Private Sues Dr Tuber for Copyright Infringement

MIAMI—Following on the heels of Kink.com, as well as its own previous effort, Private Media Group subsidiary Fraserside IP yesterday filed suit against DrTuber.com, Igor Kovalchuk, Extron Worldwide Corporation and Era Technologies Limited, alleging copyright infringement by the tube site. The suit was filed in the same Miami federal court as did Kink.com, and by the same legal team, Jason Fischer from Randazza legal Group, along with attorney Chad Belville, who is working pro hac vice on the case. The allegations are pretty much the same, as well. "Defendants’ website, DrTuber.com, is arguably one of the most visited websites in the world," states the complaint. "These enormous numbers of visitors result in Plaintiff’s copyrighted works being viewed thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times on Defendants’ website. Defendants proudly display the number of instances in which a particular piece of media has been played on its website as number of 'views.' One video has been viewed over 4,868,766 times!" In fact, the plaintiff claims that Plaintiff's intellectual property has been "viewed over TEN MILLION (10,000,000) times, available for months and for some videos, years, on Defendants’ website." In terms of defenses afforded internet service providers by federal law, Fraserside  says DrTuber can claim none, stating, "Defendants enjoy direct financial benefits from unauthorized display of Plaintiff’s copyrighted content, which deprives Defendants of any safe harbor defenses under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act." In all, the complaint cites "32 separate instances of copyright infringement of Plaintiff’s copyrighted and trademarked intellectual property." In addition to the regular plea for a preliminary and permanent injunction against DrTuber.com, Kovalchuk and anyone else associated with the running of the site, the plaintiff is seeking the transfer of the domain into its possession, enhanced damages and attorneys' fees, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest and expert witness fees. At $150,00 a pop times 32 individual cases of infringement, statutory damages work out to $4.8 million. The complaint can be accessed here.