Guardaley | X-Art
Why do copyright trolls ignore the big fish (initial seeders)?
This situation is painfully similar to what is going on in the Bittorent copyright trolling scene. Lipscomb, numerous local opportunistic lawyers, Guardaley, X-Art, Voltage — every link of the organized shakedown chain — is aimed at using heavy weaponry of the Law against alleged individual file-sharers, while initial seeders — those who make copyright content available in the first place — are totally ignored. Professional seeders are super careful — they thoroughly mask their identities, and hence it is difficult to go after them. Or is it so?
I monitored X-Art’s new releases for a month, and found out that their clips appear on the Pirate Bay almost exactly two hours after the release. The overwhelming majority of these releases are seeded by a highly active user named Drarbg, presumably a bot that aggregates pirated content from other sources. Whoever operates this bot must be linked to someone who has access to the client area of the xart.com: if not an insider, then at least a person that paid for a subscription. So, are there ways to figure out who is the source of daily leaks? If so, is such investigation affordable? The answer is yes to both questions.
I want to remind everyone the story how Flava Works, a gay pornography studio, caught an initial seeder back in 2012:
[Defendant] was accused of sharing seven movie “clips” on a popular gay torrent site, and Flava had more than just an IP-address as evidence. The company was able to trace the illicit copies directly back to his paid account through a unique code embedded in the videos.
This simple: the programmers wrote a server-side script that inserted a unique code to every clip right before the download request, so every logged-in user would receive a unique (binary-wise) copy. Well, it is not that trivial, but with X-Art’s assets, I’m absolutely sure this is doable, if piracy indeed seriously harms the sales and thus there is enough incentive to curb illegal file-sharing.
But here lies the problem: the announced goal of stopping piracy is hogwash, so the incentive is diametrically opposite. The entire business is built around monetizing infringement, not stopping piracy. Therefore, flicks continue to conveniently appear on the torrent sites two hours after the release.
In many complaints and motions for ex-parte discovery Lipscomb laments:
In an effort to create a serious deterrent and at the same time be made whole for the losses it experiences daily, Plaintiff has no other choice but to file lawsuits against the numerous infringers who unlawfully infringe upon Plaintiff’s rights.
No other choice? I’m astonished that the textbook example of the false dilemma fallacy fools judges so easily. Assuming (for the sake of argument) that the goal is really to deter piracy, there is always a choice — from succumbing to the grim reality of driving a Ferrari instead of Bugatti and doing nothing/embracing file-sharing — to proactive pursuit and prosecution of initial seeders: a well-publicized criminal lawsuit might indeed have a somewhat deterring effect.
Otherwise, ruining random people’s lives has absolutely no effect on the file-sharing activity, and the German shakedown enterprise appreciates it: like ants nurture aphids, copyright trolls nurture illegal file-sharing, harming everyone and everything except their wallets.
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Caliban Montrose wrote:
> I monitored X-Art’s new releases for a month, and found out that their clips appear on the Pirate Bay almost exactly two hours after the release.
SJD has pointed out, correctly, that X-Art movies end up on BitTorrent very soon after release, however she actually understates the severity. I have been studying and thinking over the topics SJD touches on above for several months now. A long screed on this follows.
A careful monitoring of the X-Art site will show that new movies are released at exactly 9:00pm California time on the day prior to the date listed. An examination of a pre-database” site, which aggregates information directly from the “warez scene”, will show that X-Art movies appear in some cases no later than 4 minutes after 9:00pm PT, and almost universally within 10 minutes.
Now, there are a few problems with this. First, it is uncertain if it is even possible to download a movie from the X-Art website and upload it to a topsite server that quickly, particularly considering the fact that Ms Field has testified under penalty of perjury that customers of hers have complained in the past of slow download speeds (a problem, I might add, which is often solved by using, you guessed it, BitTorrent, including by such dirty pirates as Amazon Web Services). In addition, pirates (in this case, referring to release groups) generally follow strict video format standards, usually necessitating a conversion from the original format. This takes time—much longer than 4 minutes.
This in fact leaves the Fields with several very good ways of attempting to identify who is distributing their videos. First of all, a cursory examination of a pre-db site will give them a name: KTR. Then, leveraging the paragraph above, they can either follow Flava’s lead (Flava is not, by the way, at all the first to do this) and insert unique identifiers into their videos. Since the videos are released far too quickly for the release group to have been able to re-encode, these identifiers should make it into the final file that makes it to BitTorrent. If they don’t, the Fields still have another excellent way of getting a shortlist of who could be pirating their work: just look in their server logs and see who downloaded the video in question between the time it was posted and the time it is listed as released on the scene. Given that it’s usually such a short interval this cannot be a large number of people. These methods have the great benefit of being entirely free to them, unlike the services of the Mysterious German Men, which certain statements made in past court filings suggest they pay quite dearly for.
