Friday, Jun 22, 2012    Text size: 

LOS ANGELES — The operators of HiSlut.com, MyHotBook.com, TheHotLoop.com, Slutload.com, HardSexTube.com and YouJizz.com have been named in a new piracy suit brought on by Pink Visual, which claims the defendants have been "reverse palming off" its library of porn.

Pink Visual said that it has identified 89 copyrighted movies that have been rebranded and streamed illegally. The suit seeks at least $13.35 million in damages, as well as restraining orders on alleged illegal practices by the operators of the sites.

"In an act of blatant piracy, [HiSlut.com, MyHotBook.com and TheHotLoop.com] have engaged in a pattern of removing [Pink Visual's] watermark and trademark from its copyrighted motion pictures and replacing them with defendant's watermarks and trademarks," the suit said. "Thereafter, [Slutload.com, HardSexTube.com and YouJizz.com] distributed the misbranded content over the Internet through their respective tube sites."

In the suit filed last month at U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, Pink Visual has named only one defendant by name — HardSexTube's operator, Szent Laszlo of Budapest. The others are named as John Doe defendants.

It's Pink Visual's second run in with Slutload, which last year settled with the company over allegedly infringing 53 of its films. Settlement terms of that suit were not disclosed, with the exception that Slutload agreed to adopt and employ digital fingerprint filtering technology offered through the Free Speech Coalition's Anti-piracy Action Plan. Slutload later was sold to Reality Kings.

For YouJizz, it's the fifth copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the site, whose operator has been identified in other complaints as Igor Gens, who owns parent company Vancouver, B.C.-based IG Media.

Earlier this week, Zero Tolerance, along with sister companies Black Ice and Third Degree Films sued YouJizz and Gens in a $100 million copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit.

Pink Visual said that it regularly monitors the web for infringement and misuse of its trademark, typically sending cease-and-desist and DMCA notices of copyright infringement to pirates. It also said that it employs copyright filtering software offered by Vobile Inc.