The Next Web

Adult industry: feel free to share porn over p2p, but don’t host it!

Written on July 31, 2008 – 11:25 am
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

Online piracy is also an issue for the adult video industry, in case you were wondering. Jason Tucker, head of The PAK Group, a new anti-piracy company dedicated to adult content, and president of the content production company Falcon Foto, recently told the industry web site XBIZ (NSFW) that lawsuits against individuals are no longer on the top of their list in the fight against piracy, because they “require ridiculous amounts of resources” yet don’t accomplish much.

Tucker said they’re more likely to start concentrating on adult video sharing sites, or as Tucker puts it: “companies creating locations where the exploitation of stolen works is encouraged”.

He told XBiz:

“We are close to filing a suit against a major tube site, and we will follow that up with a lot more. No one is immune. The big problem I see right now is not outsiders doing this; rather, it is people who purport to be contributing members in our industry. As a result, we know who is doing this, we know where they are, we know where they process transactions, we know where they bank, we know where they host and we know where they live. This means when we come for you, we know how to get you.”

Hat tip to NewTeeVee, which offers some more background information.

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adult content, lawsuit, p2p, porn, video sharing

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Facebook sues German copycat, more to come?

Written on July 19, 2008 – 7:35 pm
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor

Facebook has started to take action against their copycats, and filled a copyright lawsuit against German copycat StudiVZ, in what they claim is an infringement of Facebook’s “look, feel, features and services”. This claim is filled a month after Facebook won the accusation filled by ConnectU, claiming that Mark Zuckerberg was a copy cat and stole the social platform idea in 2004.

Facebook in Germany

Facebook has launched a German version of their social network a few months ago, but has problems to attract visitors. StudiVZ claims to have 10 million users, and call themselves “the most successful social network in Germany, Austria and Switzerland”. Their website is not only similar in usage, it also looks a lot like Facebook. The biggest differences are the color conventions and that the copy does not offer an English interface. Techcrunch reports that StudiVZ was acquired this year for about $100 million. (€ 63 million)

Other copycats are next?

Washington Post reports that there are nine other facebook clones out there, and expects Chinese owned Xiaonei, with an exact duplicate to be next. Facebook has to protect their brand and experience, but a but a laugh every once and a while is important too, let’s hope that parodies as Crackbook, Arsebook and Rightwingfacebook are taken with some sense of humor by the Facebook’s lawyers. As entrepreneurs, the people behind estudiLN have cashed their successful copycat approach.

copy cat approach, facebook, germany, lawsuit, studivz

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Torrent site Mininova breaks the 5 billion downloads barrier

Written on May 27, 2008 – 1:20 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

In January 2005, three young Dutch guys started a new torrent site as an alternative to SuprNova, the former popular torrent service that couldn’t cope with the legal pressure. Yesterday, these guys celebrated the fifth billion download.

Mininova has been growing with an incredible speed. Last November they reached the third billion download, 78 days later they counted four billion downloads and now another billion milestone has been reached. TorrentFreak reported that when Mininova went offline due to hardware problems a couple of weeks ago, its competitors Torrentz.com and SumoTorrent almost went down as well. They couldn’t handle the traffic of the Mininova refugees. Impressive stuff..

But it isn’t all party hearty at Mininova’s HQ, as Eric, Matthijs, and Niek face a lawsuit by the Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN. This organization wants Mininova to be history, since they think 90 percent of the files on Mininova are illegal. Mininova’s counter plead? We’re not afraid as we’re just like Google, only referring to other sites. This isn’t just youthful recklessness, since Bright reports Mininova has hired lawyer Christiaan Alberdingk Thijm, the same guy who won the Dutch lawsuit against Kazaa. Exactly the track record Eric, Matthijs and Niek need.

brein, lawsuit, mininova, torrents

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