an attorney to at the very least have some protection over your creation." The sad truth, Tucker says, is that copyright infringement is simply an associated cost of doing business.
Like Adult DVD Empire, erotic photographer Suze Randall (www.suze.net) has taken steps to thwart infringers. The acclaimed photographer, who has shot for Hustler, Playboy, and Penthouse magazines, is possibly the single most pirated erotic photographer in cyberspace - at one time, as many as 5,000 sites were illegally profiting from Randall's work.
Utilizing in-house monitoring, as well as a spidering device from BayTSP (www.baytsp.com) - a leading provider of anti-piracy and copyright tracking services to the digital media market - and the services of The Association For the Protection of Internet Copyright (APIC, www.a-w.org, www.apic-adult.com), Randall's husband and business partner Humphry Knipe has devised a powerful front against would-be cyberpirates. Additionally, fans and members of Randall's Website and affiliate program (www.pics4clicks.com) play a large role in reporting illegal uses of Randall's content. "Quite often, if I find somebody I particularly don't like I get them hit from all three sides," Knipe says. "And that usually blows them out of the water."
Sometimes, cyberpirates fight back; in those cases, Knipe says, his attorney is "just so happy to hear that. Because then he'll go right after them." But litigation can be a time-consuming and costly endeavor. Says Knipe: "Some of these suits can last for years, but generally speaking, people aren't stupid enough to go that route because they know perfectly well that at the end of the line they're going to lose and they might not have any money to pay the damages. Besides, their lawyers' fees alone are gonna kill them."
"The most important thing to know is the significance of registering your copyrights and depositing them in the Library of Congress," says Clyde DeWitt, partner at the law firm Weston, Garrou & DeWitt. "If a copyright infringement activity begins before registration occurs, then you lose the benefit of being able to recover statutory damages and attorneys' fees."
DeWitt says the severity of the problem is partly due to the fact that it takes very little money to start a Website; also, if the site is based overseas, it is more difficult to enforce copyright protection. "The first two problems are, one, finding the guy, and secondly, even if you find him and you've registered your copyrights and you win the case and get a judgment, you can't get blood from a turnip."
Mike Adams of Evil Angel (www.evilangel.com), home of John Stagliano's Buttman video series, says his top defense for content protection is sending out a formal email to the perpetrators. "I have had some success with that, given that we're a fairly large porno company, so they have to respond," says Adams. He adds that lawyers are occasionally called in to put the clamps down. The use of an email letter and the real threat of legal action has acted as a strong deterrent and "resulted in 99.9 percent of the people that are doing it... to stop doing it."
While legal action is the normal course for most who come under copyright attack, legendary adult star and activist Nina Hartley remains unconvinced the judicial system will ever fully embrace the adult industry. "I don't think the court system takes it very seriously, because they say, 'Oh man, it's just smut, what do they care...you get in bed with pornographers, what do you expect?'"
Like many others, Hartley believes cybertheft is part of the price of doing business. "People are going to steal what they can and get away with what they can."
Hartley says a performer like Jill Kelly, who has a large ownership stake in her personal content, is most at risk. While Hartley is not in the content business, she can claim ownership of her name. "After all these years, my name is something I have trademarked and it is my property. It is considered by the government to be my property." Accept no substitutions.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things (Rev. 21:7-8)
"Things are so much better now than they were two years ago," says Suze.net's Knipe. "Two years ago, you could see Suze Randall pictures everywhere; now it's not that easy to find them outside of the pics4clicks program. People are aware of the fact that they are gonna get these nasty emails from all sorts of different directions very quickly."
WCOOL's Levine concedes that someone could copy material from his database, but he believes variation and innovation keep his site a step ahead of cyberthieves. "By the time they copy it, it's changed," he says. "There are so many ways to search and surf and to use the site; it's not even just the content, it's the ability to access the content, and that content is always changing and growing."
If anything, those affected have taken a hard-line attitude to stop cyberthieves. "We are now taking an aggressive stance against those who choose to somehow capitalize on the Buttman name and/or the Evil Angel name," says Adams. "And we are willing to spend the money for lawyers, cease-and-desist letters and, if necessary, to go to court."
While progress has been made to curtail the theft of digital property, most are willing to accept the fact that it has become a part of the overall tapestry of the Internet business. "It's always going to be a back-and-forth," says Levine. "They'll come out with new technology that you can't copy, and the copiers are going to develop a new technology that figures it out."
And as the adult industry attempts to outfox the thieves, consider this clarion call from Jeff Rix, who is mad as hell and isn't gonna take it anymore. "We will go after anyone that takes content from our site. We will go after you."
Amen.
