Seized: Bareback.com, et al (U.S.C. 2257???)

you'd be surprised how many people use "model" pics in their profiles all over the web claiming to be the person in the photo.

Either one of those bareback sites a while back, mabe 3 years ago opened a premium picture area and it was full of stolen pics and videos, all the stuff you could find in the IRC channels it was on there except they charged money for it without it being licensed.

For Titan to act there certainly was some sort of infringment, I don't think that notice would have been put up if there wasn't anything going on

Rumor has it that a former Titan Model posted his pics in the personals area at www.bareback.com....problem was, they were pics taken by Titan and thus owned by Titan.

Titan sued, won a judgement. Bareback.com didn't pay it, sites were seized.

The owner of bareback.com then contacted Titan and worked something out and got the sites back.

Not a lot more complicated than that.

Lee, actual punitive damages for EACH copyright infringement...and that can be a photo or a film provided they are actually registered at the United States Copyright office can be as high as $150,000 each. If they are NOT registered at the copyrights office then the damages can only be ACTUAL damages.

We've been involved in several copyright suits where we caught guys selling our stuff on ebay....all of our stuff is properly registered. We've never lost one.

Bill

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jIgG

you'd be surprised how many people use "model" pics in their profiles all over the web claiming to be the person in the photo.

Either one of those bareback sites a while back, mabe 3 years ago opened a premium picture area and it was full of stolen pics and videos, all the stuff you could find in the IRC channels it was on there except they charged money for it without it being licensed.

For Titan to act there certainly was some sort of infringment, I don't think that notice would have been put up if there wasn't anything going on

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hdkbill

Rumor has it that a former Titan Model posted his pics in the personals area at www.bareback.com....problem was, they were pics taken by Titan and thus owned by Titan.

Titan sued, won a judgement. Bareback.com didn't pay it, sites were seized.
Bill

---

Just for our education, and for those of us that own public forums where people can post pictures, what would be the normal sequence of events here in the case that someone posted a pic such as in this case...

I would think the copyright holder would contact the site and give them official notice of the infringement nicely ( or somewhat nicely), then with a cease and desist letter if that did not get anyone's attention or the desired effect. and of course follow on steps if that fails.

It would be very hard for a forum or personals site owner to police every image posted and know to whom the copyright belongs...so i assume there would be some room in there for him to comply before he is sued.

I also wonder if there is any legal notices that should be posted on these type of sites that might help deflect agressive companies from suing too quickly..

anyone have any thoughts?

Well that is an interesting priority.

Smithers, release the attorneys....

http://www.labnet.com/oldthink/new2/burns.jpg

*LOLOLOL*

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by desslock

Well that is an interesting priority.

Smithers, release the attorneys....

http://www.labnet.com/oldthink/new2/burns.jpg

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tombarr

Just for our education, and for those of us that own public forums where people can post pictures, what would be the normal sequence of events here in the case that someone posted a pic such as in this case...

---

I was thinking the same thing. As someone who might be putting up a profile site, I'd love to hear more on this.

Michael

Tom,

There have been a few occasions where we have found photos of our models or photos pulled from our films posted on various sites. As long as it isn't malicious all we have ever done is to contact the webmaster and ask that post a credit on or near the photo giving HDK credit for it. We have never been too concerned about a few photos posted on a website and certainly not to the point of instituting copyright infringement suit.

You are correct, however. Our attorneys recommend that when we see a copyright infrigment, the first step is to notify the site of the infringment and asked that it be either removed or that credit be given. If the site responds positively then the issue is resolved.

If the site responds negatively or doesn't respond at all, at that point a copyright infringement suit could result.

All that being said, however, my understanding is that the holder of the copyright doesn't have to try to resolve the issue and does have the right to immediately institute an action against the owner of the site. I don't know for sure what Titan's stand is, but I do know that they employ, on a full time basis as an employee, an attorney who is known for aggresively pursuing all copyright infringements so I'm nut sure that they give warnings.

Bill

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by tombarr

Just for our education, and for those of us that own public forums where people can post pictures, what would be the normal sequence of events here in the case that someone posted a pic such as in this case...

I would think the copyright holder would contact the site and give them official notice of the infringement nicely ( or somewhat nicely), then with a cease and desist letter if that did not get anyone's attention or the desired effect. and of course follow on steps if that fails.

