The American holding, which owns several porn studios, is flooding the courts with lawsuits against fans of downloading free content from torrents - their number has reached a record level and continues to grow. Claims in such lawsuits are usually settled by agreement of the parties, as a result of which the plaintiff receives a significant amount of money from an Internet user who does not want to go through the crucible of a full-fledged trial. Attacks on individuals in the legal field, bordering on extortion, have become a stable source of income for the company, which brings it hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Porn holding that flooded US courts with lawsuits
The American company, the owner of several studios specializing in “adult films,” is breaking all imaginable records for the number of copyright infringement lawsuits filed, writes TorrentFreak.
The Strike 3 holding structure includes such studios as Blacked, Tushy and Vixen. The company distributes thematic video and photographic materials on a commercial basis through its websites. It also seeks to identify Internet pirates who facilitate the illegal distribution of its content, including through torrent trackers, in order to bring them to justice.
To do this, Strike 3, using special network traffic analysis tools, determines the IP addresses of copyright violators, and then tries to identify them and sue them.
However, this method cannot be called reliable, since not all Internet users have (static) IP addresses assigned to them, so a separate network address can be associated with the history of downloading torrents from several subscribers of the same Internet provider at once. Thus, people completely unrelated to piracy could very likely become defendants in Strike 3 lawsuits.
An extremely profitable business that is constantly growing
Possible errors when searching for pirates, apparently, do not concern Strike 3 too much, since hunting for torrent fans brings the company a lot of money - hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Therefore, the number of claims against potential pirates from Strike 3 is constantly growing.
Between January 1 and December 28, 2023, the company filed 3,465 lawsuits in various courts throughout the United States, in which unidentified Internet users are defendants. According to TorrentFreak, in this regard, Strike 3 is absolutely unattainable among its industry peers.
For comparison: in 2017, the total number of cases of copyright infringement registered in US courts, in which defendants were individuals convicted of illegally downloading or distributing content, reached 1019.
In subsequent years, this number only grew larger, mainly through the efforts of the restless Strike 3. At the end of 2022, it reached 2,878 cases. In total, from the beginning of 2017 to the end of December 2023, the company filed more than 12.5 thousand claims.
The producer of adult entertainment content is the most active initiator of proceedings against copyright infringers who illegally distribute copyrighted materials via the Internet, in particular through p2p networks.
Other independent film studios are also suing "individual pirates", but the amount of work done by the lawyers of these companies is not comparable to the productivity of the legal specialists defending the interests of Strike 3.
At the same time, as TorrentFreak notes, such cases are considered very quickly. Thus, 2 thousand claims filed by Strike 3 in the first half of 2023 have already been closed.
As a rule, the proceedings are terminated by agreement of the parties or as a result of the company withdrawing the claim for other reasons. It is extremely rare for such cases to reach a full-fledged trial; this is unprofitable from the point of view of financial expenses, both for the plaintiff and the defendant.
In mid-July 2023, Strike 3 and its next “victim” were already ready to meet in a courtroom in Florida, but at the very last moment they managed to come to an agreement.
The company understood that the evidence it collected was not enough to prove that the defendant downloaded a video belonging to it via the torrent protocol. So she agreed to waive her claims against him in exchange for a (legally binding) promise to refrain from downloading copyrighted Strike 3 material in the future. In case of violation of its obligations, the defendant will have to pay compensation to the company in the amount of $125 thousand.
A decent answer that didn't change anything
In relatively rare cases, Internet users who have attracted attention from Strike 3 decide to fight to the bitter end and achieve success.
Such a “tough nut to crack” turned out to be a retired police officer from Seattle (Washington State), who, in 2021, filed a counterclaim against the company, accusing it of extortion, and reached the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As a result of the trial, Strike 3 was forced to admit that the man was right and pay him compensation in the amount of almost $48 thousand.
However, the outcome of this case clearly did not become a “sobering shower” for Strike 3, which not only did not stop prosecuting individuals for piracy in a manner typical of copyright trolls, but also continued to increase its efforts in this area.
Porn holding that flooded US courts with lawsuits
The American company, the owner of several studios specializing in “adult films,” is breaking all imaginable records for the number of copyright infringement lawsuits filed, writes TorrentFreak.
The Strike 3 holding structure includes such studios as Blacked, Tushy and Vixen. The company distributes thematic video and photographic materials on a commercial basis through its websites. It also seeks to identify Internet pirates who facilitate the illegal distribution of its content, including through torrent trackers, in order to bring them to justice.
To do this, Strike 3, using special network traffic analysis tools, determines the IP addresses of copyright violators, and then tries to identify them and sue them.
However, this method cannot be called reliable, since not all Internet users have (static) IP addresses assigned to them, so a separate network address can be associated with the history of downloading torrents from several subscribers of the same Internet provider at once. Thus, people completely unrelated to piracy could very likely become defendants in Strike 3 lawsuits.
An extremely profitable business that is constantly growing
Possible errors when searching for pirates, apparently, do not concern Strike 3 too much, since hunting for torrent fans brings the company a lot of money - hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Therefore, the number of claims against potential pirates from Strike 3 is constantly growing.
Between January 1 and December 28, 2023, the company filed 3,465 lawsuits in various courts throughout the United States, in which unidentified Internet users are defendants. According to TorrentFreak, in this regard, Strike 3 is absolutely unattainable among its industry peers.
For comparison: in 2017, the total number of cases of copyright infringement registered in US courts, in which defendants were individuals convicted of illegally downloading or distributing content, reached 1019.
In subsequent years, this number only grew larger, mainly through the efforts of the restless Strike 3. At the end of 2022, it reached 2,878 cases. In total, from the beginning of 2017 to the end of December 2023, the company filed more than 12.5 thousand claims.
The producer of adult entertainment content is the most active initiator of proceedings against copyright infringers who illegally distribute copyrighted materials via the Internet, in particular through p2p networks.
Other independent film studios are also suing "individual pirates", but the amount of work done by the lawyers of these companies is not comparable to the productivity of the legal specialists defending the interests of Strike 3.
At the same time, as TorrentFreak notes, such cases are considered very quickly. Thus, 2 thousand claims filed by Strike 3 in the first half of 2023 have already been closed.
As a rule, the proceedings are terminated by agreement of the parties or as a result of the company withdrawing the claim for other reasons. It is extremely rare for such cases to reach a full-fledged trial; this is unprofitable from the point of view of financial expenses, both for the plaintiff and the defendant.
In mid-July 2023, Strike 3 and its next “victim” were already ready to meet in a courtroom in Florida, but at the very last moment they managed to come to an agreement.
The company understood that the evidence it collected was not enough to prove that the defendant downloaded a video belonging to it via the torrent protocol. So she agreed to waive her claims against him in exchange for a (legally binding) promise to refrain from downloading copyrighted Strike 3 material in the future. In case of violation of its obligations, the defendant will have to pay compensation to the company in the amount of $125 thousand.
A decent answer that didn't change anything
In relatively rare cases, Internet users who have attracted attention from Strike 3 decide to fight to the bitter end and achieve success.
Such a “tough nut to crack” turned out to be a retired police officer from Seattle (Washington State), who, in 2021, filed a counterclaim against the company, accusing it of extortion, and reached the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. As a result of the trial, Strike 3 was forced to admit that the man was right and pay him compensation in the amount of almost $48 thousand.
However, the outcome of this case clearly did not become a “sobering shower” for Strike 3, which not only did not stop prosecuting individuals for piracy in a manner typical of copyright trolls, but also continued to increase its efforts in this area.
