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BY ERNESTOC: 69
LEASEWEB SUED FOR HOSTING MEGAUPLOADAND OTHER “PIRATE” WEBSITES
ON FEBRUARY 17, 2014
Megaupload's former hosting provider LeaseWeb has been sued for copyrightinfringement at a federal court in California. A complaint filed by adult magazinepublisher Perfect 10 accuses the hosting provider of servicing several "pirate"websites. The publisher also holds LeaseWeb liable for the infringements of Megaupload, demanding up to $188 million in damages.
Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 has made a business
out of suing online services for alleged copyrightinfringement.Over the past several years the company has targeted adozen high-profile services including Google, Amazon, Yandex, Mastercard, Visa, RapidShare,Giganews and Depositfiles. Thus far these efforts have been rather unsuccessful, privatesettlements with Amazon and Depositfiles aside.Perfect 10, however, has no plans to halt its legal crusade and earlier this month the companyfiled a lawsuit against various LeaseWeb entities. In their complaint, Perfect 10 accuses
LeaseWeb of providing hosting services to several websites that host pirated copies of theirimages.“Defendants host and provide Internet connectivity and other essential services to websites,including infringing websites operated in California that have infringed tens of thousands of Perfect 10 Copyrighted Works,” the complaint states.According to Perfect 10, LeaseWeb currently hosts at least eight websites in the U.S. which storetheir work without permission; Imgchili.net, imgchili.com, imgtiger.com, imgserve.net,Poringa.net, ultraforos.com, ultraforos.net and Galleryworld.info.
LeaseWeb’s former client Megaupload is also prominently mentioned as one of the websitesthrough which copyrighted images were distributed. Megaupload’s servers were located both inthe U.S. and Europe.“The LeaseWeb Defendants have hosted the website megaupload.com on their servers locatedboth in Virginia and in Europe,” the complaint states.“Megaupload.com allegedly infringed upon Perfect 10’s Copyrighted Works until the website wasseized and shut down in or about January 2012 following a federal indictment accusing thewebsite of criminal copyright infringement.”Perfect 10 argues that LeaseWeb is directly responsible for the copyright infringements of itscustomers. The company says it sent 22 DMCA notices to LeaseWeb early 2013, identifying12,220 infringing images, and believes the hosting provider should have taken the URLs inquestion offline.“Defendants could have and should have ended the infringement by processing Perfect 10’sDMCA notices and removing the infringing images or by refusing to host the identified allegedlyinfringing websites, among other things,” the complaint explains.“Defendants have failed to take such action and have failed to remove the infringing material thatPerfect 10 has identified in its DMCA notices. Defendants’ conduct has caused, and continues tocause, severe and irreparable harm to Perfect 10,” they add.Perfect 10 does not state whether it also sent DMCA notices to the sites in question. Mosthosting providers forward DMCA notices to their clients, who are then responsible for resolvingthe issue.Previously Megaupload, who were sued themselves by Perfect 10 in 2011, informed TF that theyswiftly responded to Perfect 10
′
s takedown notices.“All infringing files Perfect 10 has ever reported to Mega have been removed within hours. Wekeep track of all DMCA notices and could identify all notifications from Perfect 10 and we haveverified that all reported links were disabled within hours,” the company told us.Perfect 10 nevertheless concludes that LeaseWeb is aware that it hosts infringing websitesbecause of the DMCA notices they, and others, have sent over the years.The adult company says it suffered significant losses and demands the maximum statutorydamages of $150,000 per infringement. With a total of 1256 listed infringements this means thatLeaseWeb is facing up to $188 million in damages.