It would be very hard for a forum or personals site owner to police every image posted and know to whom the copyright belongs...so i assume there would be some room in there for him to comply before he is sued.

I also wonder if there is any legal notices that should be posted on these type of sites that might help deflect agressive companies from suing too quickly..

anyone have any thoughts?

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hdkbill

Tom,


All that being said, however, my understanding is that the holder of the copyright doesn't have to try to resolve the issue and does have the right to immediately institute an action against the owner of the site. I don't know for sure what Titan's stand is, but I do know that they employ, on a full time basis as an employee, an attorney who is known for aggresively pursuing all copyright infringements so I'm nut sure that they give warnings.

Bill

---

I can't imagine a copyright holder that uses this "no notice" approach to copyright enforcement would prevail against a site, having no idea of the infringement, no culpability in causing the infringement, and certainly no chance to rectify the unknown infringement prior to an agressive suit.

How could a company possibly expect a forum owner, or personals site owner, to know every image that is owned by copyright by any other company. with the thousands of porn stars, past and present that are photographed, i would think this would be a nearly impossible task to monitor as the site owner without some "pre warning" on the part of the copyright holder. and I can't see a court that would allow the case unless some type of warning or notice to the offender had been established.

In every case we have pursued on our own behalf, we have been asked if notice to the offender had been given of our ownership rights...so I can't imagine a "no notice" legal strategy being successful...

i do agree with the approach of HDK and we have the same. If you give us credit or remove the pics, we are fine ... I think this is acceptable use and a good community spirit.

I think it is possible a hostile copyright legal strategy such as some companies pursue could potentially harm their product and it's reputation as being bullies in the long run.

If they were using stolen content, even usersubmitted / used content that belonged to Titan the fact of the matter is, they broke the law.

Titan were well within their rights to take the domain, it really is as simple as that plus, its not like the whole industry doesnt know Titan vigorously defend their copyrighted materials.

I just wish more companies would take the same stance as Titan.

Regards,

Lee

The complete and TRUE story of events will unfold within the next week or so. AVN will have the exclusive on the story and it will be a very interesting and enlightening one. Bottomline...if you steal from Titan you will pay. This is about business and protecting your most valuable asset...your content.

This has nothing to do with a model posting images, or anything to do with a profile on bareback.com. This is about images being posted by the administrator of the website in the premium/paid "bareback sex gallerys" portion of the website. The acts were committed by person running the website, not by his members.

All monies recieved in the settlement, after legal expenses, will be donated to various HIV/AIDS charities. We have no desire to profit monetarily from anything to do with Bareback.com.

Keith Webb
Vice President
TitanMedia.com

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Titanmen

Bottomline...if you steal from Titan you will pay. This is about business and protecting your most valuable asset...your content.

This has nothing to do with a model posting images, or anything to do with a profile on bareback.com. This is about images being posted by the administrator of the website in the premium/paid "bareback sex gallerys" portion of the website. The acts were committed by person running the website, not by his members.

All monies recieved in the settlement, after legal expenses, will be donated to various HIV/AIDS charities. We have no desire to profit monetarily from anything to do with Bareback.com.

---

Thanks for clearing up some of the confusion Keith and welcome to the community also, hope to see you around these parts a little more :thumbsup:

Regards,

Lee

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Titanmen

The complete and TRUE story of events will unfold within the next week or so. AVN will have the exclusive on the story and it will be a very interesting and enlightening one.

---

Looking forward to that exclusive, Keith. Glad I tipped you off about this thread. :)

Ken

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Titanmen

This has nothing to do with a model posting images, or anything to do with a profile on bareback.com. This is about images being posted by the administrator of the website in the premium/paid "bareback sex gallerys" portion of the website. The acts were committed by person running the website, not by his members.

---

Well in that case they were in the wrong and I feel no pity for them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee

If they were using stolen content, even usersubmitted / used content that belonged to Titan the fact of the matter is, they broke the law.

Titan were well within their rights to take the domain, it really is as simple as that plus, its not like the whole industry doesnt know Titan vigorously defend their copyrighted materials.

I just wish more companies would take the same stance as Titan.