It is possible that they already do all of this (though unlikely, given their clear lack of understanding of even the basics of BitTorrent). In that case, they should make this known, otherwise we are forced to conclude, as SJD has done above, that they are not actually serious about stopping piracy.
P.S. It is actually quite obvious why they do not go after “initial seeders” (i.e., those who are observed to be consistently among the first seeders of torrents of their videos). These seeders are universally using anonymously rented servers from sketchy Eastern European internet providers who don’t respond to complaints. Their IP address are thus entirely useless. Going after them is thus hard work (although not impossible, as stressed above), and so the Fields—who have also been blinded, possibly under the influence of the Mysterious German Men, by the ideology that BitTorrent Is Evil—take the easy way out and go after the soft target, the “little guy”: the occasional downloader who leaves torrents seeding indefinitely on his/her residential internet connection without a VPN. So instead of splashy stories of armed raids on pirate data centers we get stories of recent immigrants and geriatrics being hit with “settlements” of tens of thousands of dollars.
Fight © Trolls 
If memory serves correctly another gay porn company, Liberty Media, with their relentless attorney, Randazza, was equally adept at smashing uploading subscribers using simple tech.
I was just about to comment about that low tech solution.
The details are in the $250,000 Win story.
IIRC they checked the logs to see who downloaded content, then matched that to the same IP uploading those same films in a small window, then IIRC matched that to posts announcing the files being available.
I don’t remember if it was a private tracker, open tracker, or a cyberlocker in the case.
They then went after the uploader, who folded, worked out a settlement, and became the $250,000 poster child.
I would venture to say the reason they never go after the initial seeder is because THE COMPANY is the initial seeder. Wasn’t it proven or at least inferred that’s what Prenda was doing?
No better way to set up a honeypot than to… You know, actually set up a honeypot.
> I monitored XArt’s new releases for a month, and found out that their clips appear on the Pirate Bay almost exactly two hours after the release.
SJD has pointed out, correctly, that X-Art movies end up on BitTorrent very soon after release, however she actually understates the severity. I have been studying and thinking over the topics SJD touches on above for several months now. A long screed on this follows.
A careful monitoring of the X-Art site will show that new movies are released at exactly 9:00pm California time on the day prior to the date listed. An examination of a pre-database” site, which aggregates information directly from the “warez scene”, will show that X-Art movies appear in some cases no later than 4 minutes after 9:00pm PT, and almost universally within 10 minutes.
Now, there are a few problems with this. First, it is uncertain if it is even possible to download a movie from the X-Art website and upload it to a topsite server that quickly, particularly considering the fact that Ms Field has testified under penalty of perjury that customers of hers have complained in the past of slow download speeds (a problem, I might add, which is often solved by using, you guessed it, BitTorrent, including by such dirty pirates as Amazon Web Services). In addition, pirates (in this case, referring to release groups) generally follow strict video format standards, usually necessitating a conversion from the original format. This takes time—much longer than 4 minutes.
This in fact leaves the Fields with several very good ways of attempting to identify who is distributing their videos. First of all, a cursory examination of a pre-db site will give them a name: KTR. Then, leveraging the paragraph above, they can either follow Flava’s lead (Flava is not, by the way, at all the first to do this) and insert unique identifiers into their videos. Since the videos are released far too quickly for the release group to have been able to re-encode, these identifiers should make it into the final file that makes it to BitTorrent. If they don’t, the Fields still have another excellent way of getting a shortlist of who could be pirating their work: just look in their server logs and see who downloaded the video in question between the time it was posted and the time it is listed as released on the scene. Given that it’s usually such a short interval this cannot be a large number of people. These methods have the great benefit of being entirely free to them, unlike the services of the Mysterious German Men, which certain statements made in past court filings suggest they pay quite dearly for.
It is possible that they already do all of this (though unlikely, given their clear lack of understanding of even the basics of BitTorrent). In that case, they should make this known, otherwise we are forced to conclude, as SJD has done above, that they are not actually serious about stopping piracy.
P.S. It is actually quite obvious why they do not go after “initial seeders” (i.e., those who are observed to be consistently among the first seeders of torrents of their videos). These seeders are universally using anonymously rented servers from sketchy Eastern European internet providers who don’t respond to complaints. Their IP address are thus entirely useless. Going after them is thus hard work (although not impossible, as stressed above), and so the Fields—who have also been blinded, possibly under the influence of the Mysterious German Men, by the ideology that BitTorrent Is Evil—take the easy way out and go after the soft target, the “little guy”: the occasional downloader who leaves torrents seeding indefinitely on his/her residential internet connection without a VPN. So instead of splashy stories of armed raids on pirate data centers we get stories of recent immigrants and geriatrics being hit with “settlements” of tens of thousands of dollars.
