‘Copyright Troll’ Files Over 1,000 Piracy Lawsuits in Half a Year

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After filing more than 1,000 lawsuits against alleged BitTorrent pirates in the first half of this year, Strike 3 Holdings is the most active copyright litigant in the United States. Together with fellow adult entertainment company Malibu Media, the company is responsible for nearly all cases filed against alleged file-sharers in the US.

For more than a decade, alleged file-sharers around the world have been pressured to pay significant settlement fees.

These so-called ‘copyright-trolling’ efforts are pretty straightforward. Copyright holders obtain a list of ‘pirating’ IP-addresses and then request a subpoena from the court, compelling ISPs to hand over the associated customer data.

This scheme can be rather lucrative. With minimal effort, rightsholders can rake in hundreds or thousands of dollars per defendant. That is, if a court grants expedited discovery, allowing the companies to request the personal details of alleged infringers from ISPs.

In the past, it has been relatively easy to pursue these cases, but the tide is slowly turning. Most prominent was a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling from last year in the Cobbler Nevada v. Gonzales case. Here, the court ruled that identifying the registered subscriber of an IP-address is by itself not enough to argue that this person is also the infringer.

Nonetheless, the traditional boilerplate complaints are far from over. This week we decided to take a look at the number of file-sharing lawsuits filed in the first half of 2019. This showed that one company has been particularly active.

The adult entertainment production company Strike 3 Holdings, which distributes its adult videos via the Blacked, Tushy, and Vixen websites, takes the crown. In the first six months of this year, it filed 1,071 complaints. That’s up from last year when it filed 976 new cases in the same period.

Strike 3 filings

The second most litigious rightsholder is Malibu Media, another adult entertainment outfit. The company, known for its X-Art brand, has been an established player in US courts for a few years. During the first half of 2019 it filed 337 new cases, which is down from 681 last year.

Aside from the two adult companies, there were also some regular movie companies active. Hunter Killer Productions, for example, filed 25 cases, Bodyguard Productions was good for 16, and LHF Productions added three new complaints.

All filers have been active in previous years as well, so there aren’t any surprises on that front.

While there have been slightly fewer cases than in the first half of 2018, this year has already surpassed the total number of piracy lawsuits that were filed in 2017, which were little over 1,000. Whether last year’s record high of more than 3,300 new cases will be broken, has yet to be seen.

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