LAS VEGAS — The owner of Oron.com has stepped forward.
Stanislav Davidoglov made a declaration to federal court that he is the rightful owner of the file-sharing site. Stanislav made the statement Friday from Chisinau, Moldova. (In court documents, Davidoglov is named as Davidoglov Stanislav, with surname in reverse.)
The declaration is the latest move by Oron counsel to defend against a $34.8 million copyright infringement suit that, according to plaintiff Corbin Fisher, has been settled.
But now that Oron has denied that any final settlement took place, the case has spun into an all-out brawl between both sides.
Just last week, Oron attorneys claimed talks broke down between Oron and Corbin Fisher after the gay adult studio's general counsel, Marc Randazza, took the position that Oron's reported chief operator, Maxim Bochenko, would not be part of the proposed $550,000 settlement.
Oron attorneys, through Davidoglov's declaration and statements in previous motions, are placing a wedge in the suit by attempting to clear Bochenko's name as the company's owner.
"Maxim Bochenko is not and never has been an owner of Oron," Davidoglov said. "Mr. Bochenko is not and has never been an employee of Oron’s."
Further, Davidoglov said that "Oron is and for years has been extremely diligent in establishing safeguards to deal with potential copyright infringement."
"Oron has always had a program in place under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, by which a copyright owner can report and click on copyright infringement on Oron’s website," Davidoglov said in the declaration. "A copyright owner need only go to the front page of the website to the 'report abuse' link, which will result in the offending material being deleted."
Davidoglov also said that Oron has assisted adult studios, including Corbin Fisher, with efforts to monitor Oron.com for potential copyright infringement.
Davidoglov noted that his company has not only been compliant on take-down notices, but it also has taken an extra step further. He said that Corbin Fisher appointed Porn Guardian to submit DMCA notices on its behalf and that last December, upon Porn Guardian’s request, Oron granted Porn Guardian access to a removal tool that enables it to directly take down infringing material.
"When Porn Guardian had difficulty removing some content, Oron offered to process those folders manually. Further, prior to allowing final deletion of any material taken down by PornGuardian, Oron has automated the running of MD5 Hash algorithms on all such material thus blocking any such material from ever being unloadable again on Oron’s servers. The latter two technical means have effectively blocked third parties from uploading repeat infringing content to Oron’s servers."
Davidoglov went on to say in the declaration that Oron did engage in settlement discussions July 1 with Corbin Fisher's Randazza; however "never agreed to any final agreement to settle this case."
"Oron was only interested in a global settlement that would buy its peace completely by settling all lawsuits in their entirety, including any claims against Mr. Bochenko," Stansilav said.
Randazza declined comment on the latest court filing; Oron lead counsel Stevan Lieberman did not return XBIZ phone calls on the filing, while Davidoglov couldn't be reached on Monday.