Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Polish Premier Stops Ratification of Internet Anti-Piracy Treaty

First off today, Poland has announced that it is delaying ratification of the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) for at least one year to give the government more time to get public input and to analyze the treaty for any potential human rights issue. The country signed the agreement last week amid widespread protests but is now delaying Parliamentary approval. The treaty, which is primarily aimed at patent and trademark issues, also deals with copyright and is an attempt to harmonize enforcement between the 31 countries involved. However, the agreement has come under fire both for fears that it goes too far with enforcement and the secrecy with which it was negotiated.

2: Is Pornography Copyrightable?

Next up today, Liuxia Wong was sued by pornography company Hard Drive for allegedly downloading and sharing one of the company’s movies via Bittorrent. Wong is fighting the lawsuit and, in part, using a novel theory that pornography itself is not copyrightable as it is not a science or a “useful art” as per the Constitution. Though the argument is a long shot, Wong’s arguments also raise questions about how Hard Drive’s lawsuit was filed, actions not taken by the company to mitigate losses (such as sending DMCA notices) and the nature of its evidence against her.

3: Colleges Crack Down on Selling, Sharing Notes

Finally today, in California several colleges are cracking down on students that sell classroom notes, including taking disciplinary action against students who offer their notes for sale online and sending cease and desist letters to larger sites specializing in buying/selling notes. However, the crackdown has led to questions as to who holds the copyright in the notes, the professor who gives the lecture or the students taking the notes? Generally, it is though to be the students who hold the rights, making these actions dubious legally, but various state laws in California aim to make the practice illegal. Many of the larger sites have already stopped taking notes from the schools that complained, citing academic honesty policies.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 5 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

The very nature of their business, in many circles, creates disdain for the industry and, as per the unwritten “fifth” fair use factor, they are seen as “evil”, thus harming their chances in court.

But the social stigma and discretion that comes with the industry has yet another potential problem, DMCA compliance. Because, while adult content enjoys all of the same copyright protections as other forms of material, the compliance with DMCA notices that an adult provider sees is, likely, much lower.

As someone who regularly files notices on behalf of adult content creators or against hosts specializing in adult material, I’ve noticed a trend where, while most DMCA notices see a compliance of around 95% or above, the compliance with adult content drops to 75% or below.

Sadly, this isn’t just an issue for people who are producing pornography as a lot of adult-oriented sites also end up hosting non-pornographic content. Think, for example, what happend to Lara Jade has her images were used on the cover of a porn DVD.

The problem, for the most part, isn’t content-neutral hosts (including file lockers) but rather sites aimed directly at hosting adult content. These hosts, in general, tend to be the least cooperative and, even when they do cooperate, often take the longest and do the least amount possible to resolve the issues.

The reasons for this, however, are straightforward, but the solutions are few and far between.

Why the Problem with Adult Hosts?

Adult hosts are an interesting situation. Where most hosts consider copyright compliance to be one of their most critical abuse issues, adult hosts put a lot lower priority on it. The reasons for that are many, including the following:

1. Bigger Concerns: Adult hosts have a myriad of laws they have to obey and, while many of them also apply to more content-neutral hosts, they are certainly less common issues and they are at much less risk than adult-oriented hosts.
2. International Issues: Adult-oriented hosts are much more likely to be out of the US/EU zone that honors takedown requests. Many can safely balk at removal requests as local laws don’t require any action or, at the very least, they know they are out of reach of any potential legal action.
3. Ulterior Motives: Many of such sites actively depend on infringing material for their content base and revenue, thus, the risk in not removing content is less than the damage to their bottom line doing so would cause.

While most adult-oriented sites do still comply with DMCA notices and other copyright complaints promptly, it unfortunately means that a disproportionate number don’t.

Resolving this, however, is not an easy matter though there is at least one tool for gaining leverage over uncooperative hosts.

Dealing with Uncooperative Hosts

Dealing with uncooperative adult hosts really isn’t much different than dealing with other uncooperative hosts. As per my Stopping Internet Plagiarism guide, the best next action is to take the issue up with the search engines and get the content removed there.

Search engine DMCA notices have a series of effects. The first being that it gets the content removed from the various SERPs, reducing the number of people who see it and access it. Also, domains that accumulate a lot of these notices are often reduced or even dropped from the search engines, something that most of these sites fear.

