November 27, 2008 | The Biz

Pitbull Productions bites back

Pitbull Productions is now $2.85 million richer after a federal district judge in Miami found in the company's favor in a recent copyright infringement case.

U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan ordered defendants The Urban Netmedia Group Inc., to pay for 37 copyright violations and to hand over the file-sharing website that facilitated the piracy, WhatsTea.com, to Pitbull.

Jordan ruled that WhatsTea "enabled and encouraged" surfers to share content they did not own; the more content they provided, the more content they could in turn download.

Jalin Fuentes of Pitbull stated, "online newsgroups, file-sharing sites, blogs and magazine sites, among others, cannot hide while they willfully allow others to illegally infringe on our hard work, copyrights and trademarks ... Webmasters, registrants and domain owners must take active measures to ensure that a company's intellectual property is not being abused, illegally posted, shared and prostituted on the Internet."

As to the fate of the WhatsTea.com domain, Pitbull is now  providing users "the opportunity to legally view gay adult content without breaking the law."  In other words, they've turned it into a pay-per-view theater.

Pirating videos is certainly getting expensive!