Los Angeles – Adult media publisher Perfect 10 has filed a
lawsuit for copyright infringement and other claims against file-hosting
service Megaupload, alleging the site is distributing its images illegally,
TorrentFreak reported.
The lawsuit names 100 "John Does" that are
thought to be businesses controlled by or affiliated with Megaupload, and seeks
at least $5 million in damages.
The suit argues that Megaupload should not be
privy to "safe harbor" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA), which shields service providers from liability for copyright
infringements committed by end users.
"Pirate websites such as
megaupload.com, which obviously infringe massive quantities of movies, songs,
images, and other extremely valuable copyrighted works, and directly profit
from the infringing activity over which they have complete control, were never
meant to be eligible to receive a DMCA safe harbor," Perfect 10 argues.
The suit also claims Megaupload’s rewards program induces copyright
infringement by rewarding uploaders of popular content.
"Our legal team is
confident that we have nothing to worry about and they are working on a counter
suit," Megaupload told TorrentFreak. "We keep track of all DMCA
notices and could identify all notifications from Perfect 10 and we have
verified that all reported links were disabled within hours."
Perfect 10
sued another file-hosting service, RapidShare, in 2009. A federal court ruled
last year that RapidShare was not guilty of copyright infringement, but the
lawsuit prompted the company to do away with its own rewards program.
Before
that, Perfect 10 also unsuccessfully sued Google over the inclusion of its
images in Google Image Search.
Related Links:
http://torrentfreak.com/megaupload-multi-million-dollar-lawsuit-110202
http://tinyurl.com/2btz3g5
(DMW previous coverage)