At first, I was confused why the topic of “stopping piracy” came up suddenly half way through the post; I had completely forgotten that that is the purported goal of copyright trolls…
Your basic assumption is wrong. The suits brought do not randomly lose lives. There is about a 78% correlation between IP address owners identified by trolls as infringers and the actual infringers. By any fair perspective this is sufficient to allow theses cases to be brought. The vast majority of john die defendants are guilty as charged. The others have a due process right to defend themselves. Sorry but your biassed view does not withstand the test of time. I am as mad as you at Prenda but other trolls are legit and follow the law. You should be equally outraged at the 78 percent who are guilty as charged
Maurice – it is so nice to see that your money grubbing lets you ignore the main point of this topic. IF THEY WANTED TO THEY COULD STOP THE “PIRACY”, BUT INSTEAD CONTINUE TO SUCK IN CASH BECAUSE IT MAKES THEM MORE THAN THEIR ILLEGALLY PRODUCED PORN.
This is someone seeing their car stolen multiple times in a row, used to commit a crime, and still not locking the fscking door on the car when they get it back.
They could take a single proactive step with their supersecret tech partners, but instead pull in settlement cash because it is easy.
They could even be the source of the uploads, because it makes more money than turning out girls.
People have done so much worse in pursuit of a dollar… they talk about how much all of this costs them yet refuse to spend that money to stop it… rather on a system to let them grow fat from terrorizing innocent people. Even by your stupid numbers 22% of the people they target are innocent, yet you seem to feel those are acceptable losses. Better guilty man go free than an innocent man spend a day in jail? Something something ethics…
As to your 78% [CITATION FSCKING NEEDED]
Offer up real evidence, you know what that is donja… oh wait no… you work in copyright law.
Cocaine… its a hell of a drug isn’t is Maurie.
Dear Sorry Morry,
When your heroes have proven that 78 percent guilty, you let us know. By proven, we mean convicted in a court of law by a judge, not scared into paying several thousand dollars under threat of financial ruin and character assassination. If your numbers were right and “the vast majority” of Does were guilty, your friends in Malibu Media wouldn’t be dropping “the vast majority” of cases.
By the way, how’s the gay music coming along? Sue any grandmothers yet? Planning to take their corpses to trial? Or are you going to exhume them for the settlement? Can’t let the dead get away with piracy, after all.
“Fair perspective” to whom? Surely not the nearly 1/4 (by your numbers) of innocent Americans that Trolls target – who, through no fault of their own, are thrown into the devil’s decision of paying two grand to make the problem quietly go away, risk twenty grand to mount a mediocre defense or risk one hundred fifty grand if a judge or jury happens to weigh the “preponderance of evidence” against them.
Sorry, but your biased view (and terrible spelling) come out and admit that you’re wrongfully and publicly accusing nearly 1/4 of your targets of breaking the law by illegally sharing pornographic films with titles that would make a sailor blush. You don’t root out terrorists by carpet-bombing a village. That only serves to harm the innocent and drive the terrorists further underground. It’s the same thing with piracy: who in their right mind thinks that the most damaging pirates actually share and trade illegally gained content with public IP addresses that’s going to point back to their names and home addresses? The most harmful people to your clients’ bottom lines are not going to be caught in the broad net that exploitative lawyers and their string-pulling IT groups are casting.
Since you’re so good with numbers, what is the percentage of innocent victims who paid a settlement demand just to keep their name from being publicly associated with “Stop Daddy, My Ass is on Fire” in a Federal or State court docket? This HAS happened, and checks for these circumstances HAVE BEEN signed over to one of your trolls who are “legit and follow the law”.
Incidentally, your statement about “legit trolls who follow the law” had one fatal flaw: you seem to have misplaced the phrase “exploit the law in a slightly less nefarious and obviously criminal way”.
Maurice- given the fact that none of the million plus complaints have ended in trail, your 78% are guilty is a bunch of malarkey. As long as settlement is significantly less expensive then going to trial, defendants who are innocent will settle. This is what is a broken legal system looks like. Copyright laws are so skewed that foreigners have created a business model to exploit it. The Federal judges are cogs in the shakedown scam.
It certainly is possible the Fields or their investigators are the initial seeders. X-Art subscription porn is yesterday’s business model. Very few are going to pay for their stuff, and especially when so much porn is available for free on the internet.
Only one question for SJD:
We all know that the answer to your question is that it is *far* more *profitable* to extort settlements than it is to actually stop having your movie from being seeded as a torrent.
