Titan Media, has filed a federal lawsuit seeking damages from and an injunction against 244 anonymous defendants the company accuses of content piracy and civil conspiracy. The action, filed Aug. 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges “[d]efendants reproduced, distributed and publicly displayed, through the [peer-to-peer] network ‘eDonkey2000,’ certain Io Group-owned audiovisual works.”
What is new and notable about Titan’s Aug. 19 filing is the allegation of civil conspiracy. Titan seeks to enhance the potential damage award and give the court additional grounds for enjoining the defendants’ future behavior and ordering confiscation of the spoils by tying all the Does together as a conspiring mob.
The list of pirated titles reads like Titan’s catalog, making remarkably clear the potentially devastating financial losses suffered by adult entertainment companies as a consequence of unauthorized content copying and sharing. The suit lists 91 titles—many award-winning or -nominated—Titan investigators discovered available in full on eDonkey2000 during April and May 2010:
According to the lawsuit, most of the titles were shared more than once, meaning if Titan is successful in gaining a judgment against each defendant, damages could top $14 million, exclusive of court costs and attorney fees.
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