Clash of the Titan -Illegal site owners losing LARGE judgements in US courts
 

Titan Media is easily one of the most aggressive companies in the fight against piracy. They're probably also the most successful in terms of large judgements won. They've been fighting illegal downloading and sharing of electronic files (aka piracy) for the last few years, and they are doing a pretty damn good job of winning in court. These guys take copyright law pretty f'ng seriously and it shows.

It's nice to see someone standing up to the thieves and fighting the good fight. Good job Titan, and keep it up. Too bad there's not more in this industry willing to go to war for this cause. We (ATKingom) recently won a small case in Europe against a site operator, and although it's only a small judgement, it's a start.

Sure, all of the haters out there will respond with the negative comments about how hard it might be to collect, or how it doesn't stop others from stealing, etc. I say, those are probably the people who have very little to lose in the fight against piracy. It's easy to be an armchair quarterback, but when you're on the field playing, standing in the defensive line getting hit... it's a different story.



Titan is at again, this time with a $2.7 million lawsuit filed Aug. 11 against British company GLBT Ltd., operators of GayForIt, ItsAllGay and JerkYourTube. 1


Titan Media wins more copyright cases
"$49,500 for damages and online willful copyright infringement. In the other case, an individual was fined $41,250 for using five Titan images in a CD photo collection that he sold via online auction site eBay."2


$1.275 million judgment against online piracy ring for infringement of 17 Titan titles
?You can run and hide but in the end, everything you do online can be traced back to you,? Webb added. ?We were able to subpoena ISPs and track the IP address and individual identity of each person on the pirate blog [who was] posting and distributing our films. Once again, the message is clear ? if you steal and pirate Titan films, you will be caught and you will be prosecuted.? 3




1 http://avn.com/gay/articles/31765.html
2 http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?2004/11/05/4
3 http://www.xbiz.com/news/92386

They failed to respond to DMCA?

Good for them I say....

I agree!


Titan is gay, but you and I look even gayer with our matching Henry Rollins avatars :1orglaugh I dunno if GFY can handle two Rollin's fans

haha... I was thinking the same thing... :)

May sounds stupid for some people who dont know me, to hear something like this out of my mouth, but iam pretty damn happy to see someone taking action instead of talking bullshit like the rest does.

I don't know the specifics in those cases, but I'd assume they did ignore some notice. However, you can respond to DMCA and that doesn't mean you're in the clear. It's easy to screen-grab and document proof of the piracy to show it in court even if you take it down later.

Anyone who thinks they can throw up all kinds of pirated material and wait for the site owners to find it and DMCA them is wrong.

Exactly! From what I understand DMCA is designed to protect accidental display of copyright material. If you exhibit a habit of profiting from the safe harbor and working your business model off the 48 hour loop hole they look at it different. If they can prove theat they regularly displayed stolen content then it is different. Also these guys took it a step further and had it all behind a members area that you had to pay for which is looked at differently.

Three fans :winkwink:

Congrats to Titan for seeing it through and fighting, now we'll see if they ever collect!

I'm not a content owner just an affiliate, but I'm glad to see the content owners taking action. These thieves take money out of my hand just the same as they do the actual content owners, granted maybe not quite as much.

We as affiliates have to compete against these sites for traffic and sometimes even sales, so I'm glad "some" of the industry is willing to actually do something about the problem. Regardless if you can collect the judgements or if they are small, it's still important to have a paper trail of "trying" to protect your property.

Sweet justice.

As for the remark about many do not take it seriously. Not all of us go to court, but are very ruthless about enforcing our copyright. We will hit them where it hurts in processing, hosting, domains, Google SERPs, etc.

Smaller mid market companies can be just as effective cracking down on piracy of their material without their names in xBiz or AVN.

However, I will concede there are some larger companies who are only lip service and do NOTHING to enforce their copyrights, active, or otherwise. Unless you take into account them talking about it at shows, or on boards.

:2 cents:

This is a great thing! Nice to see companies not taking it laying down.

Very true and I'm in support of whatever action anyone is taking in the fight against piracy. Sometimes you can do much more damage with "various other tactics" (let's call them that), as opposed to dragging someone into court. You're right, it may not get the press, but it gets the point across to the thieves.

I recently had an entire forum yanked because I contacted the host and alerted them to his infringement. They pulled his account within minutes.

Yep. That is what we have done for years. We work on a smaller scale, but just as effective. If those tactics did not work, then we would haul them into court.

