Fortunately it's not that way at all for us. Since porn is still "bad", it's been very, very easy to get this done. Folks don't want to be "outed" for their porn habits. When they get these letters from our attorneys they pay up quick.

And it doesn't cost me a dime and there is no "loss". Only profit. We are doing a 60/40 split with the attorneys. I get 60. We set the settlement fee at exactly the price point that it will cost the person more to fight than to settle.

This ain't that hard and it's making me back the money I've lost over the last couple of years. And it's going to start happening a lot.

When you get that letter from my attorney you'll have the choice of getting your own attorney and facing us in court...which is more expensive than paying the settlement. And if you fight it, it's not only gonna cost you more money...but it's going to give you the nice extra bonus of your wife, kids, neighbors, co-workers, etc. finding out ALL about your dirty little porn habits that you want to keep private.

Watch as everyone gets on board with this. If you are a content producer, you need to be doing this too. It's so simple and so effective it's ridiculous. And you are not out of pocket one thin dime. It's all profit.

Robbie has an excellent point in that downloading porn is something that most people won't want broadcast. Even though on the surface porn seems to be more accepted in the mainstream world in the past, to a huge portion of America, it is still for perverts. And there is a world of difference in being outted for illegally obtaining the new Katy Perry tune and being outted for d/l'ing a copy of "Barely Legal Schoolgirl in Midget Tranny Bukake Paradise".

It's hush money, and I LOVE it.

You guys are right, torrents will still be there. But it will go back more toward the way it was, when those sites are deeper underground and were more within the realm of a "sophisticated" internet user. As it is now, it seems as if every grandma in America knows how to get stuff off of Vuze.

robbie, how many settlements have you gotten paid so far v. how many cases has your attorney filed?

You've always been a top leader and contributor to the Adult Internet, and support for you an "automatic". Thanks!

Every last one. And it doesn't cost anything The lawyer is working for his 40%
Win/win
And about damn time after the last few years of everybody getting raped.

This shit has cost a lot of people their very livelihoods. Enough is enough.

that's impressive. :)

It's not an "oedipal" thing, it has to do more with the infantile male fantasy that girls have penises (and later we discover in horror that they don't have it!).

In the beggining of times, Adam fucked goats...

so your basically admitting it an extortion scheme/blackmail scheme

of pay us or will violate your privacy rights.



How exactly did you make sure that no one who was simply recovering content they paid for wasn't "accidently" blackmailed.


if you did nothing i wonder given the counter liablity of the dmca it worth letting yourself get caught just to counter suit.

What do you make off a settlement? You're suing downloaders for downloading your content, right?

if more people seen the inside of private tracker sites they would shit themselves.

Privacy is no longer a "right" if you commit a crime. You have choice not to commit it and a choice to settle if you do it.

i hope your fancy copyright lawyers did not come up with this gem of perspective.

aren't the hurt locker lawyers having trouble from a lot of isp's getting customers information?

robbie, it's impressive that your lawyer is able to yield better results then lawyers the movie industry hired.

Did you actually take anyone to court yet? or was it 100% settlements so far?
It seems the cases are not as open and shut as everyone make it sound like, especially when you come across someone who has the means to defend themselves...

Thread Timeshifting Imminent. Launch in 5...4...3...2...

I'm am hoping that there are lots of 512(h) subpoenas coming also.

The key is keeping the settlement low enough that it is just under the price it would cost to lawyer up. And even if they do that and go to court they are going to lose. It's so easy to get your legal ducks in a row. And that's what we did. 2 very big producers (Hustler and a big gay company) led the way and we followed suit.

It's recovering money. Plain and simple. All the theorizing in the world doesn't mean anything. Smart people do the things that work. This works. And it is most definitely going to put a dent in the millions of people who join sites just to rip them and re-upload them.

And the funny part is...they are basically turning themselves in. Sites like pornbb are now a cash cow full of people incriminating themselves.

As they like you to do when a thief posts up a stolen scene for everyone else on those surfer forums....I'd just like to say "thanks" for identifying yourselves. It's like picking low hanging fruit.

I have to chime in here and talk a bit about the money involved.

In 2009 I spent around $25,000.00 to take down the pirate site known as WorldPlagiates.com / WP-Board.com

You can read my long ass blog about it here:

http://wp-board.com/

Just like some people are saying in this thread -- I was told it was a money losing deal and a waste of time.