Now, given the cluelessness of some of our readers, (and just for the benefit of any jurists, for example Judge Howell, reading up on Mr Nicolletti’s whines) why didn’t you spell that out in your article?
Speaking of which, the lack of effort to identify the initial seeder ought to be an affirmative defense for implied permission at this point — especially given the very small group of people with the access to do it, as you aptly demonstrate above for XART.
If you check some of the torrent they upload last year, you can some of the upload date was before the date they release in their x-art.com
sorry for my english.
For some reason your comment was caught by the spam filter. If this happens in the future, please shoot me an email. With hundreds of spam comments daily no way I can check for false positives: it was a pure chance I opened the spam folder.
As for your claim: may be, but I need more solid data. Date alone is not sufficient: 1) XArt releases their flicks at 9:00 PDT but marks them as the next date, but before they marked as the same day; 2) TBP time stamp is UTC. So, while the dates are different, a TPB release might happen after the XArt release.
I’m pretty sure Colette stated in affidavit or Bellwether case that torrents were available, of so of there videos clips before they even posted them to their site.
You’d think this little fact would make it a bit easier to identify the people leaking content to the public at large. How many people have access to content before it’s released to your customer base? Of those few, how many had the means to leak it?
C’mon Colette … this isn’t rocket surgery here.
@ Maurice While I see you are here to champion the cause for the poor Porn Company Production companies and their owners like Colette and Brigham and share with us their story of struggle against the criminals who upload their videos to torrent sites depriving a company that struggles to make a profit due to Piracy.
It must be tough on you Maurice to hear the tales of woe from Collette and Brigham and how they struggle to get by while facing the financial pressures of piracy. I can only imagine how thoroughly embarrassed Colette and Brigham must be to have to live in a 16 million dollar mansion while their neighbors cruelly mock them for being indigent.
I can only envision poor Collette sitting on her genuine chin chilla thow rug in the great room, tears streaming down her face while she clutches the new budget in her hand that their CPA gave them touting the cuts they will need to make due to the piracy of their videos. Long gone will be the days of when they have a personal chef and butler and will have to struggle with maid service only every other day.
No more $450 dollar bottles of wine, it will now have to be $400 bottles of wine, poor Collette trying to be brave while feeling nauseated from taste of that revolting $ 400 dollar swill Brigham clutching her closely and patting her on the back and quietly telling her that they need to be strong and this is what the pirates want.
I usually never throw around the word Heroes loosely, but that what these purveyors of the only the finest smut that $9.99 a month can buy are. Heroes. I am sure right now that their fellow smut peddlers are still counting all the change they collect as they passed the hat at the AVN convention after a stirring speech about how the Field’s valiant struggle has left them desperately clinging to exist as they struggle financially.
Let’s ask Collette and Brigham why they do not DCMA sites that their content is allegedly on? Their answer of course will be that they issue DCMA notices, but sites like the Pirate Bay don’t do DCMA notice take downs.
If X-Art content is being upload to sites and X-Art uses a unique identifier for each of their members of their web site that downloads their videos, then X-art has the ability to identify the member of their site who supposedly uploaded their video to a torrent site one would believe.
Now if this unique identifier corresponds to an X-Art website member, then why have Collette and Brigham not banned the member from the X-Art website? They have the X-Art members name, street address, City, State, Country, Phone number, and their credit card Details along with their IP address used to register at the X-Art website.
So Collette and Brigham have the X-Art members info and would know if said member was uploading their videos to a torrent site by said X-Art member’s unique identifier. If this is the case why have Brigham and Collette not initiated legal action against this alleged prolific uploader of X-art video content? The logical move would be to go after the mail actor who is uploading their content to a torrent site.
Collette and Brigham allege that X-Art content is upload to torrent site(s) in a matter of two hours. If this were the case they would be able to decipher what member(s) IP address download the video(s) in question from the X-Art website in that time frame and not only that they ought to have the ability to tell what members downloaded the video by their IP address and of course the unique identifier that would have been included in the members download of the said video from the X-Art website.
In effect Collette and Brigham should be able to deduce quite effortlessly the alleged infringer(s) as their would be an electronic trail at the X-Art site. The mere fact that we havent seen this occur ( at least to my knowledge would indicate that:
A) Their unique identifier is like the Prenda version of Alan Cooper was a mythical employee.
B)The X-Art member is so adapt at hiding who they really are that the NSA is envious of his computer savvy and ability to upload X-art content within a two hour window before his parents come home and hear him clicking away at the keyboard in his parents basement before telling him he should go to bed.
C) An X-Art employee has gone roque after getting a $40 box of wine as a Christmas bonus and not a $400 bottle of wine from Chateau Field’s private perv -er- preserve.
D) None of the above
So who’s is all curious as to why choice D) None of the Above is the clear favorite here? Well allow me to fill you in on my theory as to why in my opinion it is the only choice here.
