SAN DIEGO — In a $25M lawsuit filed this week at U.S. District Court in San Diego, Perfect 10 is claiming that the operator Texas-based Giganews Inc. and Livewire Services Inc., is illegally posting its copyrighted images on its servers.
According to a story reported on www.xbiz.com Perfect 10 claims that Giganews and Livewire, as well as scores of other websites, broker "massive quantities" of infringing materials and that cease and desist letters have gone unheeded.
Perfect 10 claims the defendants have in total, copied, distributed, displayed, and sold more than 165,000 Perfect 10 copyrighted images.
According to Perfect 10, all of the allegedly infringing sites are hosted by Data Foundry Inc. and controlled by Ron Yokubaitis, a longtime Austin, Texas-based Internet entrepreneur. Data Foundry is one of the largest and oldest data centers in Texas, founded in 1994.
Websites owned by Giganews include Giganews.com and Supernews.com; Livewire sites include RhinoNewsgroups.com, PowerUsenet.com, InfinityUsenet.com, EuroUsenet.com, GalacticGroups.com, CheapNewsgroups.com, FastUsenet.com, UsenetGiant.com and Usenet.net.
The lawsuit claims that the defendants, for as little as $4.99 a month, are selling access to their servers and a virtual warehouse of billions of dollars worth of copyrighted works, including pictures, movies, songs, and copyrighted software.
Perfect 10's Norm Zada claims that Giganews and Livewire have posted more that $30 million worth of content without paying a dime.
The suit seeks for the destruction of Perfect 10 copyrighted images and an injuction, as well as restitution of $5 million, actual damages of $5 million, statutory damages under the Copyright Act of $5 million, treble damages of $5 million and additional statutory damages under California law for $5 million, as well as punitive damages.