Wrong -- it was a hugely successful investment!

In the first 9 months after the board shut down and I got all the records and logs I settled with the traders for $147,500.00 in various cases ranging from as little as $250.00 to as high as $25,000.00.

This -- my friends -- was done with total legal bills of about $1000.00. Correct, almost no lawyer involvement at all, except the drafting of a settlement agreement template, and him taking a call or two from media types.

That in and of itself makes it profitable to go after people if you have a way to absolutely prove what they did.

It would surprise you who some of the assholes are stealing stuff and / or posting to boards. In the WP settlements we had a lawyer from Orlando, a real estate investor from Boston, and many others. Three of the guys took just 1-3 days to pay me $25,000.00 each... they clearly had the money to join hundreds of sites, but selected to steal and be sort of covert.

But, thats not the end of the profit story...

My main website slowly started increasing the average number of subscribers over the next few months (June 2009 to October 2009). In October 2009 it set its all time record for the total number of paid subscribers at one time. It did that in the "bad economy" that has seen many programs shut down, or people leave the business.

The only reason my 8 year old site would be growing at that time would be because they wanted the style of content I have and couldn't get it for free on the WP board. There is no other reason my site grew in that time period.

My September and October 2009 daily subscriber average was about 550 above what it had been for many, many months prior to taking down WP. That means a bit over $16,000.00 each of those two months / about $33,000.00 total that I attribute to taking down the WP boards.

But the story doesn't end there.... I don't only sell memberships. I also offer DVDs, and sales for them went up a bunch in that same time frame.

Plus -- as all businessmen that use "long term thinking" would know -- its not just getting them to pay once that counts, its getting them to pay month after month after month.

My average daily subscribers is up around 250 for each of the last 14 months (since taking down WP) when compared to the 14 months prior to that. This means of course -- once they couldn't get content for free, they paid and many of them (the new customers / former WP downloaders) decided to stay.

The WP cases are not done. I've waited months for a certain lawyer to get his act in gear after major medical issues and it hasn't happened. Just last week we changed lawyers and expect to file suits in October against the last 12 guys that have money, but selected not to settle. More income for me!

There is one HUGE difference between going after a music trader like the RIIA did, and going after a person trading pretty girl images or videos, gay images or videos, TS videos or images, etc. Nude, Non-Nude, Hardcore or super Softcore... Doesn't matter.

It is much harder for the defendant to explain to his wife, children, co-workers and others that he was trading these materials.

Telling the wife that he just downloaded a song or two might be OK.

Telling the wife he illegally downloaded GBs of photos and videos of Jordan Capri is an entirely different story.

I had one guy call me within 2 days of posting his name online and FedEx me a cashier's check for $25,000.00 just to get his name off the WP blog before his family found out.

The embarrassment factor puts Steve and his legal team in a strong position. I read the entire suit and various affidavits and such and they are in a great position to make this a winning / profitable venture!


Jimmy

Why isn't this guy banned yet?

Umm.. yeah... so if someone goes to a CP site with a privacy policy then nobody can know the guy got busted for CP because he has a right to privacy?

I can understand the paying to keep it quiet part of your post but really can't get my head around pirates suddenly joining a site instead of just moving on to the next pirate forum and picking something else that's free?

That has to do with the content....

EXAMPLE: If they are hooked on Jordan Capri, and can't get it free, they will pay.

In my case -- and Steve's -- we are not talking about over saturated or generic European girl naked content that can be found any place. We are talking about specific models / content that can't be found on 100s of other sites.

Some models can be seen all over the place -- some models, or content styles are more rare.

It's going to be very hard to prove it was the actual person you are suing. But I guess if you settle before having to prove it then you're golden.

some of you are fucking stupid

It doesnt matter if he never makes a cent, it doesnt even really matter if he can prove they downloaded anything.


Do you thenk the average man wants his wife, mum, friends knowing he has been downloading porn.

A letter through the door will be enough to scare people shitless. This combined with publicity would be enough to stop many users using torrents

Kudos to you guys!

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

The less said, the better.

why's that?

Hmm I don't know, maybe the fear that if they continue to get the content pirated, even if elsewhere, then they may be the next one sued? ...