Firstly we have a Video file that is getting uploaded to a torrent site within 2 hours of release on the X-Art smut site. The alleged uploader is getting this torrent on a site where torrent files are found within 2 hours of release. Allegedly the pirate is keenly aware of X-Art release times and dates and has a file that was downloaded from X-Art’s website within a 2 hour time frame. Possible? Sure. Odds that is occurring this rapidly? I would say 20/80 if not worse.
You may be wondering how I came up with odds of 20/80. Malibu is alleging the Pirate has a movie that X-Art released on their smut site for their members, that was downloaded from X-Art and then uploaded to a torrent site and was starting to be shared within a 2 hour window is what Collette and Brighams claim to have taken place in some instances.
That being said, even though the unique Identifier is assigned to an X-Art members video download in that 2 hour window and I am sure the IP address and members username/ password combination is used to gain access to the site with time of log in and a IP address used and recorded of that successful access request and logged, that there seems to be no resolve to identifying the person who initially downloaded the video from the X-Art site and then uploaded to a torrent site.
A webmaster would surely be looking at the logs and see what Username/Password of the member(s) entered at what time and date and what they downloaded from X-arts members area. If a newly released movie that the Fields claim was downloaded within a 2 hour window of initial release on the X-Art site for members, you would have to believe it wouldn’t be too hard to eliminate members that didn’t download in the initial 2 hour period of it being released on a torrent site.
In essence you could eliminate those who downloaded the video from X-Art 3, 4 or 5 hours later if the video appeared 2 hours later on a torrent site after only being released in that 2 hour window on the X-art site for it’s members.
So this is allegedly being done by someone who is a paid member with a username/password to access the site and it’s members area. A non X-Art ( guest)member who didn’t pay to join the site would have only limited access thru the tour function of the X-Art website where there would be no ability to download any members area videos. pictures or other content.
The only way a members area video can be downloaded is if you have access to the X-Art site.So you would have to fall into the following categories:
A) A Paid Member
B) A Hacker
C) Webmaster, Producer, Talent, Photographer/Videographer
D) An Affiliate promoting X-Art content ( possibility)
E) An external contracted Employee/Firm doing work on X-Art’s behalf
Now is there a possibility this is a member? Sure there is a possibility but the 2 hour time window really limits the list down of who the offender IP and unique content ID associated to the video that was downloaded from X-Art and then uploaded to the torrent site. That should slim down the potential Pirate offender list down considerably.
A Hacker? ok…sure but you would still see evidence in the logs of the intrusion and an IP address or if a proxy were used, and that unique identifier would still be downloaded with the video and of course uploaded to said torrent site.
Webmaster, Producer, Talent, Photographer/Videographer ? Could it be, sure. There is definitely some sleazy people in the adult industry realm that have screwed over various people in the industry. Take Christopher Mallick aka Chris Mallick for instance, there are a ton of people in the adult industry that will attest to that fact.
An Affiliate promoting X-Art content? I would say this is slim. The affiliates will get content to push but that content is to be used like a teaser to suck -er- get people to join the X-Art smut site, and the affiliates get a chunk of change out of the sale, so it really wouldn’t be in the affiliate’s best interest to go that route ( unless of course you stiffed them, then they maybe out to stick it to you.)
An external contracted Employee/Firm doing work on X-Art’s behalf, but most webmasters don’t give external contractors/employees to much access to the servers,. FTP etc etc. unless they have been vetted and come recommended by someone who has worked with them or someone else in the adult community and came recommended
So Let’s do a little Hypothetical here and let me tell you what my opinion, but first a little lesson from history here:
Anyone recall a famous uploader by SharkMp4. Sharkmp4 had uploaded more than 40 pornographic videos to TPB since February 2011. Those same clips were then used in copyright infringement suits. And who was tied to that litigation John Steele, Paul Hansmeier and Paul Duffy and Mark Lutz and of course Brent Gibbs. Now SharkMP4 was uploading torrent files and using those said files as a honey pot to track alleged infringers and then file a mass John Doe lawsuit and try and get as many suckers -er victims to settle with the mention of huge damages as a result of the lawsuit but could settle for much less.
Needless to say that litigation game ran on and on for quite some time and was very profitable for Steele and Hansmeier. The monitoring firm that looked for infringers downloading the alleged copyright works ( I know, I know the whole story is complicated than this, but for now the short version will do for reference ) was run by Peter Hansmeier….Attorney Paul Hansmeier’s brother. Yes the aforementioned one that was in this game with John Steele and Peter hansmeier.
he fact
And of course Devin Neville’s sleuthing came up with this little gem: Prolific torrent uploader Sharkmp4 had used an IP address associated with John Steele… Yes the aforementioned John Steele. Coincidence, No. Collusion. You bet yer ass!
