In one corner you have a dinosaur of the adult video industry -Vivid
In the other you have the giant of the new technology -AEBN
The battle: Copyright Law
This is going to be interesting and here’s what you won’t read about on the other sites.
Vivid has filed suit against Pornotube, which is owned by AEBN. Now this in and of itself is a pretty simple court battle, or as simple as court battles get. Vivid says that pornotube is violting Vivid’s copyrights because pornotube users have uploaded snippets of Vivid movies onto the tube site. And this says Vivid is a clear violation of copyright law.
But this won’t be an ordinary legal case because pornotubes parent company, AEBN, has licensed Vivid content to use on its sites. So AEBN has some legal ground here. First AEBN can claim that pornotube users upload video to the site and that AEBN cant possibly try to keep them all from uploading copyrighted material thats the same argument that youtube made basically.
BUT! AEBN can go farther and note that in it’s licensing agreement with Vivid AEBN has the right to use portions of Vivid movies as a sales tool to increase revenue for both AEBN and Vivid, thus claiming fair use.
At issue will be many questions that have plagued copyright law since the beginning of the internet and the result of this case may determine the fate of everything from tube sites to TGP sites and torrent sites.
Then there’s always the possibility that what we have here is another case of using the court system to generate PR. vivid did it with Kim Kardashian for instance.
Filing a lawsuit doesn’t cost much compared to buying ad space in national publications, or even on mikesouth.com.
Keep your eyes on this one.
3 Responses
Whether AEBN has the right to claim that they can allow users to upload free Vivid content depends upon the exact terms of their contract with Vivid.
Good point.
It’s a big case – the biggest of the year – if it’s real.
I wish it were.
Too bad AEBN isn’t screening Mike’s movies for free on PornTube, without benefit of an AEBN contract. Then we’d hear some outrage. Or not. Mike and AEBN would cut a deal.
Where the industry is really dying is on torrent sites and through the free content studios and content producers sloppily float around to affiliates.
T.
I know for a fact that they have contractual agreements with Vivid that prohibits them from using any material (in the form of “free clips”) for promotional purposes.
This is possibly the beginning of the end for AEBN, because I also know for a fact that Vivid is not the only company with which they have the afformentioned contractual agreements, whos material is also appearing on PornoTube.
However, word has it they are moving the entire “brewery” to a third world country, to escape both copywrite and 2257 laws. This, of course, would not protect them from pending or interim lawsuits, but it will provide a haven until the US feds do something about it.
Meantime, they’re making over $100M a year, so they can afford to do almost anything now, except maybe buy one of those “islands” in Dubai.
Joeblow… wheres your office at in this building?