April 13, 2006 | The Biz

TITAN-ic punishment for content thieves

Bareback.com was nearly annihilated last year when a California court offered its domain name as restitution for stealing images from Titan Media. In the end, the company saved its name - but not everyone is as lucky. In fact, the government has seized and plans to auction off nine domains as a result of similar copyright complaints by Titan.

According to AVN Online, the U.S. Marshal's office has seized rainbow-zone.com, planet-fetish.com, planet-bears.com, planet-gaysex.com, planet-muscle.com, planet-uniform.com, planet-black.com, gay-bareback.net and dirty-worlds.com under orders from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on a judgment against Metropole News Group LLC, Easy Planet LLC, and Rainbow Zone LLC.

Those domain names, as well as any others in which the companies have an interest, will be sold in a public auction beginning at 9 a.m. PST on April 19.

The action is the result of a 2004 lawsuit against Rainbow Zone (which owns Metropole News Group and Easy Planet) by Titan Media parent Io Group. The suit was similar to that against Bareback.com and alleged that Rainbow Zone "reproduced, distributed and publicly displayed more than 764 copyrighted photos" belonging to Titan Media.

But while Bareback.com ultimately settled its suit out of court -- and was therefore able to save its valuable domain name -- Rainbow Zone duked it out in front of a judge and lost. The judgment was handed down in September 2005 and awarded $1,370,250 to Io Group, including $783,000 for copyright infringement and $587,250 for California Civil Code violations.

"This is a new area of the law that few people understand," Gill Sperlein, Titan Media general counsel, told AVN Online. "Unfortunately, many adult webmasters continue to think it's okay to use content without authorization from the owner."

So if you've posted porn pics on the Web to "share" with your friends, consider yourself warned!

• Titan shuts down rainbow-zone, auction to be held April 19 [AVN]
  Previously: Steal pictures, lose your site