IMHO the Anti Piracy trolls have latched onto this faction because they can claim this is all in the name of copyright protection, but in reality it is more mass litigation to extract as many settlement’s as it can before the courts looked into what was really occurring in these case as well as others. And we all know how that turned out.
The proliferation of mass anti piracy litigation has flourished due to the fact that these cases are low cost to file, Hundreds and even thousands of John/Jane Does could be filed in a single action and then go to court to get the Judge to grant you an order to get the ISP company to turn over the subscriber information which is crucial in getting the warnings out of a potential lawsuit which of course was followed by a settlement letter to the ISP subscriber to inform him that they could settle now for some price and avoid being named in the lawsuits and occurring huge damages.
So this was a cash grab plain and simple and was quite effective. Now this bring’s us to the case at hand here This was a loop hole so to speak that was exploited by Steele and Hansmier. They took on a mass litigation strategy and did quite well and gamed the system. There used to be no copyright trolls and litigation, no they run rampant as the thought of easy cash.
(to be continued Tuesday)
One clarification: it is possible to subscribe to XArt anonymously: I did it. A cash-bought Visa card and VPN do the trick. (Which is another question to explore: can minors legally purchase Visa gift cards?) In any case, they should be able to detect the leaker and shut him down, even without knowing his identity.
A continuation:
The fact that X-Art / Malibu claim that they file litigation against the pirates who have down loaded their content to try and stop piracy of their movies. X-Art / Malibu maintain they must do as they are left with no choice as Piracy is ruining the business they have built.( I guess when your business is built on young women and men performing solo or couple sex acts who are then exposed not only on the X-Art site and the web who may then find that little thing they did and thought that no one would ever know about finds that it takes on a life of it’s own on the wider web and even whether they stay in the adult industry or leave it follows them for life and if they are lucky no one will know about “that time”, but alas there are many souls who have come and gone from the adult industry and as some have found escaping your porn past and trying to go on with a non adult career can be difficult when that porn past still finds you, or is discovered by others putting your future endeavors far away from porn in doubt, I guess Collette and Brigham can live with it quite easily when porn has made them do well enough to be in a $16 million dollar mansion IMHO
Collette in tears told the Judge during the Bellweather hearing ( I refuse to call a one sided hearing a trial even though Lipscomb loves to bring it up.as such ) how they were struggling to turn a profit due to piracy. One can only be amazed by their miraculous recovery from barely struggling porn company owners to enriched owners who could afford to pony up cash to afford a $16 million dollar place of porn. I am sure we will all await the book from Collette and Brigham on the story of their success from barely struggling smut site owners to riches that many smut site owners would be envious of ( that will of course be made into a movie )( non porn of course, but don’t count on these two wacky purveyors of porn to not make it into a skin flick)
X-Art Malibu claim they are going after pirates thru the courts in an effort to fight those who pirate their content and illegally download X-Art movies via bit torrent To an extent that is true, the they are using the court system. Collette and Brigham claim it is to fight piracy and here is where I believe their story rings hollow. I disagree with their assertion. The fact that we see in X-Art / Malibu litigation is that this litigation is driven by revenue generation. Not education, not prevention, not punishment… revenue generation.
Look at the amount of cases X-Art / Malibu has filed. How many of these lawsuits have gone to trial? Barely any. How many have been dismissed after a time period when the settlements have been exhausted. A lot….in fact quite a lot. The story we all hear is how X-Art / Malibu / Lipscomb Local Trolls are expending funds to stop the piracy and illegal downloading of X-Art / Malibu content.
If this were the case why would X-Art / Malibu / Lipscomb / Local Trolls bother to settle? Why would you not want to take take these to trial and prove your case and let the Judge /Jury decide what the punishment should be? X-Art / Malibu / Lipscomb Local Trolls have little interest in having these lawsuits litigated on the facts. Revenue is key.
How can you say these lawsuits are about revenue? That isn’t hard to figure out. IPP/Guaradley/ Excipio do not monitor for any and every instance of infringement. There whole buisness model is created on revenue gained from piracy. Yes you did read that right, their whole monitoring business model is based on piracy and revenue creation not copyright holders protection.
How can this be you may ask, well simple really. Let’s take a little trip down memory lane. Guardaley was long involved in the “monitoring of Piracy” . In Germany and elsewhere they have a long and checkered history of ” monitoring for copyright infringement” if you will and they litigation they were involved in was known for the tactic of trying to get the Pirates or infringers to settle or be dragged to court and risk being saddled with huge award costs. ( notice the word settlements keeps coming up…hmmm )
The Guardaley proprietors kept the monitoring for piracy while sending infringers letters to settle to avoid court and avoiding huge cost awards scheme going for a long long time and were quite successful, but much like Prenda Law, they got greedy and so did those they were in business with. and when the Guardaley methods and tactics used to gather the recording started to get disputed, well lets just say the wheels came off train. How bad could it have been you ask?
