We tend to
want to think of Copyright Law as a dignified business. Therefore I was shocked recently to discover
that nearly forty percent (40 percent) of the copyright infringement
litigation in this country involves the adult entertainment industry.
From my
research (honestly) I see that companies such as Malibu Media (perhaps the
largest player in this game) offer their videos for sale on the Internet. Some unscrupulous users then employ
file-sharing software to copy and share their films (does this sound familiar
to the music industry?). Much like the
RIAA litigation of several years ago these companies have found ways to trace
the infringements to various ISP addresses.
They then file copyright infringement lawsuits against the owners of
these IP addresses (identified as John Doe in the complaint). The defendants are then given the option to
pay statutory damages (which can range from $750.00 to $30,000 or defend the
claim in court. Of course the next step
is discovery in which the John Doe's real name gets revealed, leading to the
possibility that the hapless defendant gets named in a federal lawsuit for
downloading porn.
This really
is a moral dilemma. On the one hand
copyright infringement is stealing, whether you're talking about an artist's
life work or pornography and the adult film industry certainly has a right to
protect its assets. But the fact that
the Copyright Act allows for the collection of statutory damages (at a minimum
of $750.00 per title) and attorneys fees means that the plaintiffs are getting
something of a windfall each time they are successful in these suits. Some judges have taken note of this and there
seems to be a new niche developing in defending against these suits. Of course
even though they're not always victorious, litigating the claim for an innocent
defendant (i.e. a grandparent or someone with an unsecure Wi-Fi connection) can
be expensive. The worst part to me is that
these plaintiffs are holding this extra leverage over the defendants (pay up or
suffer public humiliation.
These
copyright owners have been called "copyright trolls" (defined as “an
owner of a valid copyright who brings a copyright infringement action not to be
made whole but rather as a primary or supplemental revenue stream") (see
DeBriyn – Shedding Light on Copyright
Trolls, 19 U.C.L.A. Ent. L. Rev. 79 (2012). I don't know if I would necessarily
go that far. Certainly no one accused
the record companies of being trolls when they unleashed their torrent of
lawsuits against file sharers (they were accused of many things but I don’t
recall the word “trolls” being used. But for some reason I find it shocking that
this type of litigation constitutes so much of the federal court's docket. However, it does demonstrate that there are a
lot of ways to make money in the entertainment business.