That, in turn, makes these sites much more cooperative in removing the infringing content. In several occasions, I’ve seen content that the host refused to remove infringing material but took action after getting a notice from Google about a filing there.

In short, your best bet is to take the issue to a “higher power” and, over time, it’s likely that these sites will learn to respond better on the first notice.

Bottom Line

In the end, while it’s adult content creators that certainly have the most to worry about, they aren’t the only ones either. Since non-adult material routinely winds up on adult hosts, it’s an issue for almost every type of content creators.

While there isn’t necessarily much that one can do about these issues, at least not from a practical standpoint, being aware of them makes one better able to deal with them and less likely to get bogged down in them.

That, in turn, can help you be more effective and more efficient in protecting your work online.

Have any suggestions for the 3 Count? Let me know via Twitter @plagiarismtoday.

1: Judge Kills Massive P2P Porn Lawsuit, Kneecaps Copyright Troll

First off today, hot on the heels of setbacks for the U.S. Copyright Group, the Adult Copyright Company, a similar mass-litigation copyright firm representing pornography producers, has had seven of its mass lawsuits tossed out of a West Virginia court. The judge in the case ruled that it is improper to enjoin all the defendants simply because they used the same file sharing software and that the lawsuits would have to be filed separately and only those who were likely from the area could be refiled in that court. This is a major setback for the group that could, feasibly, bring an end to the mass litigation tactics, at least barring a major change in the law or a victory on appeal.

2: More Copyright Lawsuits Filed over Review-Journal ‘Death Ray’ Graphic

Next up today, Righthaven, the group which has sued website owners on behalf of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, as well as other papers now, has been very active in suing over reuse of its Vdara “Death Ray” graphic, which shows how a building’s curved surface reflects sunlight to create hotspots on the ground. Four more webmasters were sued for the graphic, following several others. This brings the total sued by Righthaven to 192.

3: Fake Barbie Dolls Seized At Border

Finally today, the U.S. Border Patrol has seized some 141 cartons of fake Barbie and similar dolls, valued at about $61,000. The dolls were found on a truck crossing into the country at the San Luis border crossing with Mexico. The dolls are originally thought to have come from China.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

That is because, in 2007, Coton got a message through the art site deviantArt (dA) that someone had recognized her image on the cover of a DVD. Though only seventeen when, she had already been growing in notoriety in photography circles, in particular on dA, and it was one of her followers there who gave her the link.

It was that link that kicked off one of the most bizarre cases in recent copyright history and one of the more important ones for smaller content creators. With the case concluded, we’re going to take a look back at the lawsuit, how it started, how it was battled and what the outcome means.

As you’ll see, the case was a long, winding and at times emotional road but one that may have direct implications for smaller content creators all over the globe.

Strange and Angry Beginnings

As Coton began to investigate the DVD on her own, she quickly learned that it was a pornographic DVD and, specifically, a re-release of the 1982 film Body Magic (link SFW).

After contacting Hustler, who was selling the DVD on their site, she found out that the video had been released by a Houston-area company named TVX Films. TVX and its owner, Robert Burge, specialized in wholesale rereleases of “classic erotica”. As part of this, they re-release old films with new covers and had chosen Coton’s photo for their release of Body Magic, likely because the original cover had a photo of a woman in a top-hat.

When Lara Jade contacted Burge, what she received was a nasty reply, written in all caps and littered with spelling and punctuation errors. One famous passage read (capitalization his):

“I’M SURE BY THE END OF THE MONTH YOUR FACE WILL BE HISTORY. WE HAVE STOPPED SELLING THE DVD UNTIL COVER IS REPLACED. WE HAVE FURTHER CHECKED OUT YOUR NAME AND ITS NOT LIKE IT’S A HOUSE WHOLE NAME. ACTUALLY, REMOVING YOUR IMAGE WILL HELP IMPROVE THE SELL OF THE DVD….. SO FAR IT BOMBED”

Burge also claimed that the company that created the cover did their research and that the image was in the public domain. He accused Coton of “scheming” to set him and that, on the question of compensation that Coton was “Silly”.

