Grooby Legal Action against Piracy ...

[GroobySteven]

http://www.xbiz.com/news/124883

Lightspeed, Grooby File Suits Against Hundreds of Bit Torrent Users

By Rhett Pardon
Friday, Sep 3, 2010

CHICAGO — Lightspeed Media Corp., Grooby Productions and Hard Drive Productions each filed copyright infringement suits on Thursday, targeting bit torrent users who allegedly downloaded their works.

The trio of federal lawsuits, all filed by Chicago attorney John Steele, name hundreds of unnamed surfers who may have downloaded a rainbow assortment of films, from solo girl to tranny content, within the past two weeks.

Lightspeed Media, for example, says its JordanCapri and Tawnee Stone website content has been poached.

Solo-girl site AmateurAllure.com, owned by Hard Drive Productions, meanwhile, says it was a victim, while Grooby Productions' parent company Millennium TGA complains that its collections relating to its Shemale Yum, Shemales From Hell and Shemale Pornstar website properties were also breached by bit torrent users.

The three companies now join a handful of other adult companies that have pledged to stomp out piracy. Adult studios Titan Media, Corbin Fisher and Michael Lucas Productions each have recently filed suits targeting swarms of John Doe bit torrent users.

In all of the legal cases, the companies have asked for motions to discover the identities of the defendants through their Internet service providers.

Steele, who filed the suits on behalf of the companies, was unavailable at post time to respond to XBIZ questions, but the attorney operates Media Copyright Group, which offers "turnkey solution for combating online piracy of their copyrighted media."

Steele, according to his legal service company's website, offers to track and ID infringers, as well as pursue damages against infringers on a contingency basis.

Gill Sperlein, general counsel for Titan Media, told XBIZ that he applauded the trio of suits filed Thursday against online thieves.

"There many different ways people infringe adult content," he said. "However, content producers have recently started working together to stop infringement in all of its forms."

[GroobySteven]

THIS IS THE POST THAT WENT OUT TO ALL WEBSITE MEMBERS A FEW WEEKS AGO. PLEASE READ THE REASONING AND THE EFFECT PIRACY IS HAVING ON THE INDUSTRY BEFORE COMMENTING.

I don't want this to be a long lecture on piracy, downloads, the internet and the legalites or morality of downloading porn from stolen content websites. Pretty much everybody has done it in some form or another and it's part of the current format of the internet.

What I do want to do, is introduce some ideas to you as well as the direction we are now put in a position to take, to ensure the longevity of our business and to protect the employees and owners of the company.

While there has always been people getting free passwords, or sharing content, never has there been such a wholesale theft of material, which is then sold for profit. We've certainly seen the effects on our bottomline and whilst we don't seem to be as affected as many other companies (some which are already out of business) without taking steps and measures, I have to wonder, how long we can continue to produce at this level.

It's a common misnomer that these "pirates" and their sites, are just fan sites out to share their own love of this content with other like minded fans. They are not. All file sharers and filesharing companies, get paid and make a lot of illegal money. The uploader to a Rapidshare type site, get's paid when somebody upgrades to a premium download membership, the forum and blog style sites make their money from advertising and the download sites get payments to let a thief illegally download the content. Nobody is doing this for fun - it's an organised business, much of it originating in Russia, China and Eastern Europe.

Many people believe that downloading content from websites is mainly a victimless crime, or the few "rich porn producers" somehow deserve to make less. There are a number of flaws with this approach for our company. We've been operating for nearly 15 years. Many of the photographers and support staff have been with us for nearly that time and these are their full time jobs. We keep employed over 20 full time employees worldwide in various roles, we have numerous part time photographers and support staff and we have the auxilliary employment that comes from that; printers, distributors, affiliates, cleaners, drivers, etc. Many of our employees also are partners or profit sharing from our sales.
We pay transgender models over $700,000 every year in model fees alone.

It doesn't matter what your opinion is of me personally, or the business I chose to be in - without the revenue coming in, jobs will be lost, production budgets will be cut and fans of tgirl porn will suffer from less production.