Well Guardaley itself got sued by a law firm they were in the copyright litigation business with ( the settlement to avoid litigation business is what it really was ) It seems the law firm they were in business with Baumgarten Brandt found out about some flaws in Guardaley’s program that Guardaley failed to disclose to Baumgarten Brandt…Oops! So Baumgarten Brandt sued Guardaley in a German court and won. (So much for that infallible software method of detection )
The Judge hearing the Buamgarten Brandt Vs Guardaley case reviewed an independent report that Guardaley software used to collect evidence of infringement couldn’t tell whether a pirate/infringer had download a complete torrent file or just a piece of a torrent file…Oops!
Other law firms also ended up being on the short end of the stick in their partnership with Monitoring firms in the ” copyright infringement ” litigation game. ACS Law Group and the man in charge of that firm Andrew Crossley got in so deep over their settlement letters mailed out to alleged infringes that he ended up being suspended from practicing law for 2 years. Now you may be wondering how ACS Law and Andrew Crossley fell with such a thud. Some of these people that ACS Law sent letters warning them they should settle or risk have a case filed against them decided in no way were they settling and wanted their day in court .
Crossley brought over 20+ cases to court but always tried to dismiss them at the last minute. ( this a theme you will hear quite often )
The British Judge hearing the case was so pissed with Crossley’s antics with these cases that he refused to allow the cases to be dismissed ( This is the Scooby Doo – Shaggy moment where Scooby would say ” Ruh-Oh ”
The Judge went as far as accusing Crossley of wanting to avoid “Judicial Scrutiny” of the evidence filed by Crossley in these cases. ( That epic slam is only outdone by Judge Wright when hearing the case Prenda Law was involved in, and when I say Judge Wrights slam of Prenda Law was epic it was, and the Prenda boys are still suffering Judge Wrights findings)
Coincidentally the monitoring firm involved in the ACS law case was an outfit called DigiProtect, who were a German Piracy Monitoring outfit (Hmmm Guardaley was based in Germany as well, this little fact will be another amazing coincidence later )
Another Law Firm that was in the torrent litigation settlement letter game in the USA was Dunlop, Grubb and Weaver and they had an outfit called US Copyright Group. Court filings later revealed
that Dunlop, Grubb and Weaver had formed US Copyright Group with German Piracy Monitoring firm Guardaley (hmmm A Germany company again ) he subjects in a class action suit brought by
US Copyright Group / Dunlop, Grubb and Weaver / Guardaley ended up being the subjects in a class action suit brought forward by one of the iSP subscribers who was the subject of a settlement demand and paid the demand and then later sued in the class action stating that the US Copyright Group of fraud, extortion and abuse.
Needless to say that US Copyright Group is no more and that Dunlop, Grubb and Weaver are staying well away from the copyright infringement settlement game involving Guardaley.or it’s alleged shell companies.
In Canada copyright troll Voltage Pictures has filed a lawsuit alleging that 900+ subscribers belonging to ISP Tekksavy had downloading a Voltage Pictures movie via bit torrent
.The monitoring firm that is working on behalf of Voltage Picture is a monitoring company called Canpire . Barry Logan who heads Canpire stated in court documents they monitored infringement happening with software named: Guardaley Observer v1.2 ( Gee once again the name Guardaley pops up in another torrent infringement litigation case and another differently named Anti Piracy Monitoring Company…What an amazing coincidence.)
So we have different law firms acting for ANTI Piracy Monitoring Company’s that are all litigating cases involving movies downloaded via Bit Torrent client and allegedly are illegally sourced. Yet all of the law firms in these litigation cases are sending out settlements letters asking you to pay up a sum to avoid being named in a lawsuit and incurring huge legal penalties and costs.
So we have companies that are porn and non porn movie copyright holders involved in litigation cases seeking ISP subscriber information to send out letters to offer a settlement to avoid being being named in a lawsuit and incurring huge costs from such an action. All these cases seem to be tied to Anti Piracy Monitoring Companies in Germany and we still keep hearing Guardaley come up as well.. Coincidence, I don’t think so.