---

Lee, what your suggesting is not fair to the site owner. I use to run a personals and dating site and I must say, it's is impossible for a site owner no matter how large their staff is to flawlessly police content uploaded by their members to a personals profile. There were times when other site owners contacted me and made me aware of copyright infringements uploaded by users and I would take action and remove the content in question.

But it is simply impossible for a site owner to check the copyright on every single picture that is uploaded. If Porn sites started seizing personals sites without warning every time this happened if would effectively shut down every single personals site on the Internet. No gay.com, no manhunt, they would die and disappear.

guess I was right about the photos being in the paid members area.
A while back when I saw them, I couldn't belive they would be so stupid to post images that werent theirs like that.

And I think there are other studio's property in there unless it was removed when cought by Titan.

Good job though, looking after your property. Those kind of people only get it when you slap em with a lawsuit.

You definitly handled it nicer by giving the domain back than I would have. I would have kept the domain with a plain white page on it AND sue the shit out of them for the max per infringed image, but that's just me :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tristin

Lee, what your suggesting is not fair to the site owner.

---

Of course its fair, its called 'due dilligence' and its something we should ALL be doing on a regular basis in the adult industry, irrespective of whether you run a forum, tgp or a dataing site.

If you dont have the manpower to check profiles that people may post on your site, you shouldnt have a site where end-users can cause irreparable damage to your business.

Yahoo has a team of staff that are constantly monitoring their groups, match.com has a team of staff making sure that stuff on their system doesnt contain any copyrighted content, thousands of companies employ due dilligence on a daily basis.

We regularly go through the user profiles on GWW making sure they are all in line with the community rules as well as making sure they dont infringe on third-parties rghts, yes, its a royal pain in the ass to do but, by doing so, we're protecting our business. In fact, id guesstimate that for every hour I spend on the communities front end, i spend 3 hours in the backend of the system making sure things are working properly and such like, its a cost of doing business on the internet.

Regards,

Lee

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee

Of course its fair, its called 'due dilligence' and its something we should ALL be doing on a regular basis in the adult industry, irrespective of whether you run a forum, tgp or a dataing site.

If you dont have the manpower to check profiles that people may post on your site, you shouldnt have a site where end-users can cause irreparable damage to your business.

Yahoo has a team of staff that are constantly monitoring their groups, match.com has a team of staff making sure that stuff on their system doesnt contain any copyrighted content, thousands of companies employ due dilligence on a daily basis.

We regularly go through the user profiles on GWW making sure they are all in line with the community rules as well as making sure they dont infringe on third-parties rghts, yes, its a royal pain in the ass to do but, by doing so, we're protecting our business. In fact, id guesstimate that for every hour I spend on the communities front end, i spend 3 hours in the backend of the system making sure things are working properly and such like, its a cost of doing business on the internet.

Regards,

Lee

---

Ok, how on earth can you tell if a random image that a user uploads is copyright? What you are saying makes no sense. Just because a image looks professional don't mean it has a copyright or is not the real person that is uploading it. And then you have copyright photos which look like they were taken by a disposable camera. There is simply NO way for dating site owners to know if 100% of their user uploads are in fact of that user. It is simply impossible.

Sure site owners can user their judgment, but that will never prevent some from slipping by. As far as your comments on yahoo and match.com, your kidding right? I have visited match.com, yahoo personals, gay.com, manjam, manhunt, the list goes on. They all have profiles with yanked content, you see it all the time. I can remember a time I talked to a guy online, a few days later I saw his picture on a porn site I was reviewing. So it's gay.com's fault? How would they know it was from stolen content? Are you implying that none of those services are doing enough to prevent this from happening? It is simply impossible.

Your saying that if a dating site has a copyright image that they are not aware is copyright, all their hard work and the site should just be snatched and closed down without so much as a warning or request sent out? Your saying that there is no excuses for site owners not catching it? Come on Lee, you can't possibly think that this would be fair can you?

Sites should be contacted and have the opportunity to take action to remove the content. If they ignore or refuse, I see no problem with dragging them into court. But what your suggestion is unjust, unfair, and just plain scary. I would hope that Porn sites out there would not stoop to such action as this.

As far as the Bareback - Titan thing, that is completely understandable. They were stealing content from Titan and reselling it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tristin

Ok, how on earth can you tell if a random image that a user uploads is copyright? What you are saying makes no sense. Just because a image looks professional don't mean it has a copyright or is not the real person that is uploading it. And then you have copyright photos which look like they were taken by a disposable camera. There is simply NO way for dating site owners to know if 100% of their user uploads are in fact of that user. It is simply impossible.

