Australia’s Adult Industry Copyright Organisation has filed lawsuits against two companies for allegedly pirating DVDs and selling them in shops, online and by mail order.
AICO filed infringement of copyright suits against Digital Sinema Australia Pty. Ltd. and its director, Jim Karakikes. The company operates a mail order catalog and a DVD online shop.
The group also filed a similar suit against Venus Adult Shops Pty. Ltd., Tropher Installations Pty. Ltd. and directors George Allan Vassallo, Jerry Gordon and Phillip Deprima. Venus operates a chain of adult stores under the name Venus Adult Shops in Blacktown, Mt. Druitt and Katoomba in New South Wales province.
“This is a significant step in the fight against adult film piracy in Australia,” said Graeme Dunne, AICO’s executive officer.
“Last year Private and Wicked had successes in their single studio actions against DVD pirates. Now we have several other AICO members, including Vivid, Zero Tolerance, Red Light District, Wicked, Falcon, Titan, Acid Rain, Colossal and their Australian exclusive licensees, Gallery Entertainment, Calvista Australia and Greenwich Technologies taking joint actions to protect their copyrights.”
The suits seek to stop the sale and distribution of pirated videos by the companies as well as the confiscation of pirated products while seeking damages for copyright infringement on AICO’s member firms.
The case against Digital Sinema is scheduled to go to court on Monday, while the Venus Adult Shops case is scheduled for June 8.
It was just last July that the group celebrated a victory against video pirates when a judge ruled against Venus Adult Shops and Tropher Installations. The companies were ordered to pay $150,000 in damages and about $100,000 additional costs and damages over the illegal copying and distribution of adult films produced by Private Group.
The judge ruled that Venus, which operates eight video stores, had illegally copied several Private titles for distribution to its stores.
Todd Blatt, president of Antigua Pictures, which has been a part of AICO from its inception three years ago, said he was pleased with the group’s active efforts to halt piracy.
“What they’re doing is wonderful and its helping us look at Australia as a real market place and not a hub of piracy,” Blatt said.
“I’m surprised at how much (AICO) has been able to do, but I think it’s because they’re putting a lot of capital into the effort to stop piracy and I think that judges are seeing that piracy is a big issue.”
David Newnham, AICO board member and general manager for Calvista Australia, said that before the group came along, adult firms had little chance of wining piracy cases in Australia.
“Pornography is mostly illegal in Australia so the pirates’ defense was always that they did nothing wrong since adult films weren’t legal anyway.”