With Guardaley pretty much in the shitter for their antics in the German court case, it would be tough for them to do any monitoring on home soil after they were sued by a law firm they were partnered with. The resulting fiasco made it quite tough for Guardaley to continue to do business on home soil like they had been one would think. I am of the opinion they took their show to new countries with new entities and new Law partners to work with and of course actively seek out clients to sue on behalf of.( my opinion of course)
IPP/GUardaley/Excipio are not an Anti Piracy company that you would think of in the normal sense. Their business model is predicated on revenues derived from someone downloading a copy righted movie ( or even someone who didn’t download a thing but was named because their IP address was “captured” if you will in a torrent swarm to download a file allegedly )
X-ART Malibu claim they are trying to eliminate piracy of their works. IMHO I don’t believe this claim. Why not see the cases where they have the subscribers information from the subscribers ISP and take the cases into court until the matter is resolved. .X-Art / Malibu will say the costs of taking each case to trial would far outweigh anything they would receive back in awarded costs and punish their client instead of the pirate. Bullshit.
The general consensus out in the internet community, defense lawyers, and in some court rooms iis that these cases were never meant to go to trial. The litigation is about revenues and everyone wants a cut ( who is taking what percentage of the pie remains to be seen, but you can bet your ass no one is going home with empty pockets except for the poor ISP subscriber.) The Law firm handling the case is taking a cut, the Monitoring firm is taking a cut and the copyright owner is taking a cut.
So in essence we all know how this litigation is working and why they are choosing to go after the bit torrent file down loaders So why has X-Art Malibu chosen to go after down loaders but not the initial person who uploaded and seeded the supposed copyright movie? If they wanted to stop the uploading and seeding of the movie why do they choose NOT to go after that person? Could it be that there is someone connected with the parties involved later when the litigation is started that is the person who initially uploaded and seeded the torrent file in the first place? I would believe there is a possibility of this IMHO
So it seems the initial uploader and seeder seems to be not worthy of filing a lawsuit against to ask a court to discover who it was that is responsible. Very strange that this avenue is not taken. Of course we will hear the claim every step is taken to expose all who downloaded the copyrighted work. Ok lets say that was true.
So why does X-Art Malibu choose to only go after those who are sharing their movie via bit torrent? Why do they not go after the those that upload their movies to blogs, forums and streaming sites? X-Art / Malibu will claim they do go after them and use DCMA notices to Google and others to have the links removed.
So X-art / Malibu will only go and remove the links to their movies on blogs, forums and streaming sites but not those who uploaded the links and profit from them by money earned from where those links lead to? Um, okay.
I know Collete and Brigham seem to have the idea that their particular brand of smut on X-Art is high class and for a more refined class of porn connoisseur ( try not to laugh too hard now folks ) and like to have X-Art portrayed in that light but really?Such snobbery.
I guess the distinction of who is uploading their content to be shared whether it be thru torrent sites, forums, blogs and streaming sites matters not to them. For all the noise they make blathering on how piracy effects them and the smut operation they built, it sure seems contradictory that they do not go after the person who downloaded the movie from X-Art ( we all know it was made there and it didn’t appear out of thin air and they claim it was on a torrent site within two hours of release on X-Art ) and uploaded it and seeded it on a torrent site, but they go after the people who have allegedly downloaded the movie via bit torrent.
And again the movie appears with links on blogs, forums and streaming sites but nary an effort is made to go after the person who uploaded the movie to these various places ( even though some links where the file is available at pay the uploader every time the movie is downloaded by someone) nor does X-Art choose to go after those that downloaded their movie from links at blogs, forums and streaming sites.
So is X-Art that high brow as to they cant be bothered going after the initial seeders on torrent site or those who upload their movies with links to download it on blogs, forums and streaming sites hat download via the same avenues? Are we to believe that one form of piracy is okay and the other isnt?
Or is it that IPP/Guardaley/Excipi and their Anit Piracy Monitoring Software that Lipscomb extorts is infallible and methods have been proven isn’t all what it is cracked up to be. I am of the opinion that it would actually be work to track down the uploaders and downloaders at blogs, forums and streaming sites and that their is little money to be made from that group even though they illegally download X-Art / Malibu content as well which could be traced back to the uploader with the unique identifier.
Malibu / X-Art has never filed a case against any uploaders or downloaders of their content pictures or video from any blogs, forums or streaming sites even though those uploading and downloading their works do so illegally. Not one case in one court. Have a look for yourself.
As I said before this is all about revenue for all three parties and not about eliminating piracy.If it were actually about that wouldn’t you be going after those who are sharing from it and profiting from it? Of course that would be the normal course of action, except not with X-Art / Malibu.
They willfully choose to NOT go after those who upload it and download it from blogs, forums and streaming sites, even though those sites earn money from advertising and the uploaders from money earned per download or referral
As you can see protection of copyright and eradication of piracy is not in play and revenue earned from settlements is the key cog in the wheel for X-Art / Malibu / Lipscomb / Local Trolls / IPP/Guardaley/Excipio, nothing more and nothing less.