Sure site owners can user their judgment, but that will never prevent some from slipping by. As far as your comments on yahoo and match.com, your kidding right? I have visited match.com, yahoo personals, gay.com, manjam, manhunt, the list goes on. They all have profiles with yanked content, you see it all the time. I can remember a time I talked to a guy online, a few days later I saw his picture on a porn site I was reviewing. So it's gay.com's fault? How would they know it was from stolen content? Are you implying that none of those services are doing enough to prevent this from happening? It is simply impossible.

Your saying that if a dating site has a copyright image that they are not aware is copyright, all their hard work and the site should just be snatched and closed down without so much as a warning or request sent out? Your saying that there is no excuses for site owners not catching it? Come on Lee, you can't possibly think that this would be fair can you?

Sites should be contacted and have the opportunity to take action to remove the content. If they ignore or refuse, I see no problem with dragging them into court. But what your suggestion is unjust, unfair, and just plain scary. I would hope that Porn sites out there would not stoop to such action as this.

As far as the Bareback - Titan thing, that is completely understandable. They were stealing content from Titan and reselling it.

---

Tristan, You missed one very important part of my post 'Due Dilligence'.

If a company can PROVE due dilligence, their case becomes a lot stronger should they ever be taken to court for something like we are discussing here.

Im by no means saying that the methods i use are 100% infallible, what i am saying though is that by beig responsible and actively spending time on DD, our defense for any potential case would be that much stronger.

You are also correct by saying that the potential is there for someone to come along and snatch away a site because of a single image, this is the U.S.A, you can sue anyone, for anything, at any time. Whether you would win the case, thats an entirely different matter ;)

Regards,

Lee

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lee

Tristan, You missed one very important part of my post 'Due Dilligence'.

If a company can PROVE due dilligence, their case becomes a lot stronger should they ever be taken to court for something like we are discussing here.

Im by no means saying that the methods i use are 100% infallible, what i am saying though is that by beig responsible and actively spending time on DD, our defense for any potential case would be that much stronger.

You are also correct by saying that the potential is there for someone to come along and snatch away a site because of a single image, this is the U.S.A, you can sue anyone, for anything, at any time. Whether you would win the case, thats an entirely different matter ;)

Regards,

Lee

---

I do apologize if I misunderstood what you were trying to say. I thought you were implying that any site with user uploads deserves to loose that site if anything slips by. I agree that if a content owner can prove that a site is aware that such pictures have been uploaded and choose to do nothing, they should face penalties. I would just hate to think that content owners would just go strait to court without even attempting to resolve the matter with the site owner.

Stolen content in paid sections of a site is another issue all together. As it would be clear up front that the site is stealing the content.

It would be nice with there was a way that content owners could electronically tag a image in some way as copyright. Then if someone took that image and tried to upload it to a dating site or such, the system would automatically flag it as copyright and prevent the upload. But I guess a system like this is still years down the road or maybe will never be created.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tristin

Ok, how on earth can you tell if a random image that a user uploads is copyright? What you are saying makes no sense. Just because a image looks professional don't mean it has a copyright or is not the real person that is uploading it. And then you have copyright photos which look like they were taken by a disposable camera. There is simply NO way for dating site owners to know if 100% of their user uploads are in fact of that user. It is simply impossible.

Sure site owners can user their judgment, but that will never prevent some from slipping by. As far as your comments on yahoo and match.com, your kidding right? I have visited match.com, yahoo personals, gay.com, manjam, manhunt, the list goes on. They all have profiles with yanked content, you see it all the time. I can remember a time I talked to a guy online, a few days later I saw his picture on a porn site I was reviewing. So it's gay.com's fault? How would they know it was from stolen content? Are you implying that none of those services are doing enough to prevent this from happening? It is simply impossible.

Your saying that if a dating site has a copyright image that they are not aware is copyright, all their hard work and the site should just be snatched and closed down without so much as a warning or request sent out? Your saying that there is no excuses for site owners not catching it? Come on Lee, you can't possibly think that this would be fair can you?

