Adult entertainment company Flava Works specializes in gay media, mostly pornographic films and magazines featuring Black and Latino men.
Over the years, the company has built a reputation for aggressively pursuing legal action against individuals accused of sharing its copyrighted content, often via private torrent sites specializing in gay content. Flava is known for identifying ordinary downloaders and those who leak their content, presumably through use of unique identifiers embedded in official videos.
Many hundreds of alleged pirates have been targeted in these legal actions, including a Hollywood executive who fought back in court. After a retaliatory lawsuit was dropped, the case was eventually settled on undisclosed terms.
In other lawsuits, Flava clearly came out on top, including a damages claim of $1.5 million against a defendant who shared seven films.
Flava’s lawsuits appeared to slow down in recent years, but a new complaint filed at an Illinois district court shows that the production company continues to monitor pirates, including those in private communities.
Lawsuit Targets Alleged Leaker & 47 File-Sharers
The complaint by Flava Works Entertainment and affiliate Blatino Media, lists Canadian resident Nicolas G. as the main defendant. Allegedly a paid subscriber to the plaintiffs’ official websites, the defendant is said to have downloaded several films and then shared some of them on private torrent tracker GayTorrent.ru, which is also accessible at GayTor.rent.
Flava accuses the Canadian defendant of downloading copyrighted videos and distributing them on the torrent platform, in violation of its terms of service.
“Defendant [Nicolas G.] downloaded copyrighted videos of Flava Works as part of his paid memberships and, in violation of the terms and conditions of the paid sites, posted and distributed the aforesaid videos on other websites, including websites with peer-to-peer sharing and torrent technology,” the complaint reads.
The complaint
The legal paperwork doesn’t specify how the main defendant was linked to the pirated videos, but it’s likely they contained embedded identifiers. Flava alleges that as a result of the unauthorized sharing, dozens of members of the private torrent site were able to download the pirated videos.
These downloaders, 47 in total, are listed as John Doe defendants. They’re currently identified only by their respective usernames, including ActorCA, Balloonboy82, Furiousd2023, TheMonitor72, and WarGod83. All face direct copyright infringement claims and a risk of substantial damages.
Millions in Damages
The complaint is brief and doesn’t include any details explaining how the defendants were tracked or identified. The main defendant likely had personal details linked to their paid Flava account, but what evidence exists to show that the alleged users of the site downloaded pirated films is unknown.
The scale of the damages claim is clear. For each of the 47 John Doe defendants the plaintiffs request $150,000 in statutory damages. The main defendant faces a significantly larger claim of $1,500,000, pushing the total damages claim to over $8 million.
Damages
Again, no reasons are provided to justify these amounts but $150,000 is the maximum available for copyright infringement of a single work. The lawsuit was filed with a list of 31 copyrighted works, but no details to show who shared what and when. It’s possible that more details will emerge as the case progresses.
All in all, the recent complaint shows that after more than a decade, Flava is still actively monitoring BitTorrent pirates. While new lawsuits are rare, they are not without consequence and should not be ignored. The fact that Flava’s name previously appeared in multiple bankruptcy proceedings says enough.
—
A copy of the complaint, filed by Flava Works Entertainment, Inc. and Blatino Media, Inc at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, is available here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
From TorrentFreak via this RSS feed