PHOENIX — AMA Multimedia LLC — the operator of more than 20 porn membership sites, including Passion-HD.com, Tiny4K.com and PornPros.com — has filed a $9.6 million copyright infringement lawsuit this week against the owner of Porn.com and TrafficForce.
In the suit filed at Phoenix federal court, AMA claims that Porn.com displayed 64 of its copyrighted works over 110 separate URLs part of Porn.com.
The complaint alleges that Porn.com scraped content from other websites, including XVideos and VPorn, and then sold that content on its website while making it look like it was user uploaded.
“Defendants scrape, or aggregate on their own, user information and videos from other websites in the industry, and then create the façade that those users exist on their own website and uploaded the videos to defendants’ websites directly,” the suit said.
AMA Multimedia emphasized in the suit that copyright infringers have systematically abused the DMCA safe-harbor provisions in an attempt to garner protection for sites displaying copyrighted adult entertainment content without license.
“Commonly, these websites attract internet user attention through the combination of offering free viewing of copyrighted materials and the unauthorized use of trademarks, providing the user a road to the free website through the use of these marks,” AMA Multimedia counsel said in the suit.
“From this road, sites can then up sale other offerings including paid memberships for enhanced versions of their site and further monetize their site through advertising revenue.
“Porn.com is such a website and more, not only displaying copyrighted adult entertainment content but also selling specific rights and granting licenses to the content without authorization or license.”
The suit also names Porn.com’s sister company TrafficForce, which is said to have not taken precautions to ensure that its advertisers weren’t uploading copyrighted material for their banners located on the Traffic Force platform.
“Plaintiff’s copyrighted works were displayed on TrafficForce banners on Porn.com,” the suit said. “TrafficForce banners that display Plaintiff’s copyrighted works are also displayed on other websites that utilize the services of TrafficForce.”
In response to the filing, Adam Silverman, president AMA Multimedia, told XBIZ, "I encourage everyone to read the complaint, especially content producers. I doubt we received extra special treatment, this case probably extends to other content producers."
AMA Multimedia has filed similar copyright infringement lawsuits within the last year against the operators of ServiPorno.com, EPorner.com, ShooshTime.com and Dr. Tuber.
In each of the lawsuits, AMA has asked for damages of up to $150,000 per infringement, as well as an order for the transfer of the domain names cited in the cases.