Happily, we've had success in dealing with the infringers. Whether You/tubes, Rapidshare, MegaUpload, forums, sites, and so on. Google is more than happy to pull them from SERPS if you fill out the paperwork.

Processors will freeze/close/seize most accounts where you hit them with DMCA's. Some sponsors will drop, or stop paying affiliates who get complaints against them. Same said for hosting, and domain regs.

If you REALLY want to enforce copyrights, it is a bit more tedious, but you can get results. I found it amazing when I asked a lot of companies at the conference if they do ACTIVE enforcement OTHER THAN filing copyrights (if they do that). Most said no.

They deal with it when/if reported. But do not ACTIVE enforcement.

Which is a joke. Spending tens of thousands on filing copyright. $0.00 on active enforcement.

:disgust

Im just an affiliate but i can say that the widespread of pirated shit have definitely affected sales and traffic for me. Its good to see that a more able company is doing action against these thieves...

i think under DMCA safe harbor, that applies to the ISPs, hosts/billers, and keeps them safe from damages such as contributory infringement and the like, but if somebody is profiting off your copyright without having a license, you can go after them for whatever, DMCA aside

...and yes, I did catch my grammatical errors

"too bad there aren't more in"




it's GFY not a fucking term paper.

The GAYS did it! Good for Titan for showing the example of protecting their business!

BIG :thumbsup for Titan, one of the few companies with the balls to go after thieves

So awesome to hear this news!

Titan is setting a great example here, and it's working for them, which shows it can work for others.

Complacency is one of the industry's biggest enemies in this... all sectors of the industry need to be constantly vigilant, especially with overseas pirates where Western courts are of little or no help.

:2 cents:

I tried to congratulate them but they got mad at me for calling them fags:(

I for one appreciate Titan Media making this stand and I wonder why so many others do not. There is plenty of money to make going after copyright violators and there are a fuck load of copyright violators right now sitting on mounds of cash waiting to be taken to court.

It's a target rich environment for those willing to go get it.

are you trying to be funny?

you're not

What they are doing isn't exactly easy. Most of these crooks do a good job of not giving away their identity.

I guess it's a good thing I am not trying to be funny then huh?

Follow the money.

Enlighten us all as to the deep meaning of your one URL philosphical statement then plz.

good to see the content owners are going after people that are infringing onm their content

Go get em Titan:thumbsup

It's more educational if you actually figure things out for yourself, plus it makes you feel better in the end.

You posted a URL showing how ppl steal movies and attempt to profit from it, as if we all didn't know it was possible.

ahhh, I get it now...it all makes sense. it looks like you're just a smartass.

wow! I do feel better

oh I am sorry... Good JoB! GO TITANS!!! Woot Woot, keep up the good work, they're running scared!!! Obviously, cuz I mean look at the link I posted, those fools are SCARED!!!

Feel better now, your fragile little ego all put back together in one piece again?

With a name like Gunner, you wouldnt' think you'd be so sensitive.

gee guy, I'd love to meet you someday. we'd have fun together... or at least I would.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

small penis syndrome claims another victim. :thumbsup

What makes you think GFY only has 1-2 Rollins fans?

a lot of horses slaughtered during this thread... :(

Someone with only 7 posts and so much sense. Can't be true. LOL

The problem is there are a few companies like Titan and Vivid who do go after the pirates, then there is little else. We need to push people like www.removeyourcontent.com to a level where they can watch hundreds of sites for hundreds of sponsors and thousand of sites.

How do we do it?

Maybe if more affiliates looked long term and pushed traffic to sites that supported them. And avoided sites that support pirates. OK I'm a dreamer.

Good point Paul, We deal with piracy on a daily basis, I don't think some of the program owners have a clue at all about the amount of there content that is out there being given away for free.

I'm a client, and I can say I have seen results. I would personally recommend http://www.removeyourcontent.com/ to any site owner.

Thank you Gunner :thumbsup

hopefully some people have visited the URL in my avatar.
raising awareness is key

I too, would like to say that removeyourcontent.com has done a great job for me.
Moving our members area over to an encrypted stream only and hiring removeyourcontent.com to police all the old .wmv's that were EVERYWHERE...has led to making it kinda tough to find our stuff (and impossible to find the last few updates that were never .wmv) anywhere but our members area.

Which, by the way, over the last couple of weeks has started a nice rise in sales. If they can't find it for free, but it's what they want...they will pay for it.

I might be interested about the solution you use for the encryption. I totally believe the increase in sales as I have no doubt many paysite promos and tours as they gain in popularity are a good guide of what to search for all over the web.