Last November, we talked about how Mindgeek won a major lawsuit against a company that was stealing its content.
In a case heard at a federal court in the Western District of Washington, MindGeek won a default judgment against Vasily Kharchenko, the suspected operator of Daftsex.com, Artporn.com, Biqle.com, and Daxab.com.
These sites have been a thorn in MindGeek’s side for years, and MindGeek accused their operator of mass copyright infringement. DaftSex alone was good for millions of monthly visits. All viewing stolen content.
The adult media company won by default after the defense failed to appear. Kharchenko was ordered to pay more than $32 million in damages, and an injunction required domain name registry Verisign to sign over the valuable domain names to Mindgeek.
People don’t realize just how serious stealing someone’s content is. They get that if someone was to steal their car or their iPhone they would be mad. But when they steal the content someone else owns they act like it’s not the same. Theft is theft. If you take something that you don’t own, it’s theft. How is this confusing?
Mindgeek won its case against this company, which included the company having to turn over the domains.
The owner of DaftSex.com was like ok fuck you, and regged Daft.Sex and took to Twitter to announce they have set up shop under the new domain.
Now Mindgeek is back in court, not only to ask for the new domains to be turned over but to also get control of their Twitter account.
“The Court must, unfortunately, look at Defendant Kharchekno as an irresponsible teenager who simply cannot follow simple rules nor show any respect to others, including the rule of law,” MG Premium writes.
“To force obedience with the Court’s Order, the Court should take away the utilized domains and the Twitter account promoting those domains. There is simply no other way to get this behavior to cease.”
The court has yet to rule on this motion, but if MindGeek successfully takes over the new domain names, any new hijacking attempts will lack the element of surprise. Even then, Mindgeek may have to return to court if DaftSex switches domains again.