Our website's are not cheap. I appreciate in these difficult times, that $25-$35 a month is a lot of money. I believe our sites represent good value for money, for what we deliver but in order to try and cater to an ever changing market, we have made some changes in the last year by adding a value pack, releasing the sites for as little $20 a month at our ticket system.. We've also brought in a "cherry pick" system, where you can pick and choose exactly which scenes you want to see at our Buddy Wood, PK Vegas & Shemale Pornstar VOD site which we may extend to other sites.

We're looking for new ways to bring extra value to your website membership and have just started adding extra full scenes to each website weekly, to allow you to see extra sets from other sites. We are also working on a loyalty program and a few other extras which we hope will enhance your time spent on our sites.

When you join a site, you are getting the updates as they are released and years of back content. You are getting the sets that the models and the photographers wanted you to see and you are contributing to more shoots. We are the only company of it's type which allows direct feedback on all it's websites, to the photographers and webmasters and from this feedback, we will try to adjust and tweak the sites to our members requirements. If you have technical or speed problems with the website, we will try and fix it - at admin@grooby.com

This is an appeal to you all. Whether current or ex-members, or those who have yet to join a website to please think about what you are doing when downloading stolen content. It's not victimless. The victims are the people working on the sites and the models whom you love to watch.
This post is also to inform you because of the untenable position that we've been put in, about actions we are taking to protect our company, the employees, the members and the models.

1. Members are encouraged to download material, keep it and enjoy it for as long as they wish. We have no time limitations written into our material. However, you may not upload it to any file sharing or bittorrent site whatsoever. Anybody found to be doing so, will have legal action taken against them for compensation.

2. Anybody found to be downloading stolen content from any of our websites, will also have legal action taken against them. We have the technical ability to track stolen downloaded content and we will have no choice but to instruct our lawyers to take that action, in an effort to recoup lost revenue.

Any form of legal action is costly, both to our company and the offending parties. We will only take legal action against parties which our lawyers are confident of winning. Other parties illegally downloading our content may find themselves open to other actions, including media publication and announcements.

I'd like to thank all our members and supporters over the years and for your continued support. We will continue to do what we do best, in producing unique and original transsexual content. We will listen to your concerns, your feedback and your wants and try and cater to them. I am confident that the majority of you will understand what I aim to accomplish with this message and what we as a business and as a group of fans of this material, need to do, to survive through the next decade.

Thank you.
Steven
CEO
Grooby Productions

[BellaBellucci]

Right message. Wrong messenger. If you pay out $700,000 a year for models, then you're obviously pocketing much more than that. Not to mention that in your case, your business is your lifestyle as well as your job which means you also get tax write-offs for pretty much just living. And like Wal-Mart, you profit from exploited labor yet you complain about shrinkage, specifically because the thieves are reselling the content for profit. On the one hand, you state that it's these thieves that are the true enemy, but then you go on to say:

1. Members are encouraged to download material, keep it and enjoy it for as long as they wish. We have no time limitations written into our material. However, you may not upload it to any file sharing or bittorrent site whatsoever. Anybody found to be doing so, will have legal action taken against them for compensation.

2. Anybody found to be downloading stolen content from any of our websites, will also have legal action taken against them. We have the technical ability to track stolen downloaded content and we will have no choice but to instruct our lawyers to take that action, in an effort to recoup lost revenue.

So which is it? Are you saying that you're suing companies like Napster now and individuals, like the RIAA did, later? The former I can see but the latter is PR suicide. Even still, I love to watch a hypocrite waste time, money, and energy on a battle he can't win against an enemy who is as morally questionable as he is, so please, have at it.

You may have banned me on HD because of your petty ego, but at least you still keep me entertained. From the bottom of my heart: thank you. xoxo


~BB~

[Trans-Promo]

GET THEM BOSS !

I would do the same thing if I had the resources to. We are producers, artists, videographers, photographers and models and we deserve to get payed for the work we produce.

