While lots of attention has been paid to US Copyright Group, and its effort to bring mass automated copyright infringement "pre-settlement letters" to the US, it's worth remembering that the pioneers of this sort of thing, Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law, used a lot of porn movie makers early on. That might be because that's who first hired them... or, it might be because everyone involved figured that it was much easier to get people to pay up quickly and quietly if they were accused of downloading gay porn, rather than having to go to trial over the issue. This is not, of course, to say there's anything wrong with gay porn for those into that sort of thing, but in general, most people probably don't want to have it broadcast to the world that they're involved in any sort of lawsuit over downloaded porn, gay or straight, with the case for settling being even more compelling for those who were not openly gay.

It appears that a similar calculus may have brought such lawsuits over to the US. It's not clear if this is part of any coordinated campaign by a law firm, as we've seen elsewhere, but THREsq reports that 65 "John Does" have been sued for accessing a gay porn movie via BitTorrent in a Texas court.

The complaint reads like most of the other, similar complaints we've seen, explaining the basics of BitTorrent to establish the claim that these "Does" infringed on the copyright. Once again, it seems like an open question as to whether or not it's actually legal to include all of these defendants in a single lawsuit. It's also not clear if the goal here is to send similar pre-settlement letters, but that sure seems likely.

Source: Techdirt
DeathKnell Reviewed by DeathKnell on . More Porn Companies Filing Mass Lawsuits Against File Sharers While lots of attention has been paid to US Copyright Group, and its effort to bring mass automated copyright infringement "pre-settlement letters" to the US, it's worth remembering that the pioneers of this sort of thing, Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law, used a lot of porn movie makers early on. That might be because that's who first hired them... or, it might be because everyone involved figured that it was much easier to get people to pay up quickly and quietly if they were accused of Rating: 5