April 11, 2012 | Online

Hollywood backs Flava Works

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is helping porn producer Flava Works in its lawsuit against myVidster for online piracy.

The case started in 2010, when Flava Works filed suit against myVidster, a social video bookmarking site. Although myVidster does not, itself, host video content, it allows content from elsewhere to be embedded on the site.

Initially a preliminary injunction was granted by an Illinois federal judge, who found that myVidster and its operator, Marques Rondale Gunter, could not hide behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act because the site did nothing but the bare minimum to reduce illegal activity of users.

The judge found that "beyond his mechanical response to the notices, Gunter refuses to concern himself with copyright protection. It is true that service providers are not required to police their sites for infringement, but they are required to investigate and respond to notices of infringement."

The case was appealed. Google and Facebook got involved, arguing that the injunction against myVidster was unfair. Both companies said that this would mean social bookmarking sites received the same treatment as direct infringers, a decision that "has imperiled the investment decisions and licensing arrangements" by its companies. (It would also be a huge headache for sites like Facebook and Google-owned YouTube.)

Last week, the MPAA filed a brief in support of the injunction, siding with Flava Works. It called myVidster "an unlicensed on-demand, internet-video service that generated advertising and other revenues by attracting an audience for infringing content."

MPAA argued that it did not matter whether the pirated material was actually in possession of the user or the site; linking to, and thereby hosting, an embedded copy resulted in the same damage to the rightful content owner.

MPAA Lines Up With Porn Studio in Steamy Copyright Dispute [The Hollywood Reporter]