SAN JOSE, Calif. — Facing a copyright infringement suit over allegedly pirating gay adult content, the operators of membership site MonsterCockTube.com told a U.S. judge they are immune from legal action because they are German citizens.
Titan Media, which had been trying to serve Thorsten Palicki and Maik Herrmann since last year, ended up serving the pair at an online adult trade show in August.
Titan claims MonsterCockTube operators pirated at least 15 Titan movies. MonsterCockTube, now redirecting as MonsterCockLand, offers tube content, as well as video-on-demand material.
Since serving the pair at the online adult trade show, Herrmann and Palicki have communicated from Germany to U.S. Judge Maxine Chesney that they can’t be tried for civil liability in the U.S.
As German citizens and business owners, the pair said, “only the constitutional principles of the Federal Republic of Germany for us as non-Americans are valid.”
“I would ask you to instruct [Titan] to send us the complaint with the constitutional principles of [Germany],” Palicki and Herrmann wrote.
The pair, which said they consulted an attorney in their homeland on the matter, last sent a letter to Chesney two weeks ago.
That letter, which responded to Titan’s complaint written in German, was prefaced with a statement made in English to the judge.
“As announced in the last letter, we will communicate in the future only in German,” the pair said.
In its third amended complaint, Titan has asked a judge to add Seychelles-based PSI Services SA to the complaint.
In previous amended complaints, Titan said Palacki and Herrman had been attempting to avoid a suit by attempting to change the ownership of the company into a bogus offshore company, Sunrise Media Ltd., in order to hinder the lawsuit first filed last year.
“Just six days after Antelope Media’s agent received the complaint in this action, [Herrmann and Palicki] formed Sunrise Media Ltd.,” the suit said.
Titan also alleges that to conceal online assets, the defendants transferred the registrations of other owned domain names, including AllRealBareback.com, AlphaMaleCash.com, AaronGiantxxx.com, AndyMusclecam.com, MusclesInMotion.net and SixFootSixGuy.com from Antelope Media to Sunrise Media.
The suit also alleges the same transfer with MonsterCockTube.com from Antelope Media to another defendant Newhaven, a Dutch business entity, with the help from Netherlands resident Patrick Schwarz.
In Herrman and Palicki’s first letter to the court last year, the pair claimed Antelope Media didn’t own MonsterCockTube and that they would not have the resources to defend against the complaint.
Titan's Keith Webb told XBIZ Herrman and Palicki’s latest response is "laughable at best."
"They have prevailed themselves of the U.S. to operate and run their sites, all transactional processing is in the U.S., their original corporate entity was a U.S. LLC [business] and all their sites are in English," he said. "It’s their typical trying to pull straw from their asses to try and evade responsibility."
Palicki and Herrman on Tuesday did not respond to XBIZ for comment.
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