Gay Porn Gossip

A federal court has awarded Titan Media $1.35 million in damages from tube-site operator, MonsterCockTube.com whose users were alleged to have infringed the studio’s intellectual property rights associated with a lawsuit filed in The United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. You may recall our April 24th Post concerning this federal civil lawsuit.

The federal court judge also issued a permanent injunction barring the tube-site and its owners, representatives and subsidiaries from making any further infringing use of Titan’s content.

According to AVN the court in order to give Titan an opportunity to collect money on the summary judgment— The judge permanently enjoined the website and its associates from transferring domain names and proceeds from domain operations until the judgment has been satisfied in full.

As with all of these types of lawsuits, the people or companies operating these tube websites have little or no money and or assets to pay any judgment of this size. In the end, Titan spends considerable money on associated court cost fees, attorney fees and more. As in most cases of this nature as was the case here, the defendants simply don’t appear or respond to the civil complaints and Titan wins by default. In this particular case, the tube-site being sued is still in operation and has already changed their name to Monstercockland.com. Moreover, in this instant case the owners are German foreign nationals, pretty much out-of-reach by the arm of the law in the United States.

Several years ago Titan sued numerous unnamed “John Does” and a named individual who went by the online persona as “Closet Jock” (legal name Mark Laperna) who had created a free hosted tube website on popular “build it yourself” social networking site, Ning. Laperna’s only source of income was his social security disability check for $594.00 per month and reported to the court in a handwritten letter his only other income source had been a payment by celebrity Paris Hilton to appear at her 28th Birthday party in Las Vegas dressed up as Pee Wee Herman. Laperna’s website (BigDickClub) on Ning was taken down by the social networking company. Ning changed their policy opting to no longer host adult content related community sites as a result of all the legal recourse associated with the lawsuit filed by Titan. Ning was also named as a defendant in the initial lawsuit filed by Titan, however later Ning was dismissed as a defendant, following their change of policy.

It would seem that seeking a multi-million dollar lawsuit against Laperna would also had been futile in any attempt to collect monies seeing that Laperna only had barely enough income to make ends meet with only a disability check.

A blogger who blogs as Brad for Breakfast claims he to was also the focus of a threatened Titan lawsuit after becoming a porn website revenue-sharing affiliate. Brad gives a very detailed written account about the actions taken by Titan. His published article also includes a comment by Corbin Fisher, who after learning of Titan’s action terminated Brad’s revenue sharing affiliate account.

Another source to GayPornGossip shared an email he received from Titan Media. The email directed the reader to a Titan Media webpage where a Monopoly “get out of jail free” parody graphic was embedded. This graphical “get out of jail free” card hyperlinked to Titan’s Paypal account. Basically, would an accused wish to avoid prosecution by Titan for copyright infringement they could pay a $75.00 settlement fee to Titan via PayPal, remove the copyright content and be exempt from any civil/criminal litigation – by remitting payment of $75.00 the admission of unauthorized use of Titan’s content was implied. Of note the $75 fee was per item. So if someone had let’s say for instance 3 individual Titan photos, they would owe $225.

It would seem to this writer if Titan Media has CLEAR PROOF of copyright infringement, why can’t they file criminal charges or report these violation of federal copyright laws to law enforcement authorities as opposed to filing these costly civil actions? If not, then what’s the point of having all that jargon about FBI Warnings, maximum years of imprisonment and or heavy fines at the beginning of each video?

Several other gay adult studios such as Corbin Fisher and Channel 1 Releasing have joined with Titan in pursuing remedies using federal court processes.

GayPornGossip has been getting email tips from our readers stating that one of the owners of Titan  is a silent partner and attorney Gill Sperlein. Sperlein  is representing and or consulting the other enjoined studios while being house-counsel for Titan and the attorney of record in the lawsuits. Claims are that he collects significant legal service fees. It is suggested from these tips that due to the porn industry recession (dubbed by The Advocate as “Porn Panic” ) that Titan has encouraged fellow porn studios to enjoin in their legal efforts as a means of collecting additional revenue to offset losses in a continuing degrading market with porn DVD sales.

Nevertheless, after having won all these million dollar court judgments it leaves one to wonder what exactly the balance sheet looks like for Titan Media and other porn companies, assuming that the uncollected judgments can be shown as an asset. If so you would have a company well over-valued or inflated with debts unable to be collected. At the very least, a company should be able to declare a substantial tax deduction for legal expenses.

Just recently GayPornGossip also reported that Titan is offering to sell their luxury 80 acre estate used for shooting their porn videos for 1.6 million dollars. GayPornGossip has been told by sources that Titan has relocated their productions to Palm Springs, California. Again, it leaves one to wonder if they need to sell that property to help pay all these costs associated with bringing lawsuits or are they building an even more impressive balance sheet.

Regardless of these collateral allegations concerning Titan’s motives it makes no sense to this writer, to pay all these legal costs to only end up with an unenforceable court order.

One thing is evident – the legal system is making plenty of money.  Instead of courts, process servers and lawyers getting this money it could be invested in developing and deploying technology to protect the content from piracy.

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