Despite this, Burge did begin the process of recalling the DVDs and removing Coton’s image from the cover. Coton, not satisfied with Burge’s response, began contacting solicitors in her area. However, it proved to be largely a futile exercise.

“Since I was from the UK and the company was in Texas, the solicitors wanted tens of thousands of pounds to take the case. My parents couldn’t do it, I don’t come from a wealthy family,” Coton said.

It was then that Coton took her case to the Web, posting on dA about the incident. The case not only became the talk of the dA community, but quickly spread to other sites, including several mainstream media outlets.

“I didn’t expect the reaction to happen that way,” Coton said, adding that others seemed to react to the case very strongly

However, for a while it didn’t seem as if anything would come of it beyond some negative press for Burge and TVX and some additional media attention for Coton as there was still no hope for filing a lawsuit with no attorneys willing to take the case.

An Offer to Help

According to Richard Harrison, it was on a “gossipy” blog that he first heard about Coton’s plight. A Tampa-area attorney, Harrison he reached out to Coton and agreed to take on the case at no cost her, accepting only a contingency fee, saying that it was something that meant a lot to him and his firm, Allen Dell, to take on.

However, the case almost never got off the ground. Harrison ordered several copies of the DVD only to find that the cover had already been changed. With no evidence, there was little that could be done in pushing the case forward. The DVDs sat, unopened in his office for some time before he decided to take one out. There, on the DVD itself, he found Coton’s image.

With this new discovery, on July 31, approximately two months after he first reached out to Coton, he filed suit in Tampa District Court.

The initial complaint (PDF) listed Burge and TVX as defendants and also included two other media companies involved in the distribution of the DVD, both of which eventually settled out of court and had their cases voluntarily dismissed. Burge initially protested the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds though, in April 2008, his motion to dismiss was stricken (PDF) after his attorney failed to follow procedure and be admitted to the court. Eventually, in October of the same year, the two parties agreed to voluntarily consent to the jurisdiction of the court (PDF).

But it was the delays and procedural problems that defined much of the case. According to Harrison, at least two attorneys attempted to represent Burge and TVX though both were not able to continue on procedural grounds. Burge represented himself for most of the case (pro se) but since corporations can not represent themselves and TVX failed to find a representative, it was found in default (PDF) in October 2008. Burge himself, largely due to his lack of timely and proper filings, was found in default in February 2009.

However, this didn’t stop Burge from making filings in the case. He would often file long, rambling petitions filled with inaccuracies about copyright law. Many of his motions included pages of “evidence” that, often times, just included different copies of the image he’d found on the Web. One of his motions, filed at the end of the trial, included a tirade against the VA healthcare system (PDF) and openly insulted the court for not allowing him the time he felt he needed. This, in turn, would force Harrison to respond to the motions and usually have them stricken from evidence.

Despite the odd filings from Burge, the defaults set up the trial earlier this year, which was on the issue of damages alone. Though Burge had not attended any hearings in some time, there were rumors that Burge might come into Florida for the trial.

“It was very scary,” Coton said, “I was very worried he was going to show up,” saying that her one face-to-face meeting with Burge during depositions was far less than cordial and Burge seemed to her to be a very “angry” man.

However, the worry was for nothing as no one represented Burge or TVX. Coton and Harrison were able to present their evidence to the judge without opposition, thus bringing an end to the trial.

In the end, the judge awarded Coton nearly $130,000 in damages, including $100,000 for defamation and $25,000 for misappropriation of image. The rest was for the copyright infringement claims.

It brought an end to the now three-year old case, but certainly hasn’t ended the questions and debates the case raised.

Far From “Over”

Though the decision is certainly an important win for Coton and for photographers everywhere, the case is far from over. With judgment in hand, there is still the issue of collecting on it, a matter that could prove to be very difficult.

Given that Burge’s native Texas is what Harrison calls “a debter’s heaven” it remains to be seen what, if any, assets Burge has that can be collected on. Though Harrison has pledged to attempt to follow Burge “to his last breath” in an attempt to collect for his client, he admits to being skeptical that he will see most of the judgment.

“I would be shocked if we get another nickel out of this case,” Harrison said.

