Crackdown on File-Sharers Trading in Gay Porn
After being a relative safe-haven for file-sharers, the sharing of porn is becoming the latest target for increased legal action. Following on from promised action against people involved in mainstream porn, a leading distributor of gay porn is now flexing its muscles against those it accuses of infringing its copyrights.
Over the last couple of weeks we’ve reported how parts of the adult content industry is aiming to tackle sites which they believe are involved in the illegal distribution of their intellectual property.
Titan Media advertise themselves as ‘the premier creator of all-male erotica’, (aka ‘gay porn’) and they are also cracking down on sites and individuals who they say are illegally using their content.
Previously, after the CEO of anti-piracy company BayTSP refused to chase porn file sharers saying: “We don’t want to be known in the porn space”, companies like Titan had to go it alone, even going as far as complaining directly to KaZaA in 2004.
No stranger to taking (or at least threatening) legal action against P2P in more recent years, Titan has previously targeted sharers on the eDonkey and other networks, including several blogs.
Now, according to industry publication AVN, Titan Media has shut down what it calls ‘an online gay porn piracy ring’, which in reality were half a dozen blogs (some hosted by Google) carrying links to gay porn stored on sites such as Rapidshare.
The lawsuit filed in the Northern District of California names Gilbert Michael Gonzales (aka ‘MikeyG’) as the brains behind the operation, also listed 21 ‘John Doe’ as defendants and alleges copyright infringement of 45 Titan Media productions.
President of Titan Media, Keith Webb told AVN: “The message we are sending is that you can run, but you cannot hide. Mr. Gonzalez thought he could hide behind anonymous blogs and postings, but he was seriously mistaken. People need to realize that nothing they do online is anonymous. Every single posting, upload, download, or page view is tracked and recorded, and can eventually be traced back to the individual. Mr. Gonzales taunted us in his online blog postings to try and catch him and shut him down…so we did. If you steal Titan Media property, we will identify you and we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”
Back in 2004, Titan admitted tracking down those it said infringed its copyrights and threatening them with legal action. However, as an alternative to a messy and costly lawsuit, it offered alleged file-sharers an amnesty in return for them taking out a valid subscription to Titan Media’s products. Titan did not immediately respond to emails requesting a comment so we are unable to confirm if this is still the case.