Sites should be contacted and have the opportunity to take action to remove the content. If they ignore or refuse, I see no problem with dragging them into court. But what your suggestion is unjust, unfair, and just plain scary. I would hope that Porn sites out there would not stoop to such action as this.

As far as the Bareback - Titan thing, that is completely understandable. They were stealing content from Titan and reselling it.

---

I agree with you 100% on that Tristin. I find the suggestion that if you own a site, you should automatically know if an image is copyright or not to be laughable.

I once received an email from someone claiming they wanted to be a model. I got all excited because the pics they sent were of a really hot japanese guy. I thought I had discovered gold, until my partner informed me that it was some obscure japanese pop star.

I certainly agree that site owneers should exercise due diligence in making sure there are no obviously infringing photos posted ie. with a copyright notice on them, but I am sure there are hundreds of porn stars I would have no recogniton of.

When I was doing pseudo-government work, we were held to strict due diligence requirements by the Department we were contracted under. However, due diligence mean just that, not perfect diligence. However, how can due diligence be shown if the matter is not raised and the site owner given a chance to correct the problem. If they are approached and dont respond or refuse to remove it, then I think action would be full justified.

I fully agree with the action Titan took in this matter, according to the statement I saw posted here from Titanmen. I would do the same thing if I found my content being stolen and sold as someone elses members area.

Someone stealing complete photo sets or gallery sets and posting them in the members area of their site is a completely different situation from someone runing a personals site with a couple thousand members and one of them slips in a copyrighted pic that the site owner or administrators had no reason to question. Clearly the difference in intent should be obvious to anyone I would think. Or maybe not.........

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tristin

It would be nice with there was a way that content owners could electronically tag a image in some way as copyright. Then if someone took that image and tried to upload it to a dating site or such, the system would automatically flag it as copyright and prevent the upload. But I guess a system like this is still years down the road or maybe will never be created.

---

That technology is actually already available :)

Ill see if i can find the URL to a couple of sites where you can use this technology to do exactly what you described.

I also beleive that ASACP use something along similar lines to 'crawl' for CP related imagery.

Regards,

Lee

In case nobody has noticed, BAREBACK.Com is back in business and has been for a few days...

Apparenly, Titan "illegaly" seized BAREBACK.Com as part of their copyright infringement settlement...

The saga continues... In this case, I think a simple Cease and Desist order should have been enough; that's what we issue whenever we find stolen content (and we do).

We are now imbedding information in the files and are stamping our images with a giant © which will only be removable if you spend a gazilliion hours in PhotoShop re-touching the images.

This is what professional photo resources such as Image Bank and others in the Ad Busisness have been doing since day one.
If you want to use the photo you see in the collections, you have to PAY for it. simple... then you get your own copy.

We will be uploading our newly imbedded photos shortly.

It's up and running because we made a settlement agreement with them. We still have control of the domains until the final payment is made. This is business...if you steal and get caught you have to pay for your illegal actions. They paid and we gave them their domains back, very simple. This was nothing personal, just business.

And no, we did not "illegally" sieze the domains it was all quite legal and a brilliant piece of legal work on the part of our generel counsel! We are actually in the process of doing it again with another group of websites.

For us our most avaluable asset is our content. For many websites their most valuable asset is their domain name. We can legally seize their assests once we win a judgement against them.

Almost forget....in response to DeAngelo's comments...some of the images clearly had the TitanMedia name and copyright mark on the face of the photograph. It was clear to anyone that the photograph was our copyright protected property, yet they went ahead and published it in the pay section of their website. That's called "willful infringement" and shows knoweldge of the illegal act. The images were posted by the adminstrator of the website, not by the members.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Titanmen

Almost forget....in response to DeAngelo's comments...some of the images clearly had the TitanMedia name and copyright mark on the face of the photograph. It was clear to anyone that the photograph was our copyright protected property, yet they went ahead and published it in the pay section of their website. That's called "willful infringement" and shows knoweldge of the illegal act. The images were posted by the adminstrator of the website, not by the members.

---

That's fucked up.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tristin

That's fucked up.

---

Yup but, they got fucked up in return for doing so LOL

You know, the really sad thing about this? People are STILL going to steal content because they will think its not going to happen to them, until they get caught that is :)

Regards,

Lee

groovy!!

http://www.digimarc.com/ are one of the places that do image tagging.
Photoshop also has the capability