CANOGA PARK, Calif. — One of the adult entertainment industry’s most popular directors is continuing to strike back at online thieves in his own grand style.
Greg Lansky — the visionary director and co-owner of the Tushy, Vixen and Blacked line of websites and DVDs — has filed scores of lawsuits against those using file-sharing systems to trade his copyrighted 4K high-definition movies online.
Since late September, Lansky’s Strike 3 Holdings has filed 117 separate federal lawsuits in New York, California, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Connecticut and New Jersey, as well as the District of Columbia.
The copyright infringement lawsuits each claim defendants are pilfering Strike 3’s high-end productions and allowing them to be traded on the internet.
Strike 3, in the suits, said that Lansky’s videos are produced with a Hollywood-style budget and quality, and that his film lines are “famous for redefining adult content, creating high-end, artistic and performer-inspiring motion pictures.”
Lansky’s work is so popular that the three brands he directs attract 20 million unique visitors. In court filings, Lansky, who jumped into the porn production biz in 2014, is characterized as the adult entertainment industry’s “answer to Steven Spielberg.”
“Strike 3’s motion pictures have had positive global impact, leading more adult studios to invest in better content, higher pay for performers and to treat each performer with respect and like an artist,” according to the most recent suit, filed in late November against a John Doe.
The alleged instances of infringement, according to many of the lawsuits filed in the past several months, were captured through Strike 3’s investigator, IPP International U.G., which established direct TCP/IP connections with defendants’ IP addresses.
IPP used IP address geolocation technology by Maxmind Inc., a provider of IP address intelligence and online fraud detection tools, to trace physical addresses of the alleged infringers.
So far, the 117 separate lawsuits are still in the early stages, according to records on the federal court system database, with none being decided, ordered closed or disclosed as settled.
Strike 3 seeks injunctions and damages for each act of infringement in the cases.
Lansky did not comment to XBIZ through his publicist today, but he tweeted about a New York Post story published Sunday that described his legal stance.
“Adult performers are artists, and I will protect the art we create together all the way to court,” Lansky tweeted. “Because our work matters. STOP stealing, start paying!”