For the most part I think the goal here is to regain paying subscribers that turned to pirating over the years of it becoming such easy access.... and after an incident like the WP Board, or hopefully Lightspeed's case, it shouldn't be a hard sell.

I don't think anyone expects people that have always pirated to suddenly start paying

I don't get why people respond negatively to these threads.

To think piracy is some new, unbeatable monster makes you look silly. Piracy is simply a crime, just like any other crime. You never totally stop a certain type of crime, but you manage it.

Take auto theft for example. Cars still get stolen but by using criminal prosecutions, security devices, and consumer education, etc., you can manage it so that your car isn't stolen every time you turn around.

Same with piracy. You simply treat it like any other criminal activity and use a multifaceted approach to managing it to a reasonable level.

If you're going to wait around for one magic thing to stop piracy, you'll wait forever. The world doesn't work like that. It's things like what Steve(s) and Robbie are doing that will bring piracy down to a manageable level.

yeah, finally, it had to come and excelent work from lightspeed, grooby and harddrive, keep it up and lets go to the win! your links are comming all around my network in few days! :thumbsup

The problem with hollywood is that they were trying to stop piracy not look at it as a money making venture. They wanted to set examples, and hope it scared people. They spent a lot more in attorney fees then they took back in with damages. They had a different goal than Steve. I think Steve's approach will be effective for him and he will make money.

LOLOLOL ? what is so funny? He found a way to continue to make money off of the people who are stealing his content. It might just be the "big tube sites" we all know most of them are the ones who put up the stolen content in the first place and not their "users".

If people didn't steal they wouldn't be sued and have to pay up. Can wait to see this unfold, it's been the best way IMO for sites to handle this for 3 years but no one has tried it... until now.

There's too much on that blog to read through for me to tell quickly whether he just went after the site owners, the donators, and the uploaders or whether he went after the downloaders too.

Downloaders just move site or are already on many sites taking stuff.

Uploaders seem to have a favourite site to post on. Out of the many sharing forums (which all seem to operate a similar policy to here of don't post other sites) i'd be surprised if there was even mass knowledge of WP-Board outside of it's members.

:uhoh I have no idea what the fuck you are trying to say here but the bottom line is that starting cases against piracy definitely helps the influence of buying site memberships vs. pirating content.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh :1orglaugh:1orglaugh you drink your own kool aid too much.

what an idiot/

Don't steal content if you don't want your "priacy" violated...


LMAO privacy rights.... :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Yeap, and if they want to look at porn and keep it quiet then they better not steal porn.

Awe too bad, poor little content thief gets exposed for stealing PORN.

Maybe the ones who settle fast also are afraid to buy? They do not want their wife or bank to see their creditcard statement and email spam, instead they download free?

Pirates do not deserve that privacy but paying customers do. This industry also have to take that seriously because one thing leads to another. A bad circle can't be broken by creating it. I'm really amazed by all the spam I get after doing test signups :)

I'm not going to get into this too much, or debate it too much as frankly, it seems that most of the people having a whine are the ones who don't really have that much to lose.

Are we going to stop piracy doing this? Absolutely not. There will always be piracy and there will always be people looking to get the content for free, these people will NEVER buy. This is an inevitable part of any business that creates a content that can be ripped off.
The problem is when potential buyers find it easier to steal content than to buy it. These lawsuits are just part of our overall strategy to go after content thieves and hopefully drive them further underground, so that those potential buyers, find it easier to go to the actual websites rather than take the risk of stealing or jumping through loops to steal it. We have other initiatives going on against the uploaders, this is specific to bit torrent downloaders.

What does Grooby hope to accomplish from this? Both a new potential revenue stream and the threat of what may happen, if you continue to poach our content.

Let's see what happens when 100 people get a legal notice stating our intention to sue, and publicize the legal action we're taking against them for downloading illegally:
"SHEMALE-MIDGET-DEEP-ANAL-FUCK-ORGY.WMV", before being so negative about the outcome. If it fails, nothing ventured, nothing gained but at least we're trying to work at this and we will find a solution instead of sitting around whining about the profits dropping.

:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

Steve can suck it.

in big red letters so you don't get confused

Being an internet whore is 100 percent legal last time I checked. Not sure why you get your panties all bunched up when people post things you don't agree with. Put on your big girl panties and deal with it. :2 cents: