11 Record Labels Bring Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against Porn Industry Giant RealityKings.com
The ABA Journal reports that eleven record labels, including notables Warner Bros., Atlantic, and Elektra recently filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Defendants RealityKings.com and RK Netmedia (who operates both realitykings.com and inthevip.com). Both Defendants are major players in the porn industry and feature videos with adult ‘actors’ engaged in sexual acts while popular songs provide background music. Although the quality of their online content is open for dispute, Reality Kings is the self-proclaimed "World's Best Reality Porn Website. The lawsuit alleges that RealityKings.com and RK Netmedia used copyrighted songs more than 500 times in their adult videos and where ‘actors’ perform little dialogue except for lip-synching songs like Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack”, Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl”, Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Stop (Til You Get Enough), Sean Paul’s “Get Busy”, and (more puzzling and perhaps out of place) T.I.’s “Dead and Gone.”
“Defendants simply stole these sound recordings and music compositions, synchronizing plaintiff’s works more than 500 times onto the soundtrack of their pornographic videos without license of consent from the plaintiffs.”
And that RK Netmedia and RealityKings.com profited from the infringing use of the Record Labels’ copyrighted material;
“Defendants not only incorporated plaintiff’s works into their videos, but then used them to draw an audience to their website and to advertise and promote their videos… encouraging their performers to lip-synch the lyrics to plaintiff’s recordings while engaged in sexual acts on-camera.”
However Defendants in the suit haven’t been quiet, Rolling Stone reports that Reality Kings plans to contest their use of the copyrighted songs as “fair use” and they quoted Reality Kings’ attorney Marc Randazza as saying;
“If you're going to film in a live night club, you're going to absorb some of the ambient sounds. You are going to hear what the DJ is playing, and if someone can tell me how to shoot at a nightclub and police out the music in the background, I'm all ears.”
Rolling Stone also quoted reps from the Record Labels saying that Reality Kings’ use of the copyrighted songs is "deliberate and calculated."
Lawrence Walters who is acting as an attorney for RK Netmedia, (quoted by Digits) said;
“The use of the music was a First Amendment issue and that the videos represented a “reality show in a dance club”… the company will try to resolve the matter without going to court but contends that the music was being used fairly as part of a “commentary on popular night club culture.”
The 11 Record Labels filed suit in the federal U.S. District Court of California and are seeking the maximum $150,000 for each instance of copyright-infringement.
This lawsuit seems to be representative of a growing trend in how major brand owners are protecting their intellectual property. No longer satisfied with protecting their brand rights merely identifying copyrighted material on Websites like YouTube and Vimeo and requesting that the material be taken down (not that they have discontinued this practice), copyright and trademark owners are now aggressively pursuing remedies against perceived infringements by bringing suit against copyright and trademark infringers in the US federal court system.
For up to date Google News coverage of this contest of copyright use between the Record Labels and two porn companies, click here.
For other information and related articles check these out;
ABA - Record Labels Sue Porn Company, Want Their ‘Sexyback’
TMZ - Record Labels Come Together, Sue Porn Site
Digital Spy Blog - Music labels unite to sue porn sites
Wiki - Reality Kings
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