Wednesday, May 25, 2011    Text size: 

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Private Media Group has filed another copyright infringement suit against a tube site operator.

XHamster.com, according to claims made in federal court, has been streaming poached Private content — at least 73 videos, including "Dominatrix Chess Gambit," "Billionaire" and "Uranus Experiment 3," among scores of other titles

As a result, Private, which says XHamster.com's traffic is "enormous," has sued the operator for at least $10.95 million.

"Upon information and belief, Alexa, a website rating service, ranks XHamster.com as the No. 55 most-visited website in the world," the suit says. "Websites that have less traffic than the defendant include such widely known entities as GoDaddy.com (67), New York Times (85), NetFlix (95), Fox News (175), Wall Street Journal (212), and defendant even has much more traffic than WalMart.com, with an Alexa ranking of 288.

"Defendant is arguably one of the most visited websites in the world, reaching more web users every day than WalMart.com."

Private spokesman Jason Tucker declined to comment to XBIZ on the suit, but the filing this week says that the Barcelona-based company's "intellectual property has been viewed over 1 million times, available for months and for some videos, years, on defendant’s website."

The suit names Westchester, Calif.-based WhoIsGuard, which protects online identities through its service, as a defendant, as well as 100 John Doe companies and another 100 John Does.

Private is seeking to learn XHamster's actual owner's identity. XBIZ was unable to reach the operator.

In the past year, Private aggressively has gone after alleged infringing sites, most of them tube sites, including YouJizz.com, SkimTube.com, EskimoTube.com and Tjoob.com, as well as XonDemand, EmpFlix.com and TnAFlix.com. All of the suits are pending.