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August 16, 2017

Flava Works Sues for Infringement, Is Sued for Trolling

LOS ANGELES—In what might be a remarkable coincidence, two lawsuits involving Flava Works, Inc., were filed on Tuesday, August 15. Flava Works, the gay adult studio and owner of several gay-centered websites, filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois against one Marc Juris, whom Flava Works believes "resides in New York, NY," for illegally downloading Flava Works-owned content and then illegally redistributing that material on torrent sites in violation of the user agreement which he entered into with the company. On that same day, however, one "John Doe" filed a lawsuit against Flava Works in the Central District of California, accusing Flava Works and "Roes 1-10" of attempting to extort money from him for "illegally sharing content on the internet—without regard to whether such accusation is true" and then "threaten[ing] to file a public lawsuit unless the victim pays a 'settlement.'" But according to Phillip Bleicher, CEO of Flava Works, Marc Juris and "John Doe" are the same person, though Doe states in his suit that "At all times relevant to this action, Plaintiff John Doe was a resident of Los Angeles County, California," and claims that the California federal courts have jurisdiction because "a substantial part of the events giving rise to Plaintiff’s claims occurred in the Central District of California as Defendants: (a) are or claim to be authorized to conduct business in this District and have intentionally availed themselves to the laws within this District; (b) currently do substantial business in this District; and (c) are subject to personal jurisdiction in this District." Those are particularly interesting claims, especially in light of the fact that Bleicher has provided screen shots of one Marc Juris' membership, as "skyridernyc," in Papicock.com, a Flava Works site, and also in Gay-Torrents.org, a file-sharing site, under that same screen name. (Bleicher provided a URL allegedly confirming that membership, but that particular screen could not be accessed without becoming a member of the torrent site, which AVN was loath to do.) It would certainly be a coincidence if there were two Marc Jurises, one living in L.A. and the other in NYC, both of whom subscribed to gay porn sites. But assuming for a moment that the "John Doe" of the California lawsuit is the Marc Juris who subscribed to the Flava Works site—"Doe" had requested a court order requiring that any counterclaim against him use the Doe pseudonym, but that appears not yet to have been granted—he claims in his suit that Bleicher, who is not personally named as a defendant, had extorted him, as a "former subscriber," by threatening "to file a public lawsuit unless the victim [Doe] pays a 'settlement.'" "In early June, Plaintiff was shocked to receive a letter from Phillip Bleicher, Defendant’s CEO, falsely claiming that 'Flava Works is aware that you have been "pirating"’ the content from its website(s) for your own personal financial benefit'," Doe's complaint reads. "Aware that Plaintiff is a prominent public figure, Bleicher explained that Plaintiff could avoid a public lawsuit only by paying $97,000, an amount that would increase to $525,000 if not surrendered quickly. Bleicher was not subtle about the purpose of the payment being to avoid public humiliation, explaining that '[I]f you act promptly you will avoid being named as a Defendant in a lawsuit.'" Doe goes on to claim that Flava Works has "for more than a decade engaged in a pattern of extortion against subscribers of Flava Works’ websites. ... Public court records reveal that Defendant has filed a number of such boilerplate lawsuits (including lawsuits against hundreds of Doe defendants at one time)," and that such "pattern" is similar to one that's been making news countrywide: porn trolling, such as led to a guilty plea from at least one of the principals of the Prenda Law organization, and several court orders requiring the return of funds obtained from defendants who paid Prenda not to sue them. "Defendant asserts, without foundation or basis, that Plaintiff has uploaded Defendant’s copyrighted videos to various BitTorrent websites, and webforums, thereby allowing other internet users to freely download Defendant’s videos. That accusation is false," Doe's lawsuit states. "Along with his demand letter, Bleicher sent Plaintiff 85 pages of materials that Defendant claims prove the alleged infringement. But they do no such thing. The materials do not reveal or expose infringement of any sort. Defendant’s real purpose in sending this 'proof' was to demonstrate just how humiliating it would be to defend against Flava Works’ scurrilous charges. Defendant’s materials consist largely of screenshots of extremely graphic images of pornography, which Defendant implies that Plaintiff has viewed—but which are completely irrelevant given that they are not Flava Works content. Nevertheless, Bleicher assured Plaintiff that these materials would all be included in a publicly filed lawsuit if he refused to accede to Defendant’s payment demands." Doe is seeking a "judicial declaration that Plaintiff has not infringed Defendant’s copyrights," as well as attorney fees and whatever "further relief" the Court sees as just." But as far as Bleicher is concerned, Doe's lawsuit is pure crap. "They [Doe] filed their judicial declaration the same day we filed our lawsuit against Marc Juris (John Doe) in the Northern District of Illinois (where he expressly agreed to jurisdiction when he agreed several times to our terms and conditions)," Bleicher wrote in an email to AVN. "Furthermore, Juris is a member of several illegal gay adult torrent file sharing websites and he has been uploading and downloading Flava Works' videos on these sites without Flava Works' permission," Bleicher charged. "We have ample evidence to prove that its him (from matching emails, IP, logs and usernames) and he continued to share our copyrighted works. We reached out to Juris to demand that he cease and desist and settle out of court. He refused. Now we are suing him for $1,200,000." Specifically, Flava Works' lawsuit charges Juris with "direct copyright infringement," "contributory copyright infringement," "vicarious copyright infringement" and "inducement of copyright infringement," that last apparently as a result of Juris' alleged reposting of Flava Works content on torrent sites. The suit also seeks to restrain Juris from "distributing, reproducing, using, copying, streaming, making available for download, or otherwise exploiting Flava Works’ Intellectual Property" on any website or elsewhere, and seeks to recoup any money Juris has made from the alleged infringement. Since the filings on Tuesday, no further action has been taken by either party, though the John Doe complaint was the subject of an article on Courthouse News.

 
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