Monday, Jul 11, 2011    Text size: 

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Private Media Group has filed suit against the operators of another   tube site that is alleged to have streamed its videos.

Sunday's filing at U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, targets PornVisit.com and its operators, Mark Faragalla and Mina Faragalla of Beaumont, Calif., for allegedly streaming 25 videos on the tube site.

Private's copyright infringement suit through its Fraserside IP division names 100 John Does, as well as 100 John Doe companies, presumably PornVisit's business partners or advertisers. It seeks $150,000 for each alleged infringement, as well as an injunction among other forms of relief.

Private says that the tube site is one of the larger in the biz drawing more than 500,000 surfers per day and ranked at 2,861, according to traffic-ranking service Compete.com.

In the suit, Private says PornVisit placed its own watermark on the 25 videos subject to the infringement claim and "proudly" displayed the number of instances in which they were viewed.

"PornVisit.com is designed for the sole purpose of taking commercial advantage of copyrighted works without any authority whatsoever and derive benefit from the copyrighted works," the suit says. "This significant commercial and financial advantage is obtained without purchasing or licensing any rights from the copyright holder nor incurring the significant expense of creating and generating the content itself.

"Defendants use the website PornVisit to gather a vast and extensive collection of infringed films to display and distribute. The website is a one-stop shop for infringing material."

Private attorney Chad Belville wasn't able to speak directly on the case; however, he said that more similar suits are in the works.

"We do have several more suits lined up for the next few weeks," he told XBIZ.

PornVisit operator Mark Faragalla did not immediately respond to XBIZ for comment.