LOS ANGELES — Pink Visual on Tuesday filed a copyright infringement suit over poached content found on Motherless.com.
The suit claims not only infringement but unfair business practices because Motherless and its operators act as "secondary producers" as it relates to 18 U.S.C. § 2257.
Nineteen copyrighted scenes of various adult content owned by Pink Visual's parent company, Ventura Content, were found on the site, according to the suit.
Motherless.com, which uses the tagline "go ahead, she isn't looking," claims on its site that all of the content is user contributed.
"If you want to blame someone for the content on the site, blame the people of the world — not us," the site says.
Motherless' operator, Joshua Lange, and 20 John Does, presumably advertising business partners, also were named to the suit filed at U.S. District Court at Los Angeles.
It's the second suit of the week to employ alleged 2257 violations in a complaint to show possible unfair business practices.
XPays on Monday used 2257 in its complaint against BitTorrent users who are alleged to have shared the “Paris Hilton Sex Tape.”
The first porn suit to use the 2257 angle in a copyright infringement suit, industry observers say, is the Vivid vs. PornoTube suit that was filed in 2008.
That suit, which pitted one of top porn studios against PornoTube's parent company, online adult industry giant AEBN, never advanced beyond pre-trial stages and was later settled.
The plaintiffs using the 2257 weapon in copyright infringement suits say that legitimate porn distributors spend enormous sums to comply with the law and the defendants aren't.
Jessica Pena, Pink Visual's corporate counsel, told XBIZ that the unfair business practices stemming from the 2257 allegations show the operator's disregard to federal rules that apply to the legal porn business, as well as disregard to ownership of intellectual property.
"When a website manages and distributes sexually explicit content, its operators are subject to the same burdensome record-keeping and labeling requirements that legitimate members of the adult entertainment community are," Pena said. "Their failure to comply with those burdensome regulations gives them an unfair business advantage over rule-abiding companies."
Pink Visual President Allison Vivas said that this week's suit represents a continued stance against those who poach the Tucson-based company's content.
"This lawsuit demonstrates Pink Visual's commitment to continue our efforts against those who engage in copyright infringement," she said.
Lange, who operates the site from Staten Island, N.Y., did not return XBIZ phone calls relative to the suit.
