November 3, 2012 | The Biz

FlavaWorks wins big against content pirate

A man accused of pirating 10 of FlavaWorks porn titles using BitTorrent has been ordered to pay a whopping $1.5 million in damages by a federal court in Illinois. That's an impressive $150,000 per movie.

This is considered the largest amount awarded in such a case.

Kywan Fisher, the accused, had signed up as a member to one of FlavaWorks sites, downloaded the videos legally, and then decided to share them freely through BitTorrent. It took some work, but was relatively simple to track him down; FlavaWorks adds unique codes to its online videos. When a customer downloads them, that code follows them.

In the lawsuit, FlavaWorks accused Fisher of "wilful copyright infringement." The company also pointed out that he violated the terms and conditions of the pay-to-view video service he signed up for.

Fisher offered no defense to the suit. We also doubt he will be offering much in the way of payment for damages.

Pornographic films on BitTorrent: Flava Works gets huge damages [BBC]