You don't see these people going into someone's home or into a store and stealing... and why? Because there are repercussion to being a thief.

Bella, explain to me why you saying it is not ok to go after thieves? Or are you the next Sue Lowden?

[BellaBellucci]

Bella, explain to me why you saying it is not ok to go after thieves?

Is that what I said?

It's a common misnomer that these "pirates" and their sites, are just fan sites out to share their own love of this content with other like minded fans. They are not. All file sharers and filesharing companies, get paid and make a lot of illegal money. The uploader to a Rapidshare type site, get's paid when somebody upgrades to a premium download membership, the forum and blog style sites make their money from advertising and the download sites get payments to let a thief illegally download the content. Nobody is doing this for fun - it's an organised business, much of it originating in Russia, China and Eastern Europe.

I just want to know who he's going after exactly. His statements and actions contradict themselves. The XBiz article says users, but here he is saying that it's faceless eastern European organized theft/resale rings that are the enemy. Which is it?

~BB~

[SunshyneMonroe]

Its funny cuz the same thing kinda happened to me guys where taken vids from my site and postin them on xtube tranny tube ect but all it takes is a email and they take them off

[Nicole Dupre]

If Seanchai had added Bella's site to his solo site stable, we all know she wouldn't be bitching about him going after anyone stealing her content.

I said "IF". lol

[Jack59]

Might I direct your attention to this essay on the subject of internet piracy by author Eric Flint:

http://www.baen.com/library/

[Trans-Promo]

Is that what I said?



I just want to know who he's going after exactly. His statements and actions contradict themselves. The XBiz article says users, but here he is saying that it's faceless eastern European organized theft/resale rings that are the enemy. Which is it?

~BB~

Through my small understanding of IP Law, if a company knowingly allows its members to practice downloading without paying licensing fees the company is liable. When the lawsuit opens, the lawyers to the plaintiff will subpoena company records. Those records will most likely include user information, IP information.

A great example, if you recall, was the A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. case. More applicable would be the Pink Visual vs Brazzers case - http://www.xbiznewswire.com/view.php?id=119753

It is imperative that companies shut down anyone - INDIVIDUALS OR NOT - and enforce the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which protects artist against internet infringement.

In my IP class many have spoken of being disconnected from their service provider because of illegal downloads, more internet service providers need to take this type of action.

[BellaBellucci]

Through my small understanding of IP Law, if a company knowingly allows its members to practice downloading without paying licensing fees the company is liable. When the lawsuit opens, the lawyers to the plaintiff will subpoena company records. Those records will most likely include user information, IP information.

A great example, if you recall, was the A&M Records, Inc. v. Napster, Inc. case. More applicable would be the Pink Visual vs Brazzers case - http://www.xbiznewswire.com/view.php?id=119753

It is imperative that companies shut down anyone - INDIVIDUALS OR NOT - and enforce the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which protects artist against internet infringement.

In my IP class many have spoken of being disconnected from their service provider because of illegal downloads, more internet service providers need to take this type of action.

It sounds nice and all but it's impractical and controversial, depending on the scale of the piracy. I'm all set with anyone who has access to sensitive data having any more control. It's a slippery slope. You want them to take actions that are not legally mandated (banning users) to enforce DMCA now, but would you still be OK with them censoring you if they wanted to shut you down for other reasons, such as something you said or something you did online?

The DMCA is intended to force content providers to remove uploaded content upon a claim of infringement, not to force ISPs to take actions against its own customers and likely could not due to first amendment considerations.

Also, DMCA is far from perfect. Common arguments against are that it:

1) stifles free expression, such as in its use against Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov, Princeton Professor Edward Felten, and journalists;
2) jeopardizes fair use;
3) impedes competition, such as blocking aftermarket competition in toner cartridges, garage door openers, and enforcing walled gardens around the iPod
4) interferes with computer intrusion laws.

I'd guess that expanding the law to ISPs is (thankfully) not a likely scenario. I agree with the article Jack posted.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

~BB~