Friday, May 25, 2012    Text size: 

PHOENIX — A massive piracy suit has been waged by Kink.com against the operator of YouJizz.com and his suite of tube sites for the alleged infringement of 420 videos.

The suit, filed yesterday at U.S. District Court in Phoenix, seeks more than $63 million in damages, as well as the transfer of numerous "Jizz" websites, including YouJizz.com, JizzHut.com, Jizzbo.com, OnlyJizz.com, MoviesGuy.com, HotFunHouse.com and YouJizzPremium.com.

Igor Gens, the owner and operator of Vancouver, B.C.-based IG Media, is named as a defendant in the suit, as well as his company.

Gens last year was sued by Private Media Group in two similar tube site copyright suits, but the cases were eventually settled out of court. Terms of the both suits were settled "confidentially," said Chad Belville, counsel in both Kink's current and Private's settled suits.

Kink alleges in its suit that 420 of its videos were poached and streamed more than 8 million times on IG Media's sites.

Some of Kink's brands that are involved in its suit include Naked Kombat, HogTied, Devine Bitches, Bound Gods, Public Disgrace, The Training of O, The Upper Floor, Ultimate Surrender and Kink.com.

The suit said that the sites, which offer premium memberships, had a pattern of offering Kink content that included masked branded logos

"[Kink] marks each film with a copyright notice and trademark in order to inform  the public of [Kink's] ownership," the suit said. Upon information and belief defendants have altered [Kink's] films in that these notices and marks have been removed or obscured."

The 156-page complaint seeks statutory damages of $150,000 per infringement, among other damages.

Belville, who represents Kink, told XBIZ that the San Francisco-based studio and distributor "produces the best content of its kind, and unfortunately, that content has been the target of rampant infringement. Now it is Kink's turn to put infringers in the crosshairs."

Gens referred comment on the lawsuit to his attorney, Lawrence Walters, who also serves as IG Media’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, agent. 

Walters, who said that Gens' company hasn't yet been formally served with the suit, explained that the websites named in the suit are compliant with well-known anti-piracy and DMCA processes, but the sites aren't subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

"We are surprised that a company like Kink would pursue a case like this," Walters told XBIZ. "The websites named in the complaint all participate in the FSC’s Anti-Piracy Action Program (APAP), which provides content producers like Kink with a workable method of identifying and monetizing any of their content automatically by replacing any unauthorized clips with a trailer of their choice, along with links back to their site, or truncation. 

"Moreover, all of the sites named in the complaint are protected by DMCA safe harbor provisions.  Importantly, these sites are not even subject to U.S. jurisdiction, as they are owned and operated outside the U.S."

Walters cited multiple recent cases against foreign tube sites like xHamster.com and Faceporn.com that have had their cases dismissed by federal courts based on lack of personal jurisdiction. 

"Forcing a foreign website to defend a case like this in Arizona violates fundamental due process rights," he said. 

Walters also said that Gens and other defendants have not received any DMCA notices relating to the content referenced in the complaint.

"If such notices had been received, the material would have been promptly removed without the necessity of litigation," Walters said. "Our client routinely cooperates with DMCA removal requests. As is typical with many user generated content sites, these websites contain promotional material uploaded by affiliates of content producers."

Walters noted that Gens and the defendants would have no way of knowing whether the 420 videos named in the complaint were uploaded by authorized Kink affiliates or otherwise. 

Federal law does not impose that type of burden on a user-generated content site. 

"The purpose of the DMCA is to provide content producers like Kink with the ability to quickly remove any unauthorized content uploaded by third parties without permission. It chose not to follow the DMCA, or participate in the FSC program, but instead decided to resort to litigation in the hopes of enhancing its revenue.

"We believe the lawsuit is unfounded, and we intend to aggressively defend the case once the complaint is properly served."