Flava Works Wins Default Judgment of $1.5M in Copyright Suit

CHICAGO, ILL.—Reminder to self: Show up to court, especially if you're looking at copyright infringement fines of $150,000 per. That's a symbolic reminder, of course, as pirating copyrighted movies on BitTorrent networks is illegal. For one Illinois man, however, it's all too real in the aftermath of a default judgment filed Tuesday by Judge John Lee in a lawsuit brought by gay porn studio Flava Works in July 2011. The man, Kywan Fisher, who got tagged for 10 counts related to infringing Flava titles such as Thugboy VII Running from the Dick and Star Struck!, which, according to Flava Works, he obtained as a paid member of their membership site, ThugBoy.com. "Defendant agreed to the terms and conditions of the site and agreed that Defendants would not copy and distribute copyrighted videos of Flava Works," the plaintiff stated in a trial brief submitted to the court. Despite the prohibition, it continues, "Defendant distributed the above-mentioned files by making them available on websites via peer to peer technology." Unfortunately for him, Flava was watching via proprietary software. "Copies of Plaintiff’s copyrighted videos that were found being distributed on the Internet contained a unique embedded code that was assigned to Defendant when he joined as a paid member of Plaintiff’s website," the brief continued. "Every time the Defendant downloaded a copy of a copyrighted video from Plaintiff’s website, it inserts an encrypted code that is only assigned to Defendant. In this case, the encrypted code for Defendant is: 'xvyynux.'" Able to track the files' movement, the brief further claims, "All of the aforesaid copyrighted videos of the Plaintiff with Defendant’s unique encryption code were found on both sites: Fileserve.com and gay-torrents.net." More specifically, it states, "Plaintiff’s copyrighted videos were downloaded thousands of time by third parties:3416 times on Gay-Torrents.Net." Because the infringement was committed willfully, Flava further claimed it was entitled to no more than $150,000 per the "at least 10 times" that Fisher "... copied or distributed Flava Works, Inc.’ intellectual property..." In lieu of any defense, and satisfied with the plaintiff's showing of facts, Judge Lee agreed and filed a default judgment on Oct. 30, $1.5 million plus costs and attorney's fees, and permanently enjoining Fisher from "copying, distributing, reproducing, or making available for download or embedding any material that infringes Flava Works, Inc's Intellectual Property..."