PHOENIX, AZ—Award-winning adult studio Zero Tolerance and sister companies Black Ice and Third Degree Films filed a $100,000,000 copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit in federal court in Arizona this morning against YouJizz.com, IG Media Inc., Igor Gens and others. The lawsuit follows on the heels of a similar suit brought against the same parties by Kink.com in late May.
Filed by attorney Chad Belville in U.S. Federal Court in the District of Arizona, the suit claims infringing acts on over 1,000 of the plaintiffs' protected collective works. One Third Degree Film, Teens in Tight Jeans, was viewed on one infringing site over 5.5 million times, according to a press release issued this morning.
The release also contained a quote from a 2012 Special Report by Ambassador Ronald Kirk of the Office of the United States Trade Representative, who wrote, “The increased availability of broadband Internet connections around the world is generating many benefits… However, this phenomenon has also made the Internet an extremely efficient vehicle for disseminating copyright-infringing products, replacing legitimate markets for rights holders.”
According to Zero Tolerance founder and CEO Greg Alves, “These sites have committed massive copyright and trademark infringement and that hurts our brands. Our fans have come to rely on our top quality high definition video and we will not let thieves destroy that work. Our Studio continues to be in the fight against piracy.”
Attorney Chad Belville added, “This could be the longest copyright case filed in Arizona; this case is definitely the longest I have ever filed by a long shot."
As with the Kink.com lawsuit, the action brought by Zero Tolerance et al maintains that the IG Media family of sites is not entitled to safe harbor protection under the DMCA, a claim that the defendants attorneys will surely aggressively deny.
In support of the "no safe harbor" argument, Belville writes in the complaint, "The respective Defendant websites draw from a common database, as seen by common features in the unique respective URL addresses. If a user uploads a video to one Defendant website, the other Defendant websites will draw upon and use that data to create unique pages to display the video.
"Therefore," he continues, "Defendant may claim a video is user uploaded for one website, but the other websites are not displaying user-uploaded content – rather those websites are sourcing their videos independently of the user. With full knowledge of their actions, Defendants are intentionally creating unique, search engine optimized web pages on completely separate websites for the purpose of earning revenue utilizing the display and distribution of Plaintiffs’ videos without any license from the rightful owner."
The Zero Tolerance complaint can be accessed here.
