AFFIDAVIT OF JUSTIN CROSSMAN
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David S. Gingras, #021097
Gingras Law Office, PLLC
3941 E. Chandler Blvd., #106-243Phoenix, AZ 85048Tel.: (480) 668-3623Fax: (480) 248-3196David@GingrasLaw.com Attorney for Plaintiff Xcentric Ventures, LLC
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURTDISTRICT OF ARIZONA
XCENTRIC VENTURES, LLC, anArizona limited liability company,Plaintiff,vs.KARSEN, LTD., a foreign entity of unknown origin d/b/a Scaminformer.com;KURT STANGO, an individual d/b/aScaminformer.com; DOES 1-10, inclusive,Defendants.Case No: 11-cv-1055-FJM
AFFIDAVIT OF JUSTIN CROSSMANIN SUPPORT
OF PLAINTIFF’S
MOTION FOR ENTRY OF DEFAULTJUDGMENT AS TO DEFENDANTKARSEN, LTD.
(Assigned to Hon. Frank J. Martone)I, Justin Crossman hereby declare as follows:1.
My name is Justin Crossman and I am currently employed as the Directorof Information Technology for Xcentric Ventures, LLC which operates the websitewww.RipoffReport.com.I have been employed in this position since October 2010, andprior to that time and for a period of several years I provided various technology-relatedservices to Xcentric Ventures on an independent contract basis, all of which related to themaintenance, development and operation of the Ripoff Report website.2.
I am aware that in late 2008, Xcentric Ventures filed a lawsuit against theoperator of a competing website, www.ComplaintsBoard.com,which accused that site of
stealing thousands of pages of copyrighted material from the Ripoff Report site in order
to “pre
-
populate” its competing site with
content. Around this time, I was providing
Case 2:11-cv-01055-FJM Document 14-2 Filed 09/23/11 Page 1 of 89
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This report was posted on Ripoff Report on [DATE] [TIME] and is a permanentrecord located here: http://www.ripoffreport.com/[address].htm.Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copiedwithout the written permission of Ripoff Report
services to Xcentric Ventures as an independent contractor, and I was aware of the eventswhich gave rise to the lawsuit againstwww.ComplaintsBoard.com in the case entitled
Xcentric Ventures, LLC v. Arden, et al.
, Case No. 2:08-CV-2299-HRH (D.Ariz. 2008).3.
Due in large part to the unlawful conduct of www.ComplaintsBoard.com,
Xcentric decided that it was necessary to take steps to prevent competitors from stealingcontent in the future and to make this type of unlawful copying harder to perform andeasier to detect. Among other things, one of the steps that Xcentric took was to add a
“copyright legend” to every report page on the site. This legend took the form of t
extadded to every report page, and it used the following format to identify the originalURL/address of each report page, along with information indicting the date/time thereport was originally posted to the Ripoff Report website:Ripoff Report Copyright Legend Format4.
This copyright legend, which contained specific information that wasunique to each page appearing on the Ripoff Report website, was automatically generated
by Xcentric‟s servers and
added to every report page on the Ripoff Report website inearly 2009 and every new report page created since then.5.
By adding this legend, Xcentric intended to ensure that viewers of theRipoff Report site clearly understood that Xcentric owned the exclusive rights to eachreport page on the site. In addition, by adding this legend to every report page, Xcentrichoped that in the unlikely event another website attempted to copy large portions of material from the Ripoff Report website in the same way Complaintsboard.com did, thepresence of the copyright legend would make it harder and more labor-intensive torepublish any copied pages because doing so would require the pirate to remove thelegend from all 600,000+ report pages on the site.
Case 2:11-cv-01055-FJM Document 14-2 Filed 09/23/11 Page 2 of 89
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6.
In early 2011, Xcentric learned that a new competing website located atwww.Scaminformer.com had stolen significant amounts of material from the Ripoff Report website. Upon further investigation, Xcentric also determined that the copyrightmanagement legend was partially removed from each and every pirated page. As allegedin paragraphs 45
–53 of Xcentric‟s Complaint, when Defendant Karsen copied these
pages from the Ripoff Report website, it apparently used an automated script to remove
the name “Ripoff Report” from
the copyright management information found in thelegend
on each page which originally read “
This report was posted on Ripoff Report on
[DATE] …”. As a result of removing the words “Ripoff Report”, each infringing page
appearing on
Defendant‟s
site contained a typographical error in the remaining text whichread
as follows: “This report was posted
on on
…”.
7.
At the time the Complaint in this matter was originally filed, eachinfringing page on the Scaminformer.com website contained the same typographical
error; i.e., text which read “This report was posted
on on [DATE/TIME] and is a
permanent record located here:”
(emphasis added). This text constitutes the remainder of the copyright legend appended to every page on the Ripoff Report website after the
words “Ripoff Report” and t
he original page URL/address were removed by Defendant.
Case 2:11-cv-01055-FJM Document 14-2 Filed 09/23/11 Page 3 of 89
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