In addition to the question of collection, according to Harrison he and his firm have donated “well north of $100,000″ in fees to the case. If this case were not pro bono taken on a contingency fee basis, even if Harrison were able to secure complete collection of the judgment, most of it would be eaten up by fees and Coton herself would only see very little, if anything, from it.

This would be especially true if it were not for the fact that the photo in question was a self-portrait. With $125,000 of the nearly $130,000 in damages being for the defamation and misappropriation of image claims, less than 4% of the damages came from the copyright claim. The reason for this is that Coton, as a UK photographer, had not registered her works with the U.S. Copyright Office and, though she could file suit, she could not seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees.

In short, without Harrison and his firm’s free legal help willingness to take the case on a contingency basis at a loss, this case most likely would not have been practical to pursue. But even with his help, without it being a self-portrait, there is almost no way that this case would have seen the kind of damages that it did generate.

That being said, there is little chance of an appeal from Burge. Since he is in default, the odds of an appeal being successful are slim to none and the likelihood of him filing such an appeal are equally small. So, other than collection, it seems likely that this case is over.

Effects From The Case

With the case done both Coton and Harrison have been looking back over the, at times, very wild ride.

For Coton, it has been something of a mixed bag. Though the media attention has helped her with her career in some ways, the fact her image was on a pornographic DVD has hurt her.

“I’ve been scared of clients finding out about this,” Coton said, “It isn’t good for any big clients to be associated with porn.”

One job in particular, a project that would have the camera company Canon sponsoring her has been put on hold pending the resolution of the case.

The biggest problem Coton had been that, since the image was used on the cover of a pornographic DVD that many, incorrectly and without seeing the image, assumed it was a nude photo. This, according to her, has hurt her reputation as both a photographer and a model.

Still, Harrison and Coton both are very happy with the outcome of the case. According to Harrison, “Everything our client wanted to accomplish, we accomplished, we protected her image, we protected her reputation and we protected her copyright.”

He also said that the damages awarded were “fair” saying that, as is typical for such cases, they had presented multiple legal theories on damages were not allowed to double dip. Also, he knew that much of the punitive damages were a “stretch” given that, at the time of the act, Burge wasn’t likely doing anything with malice.

So, even though they had requested over $400,000 in damages, the $130,000 awarded seemed, to him, to be “about right”.

Coton is cautiously optimistic about collection and hoping that the money, if it does appear, can be used to help finance her move to the United States, specifically New York.

Bottom Line

If anything, this case serves as a warning. First and foremost, to anyone who would seek to use Google Images or the Web at large as a tool to find stock photos. Most of the content on the Web is copyrighted and using something without clearing all the needed rights is opening the door to a wide array of legal troubles.

It is also a warning content creators though, that your work is valuable and it can be used (legally or illegally) for commercial purposes. When Coton took the photo in 2004, she was just having fun with her camera and learning her hobby, she never envisioned it being used commercially, let alone on the cover of a porn DVD.

This makes it vital that, before you put works online or timely thereafter that you register your works with the U.S. Copyright Office, especially if you want to prevent unauthorized commercial use. Not only do you need such a filing to even start a lawsuit, without a timely filing you can’t seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees, making it almost impossible to justify a lawsuit.

While the Lara Jade Coton case is a major win and one I hope makes other infringers pause before lifting the works of others, especially for commercial use, it also highlights the responsibilities of content creators to protect their work.

On that note, I want to thank both Lara Jade Coton and Richard Harrison for sticking through this fight and seeing it through to the end. They have done content creators everywhere a major service by sticking up for smaller creators against very high odds.

Update/Correction: Richard Harrison emailed me to correct the issue that his firm did NOT work pro bono but, instead, worked on a contingency fee basis. This means they are paid a portion of damages collected. However, that is rare in these types of cases as, usually, there is no way to recoup the full costs of the case via this means, meaning it was taken at a steep loss. I have updated the text of the article above to reflect this change.

In a judgement dated yesterday, September 16, the judge in the Lara Jade Coton case has awarded the photographer $130,000 in damages after a self-portrait of her was used as the cover art and the disc art for a pornographic DVD.

The case began in 2007 when the defendants in the case, Robert Burge and his company Televised Visual X-Ography used Coton’s photograph when they distributed a pornographic DVD entitled “Body Magic”. Coton, who was 14 at the time the photo was taken, was seen wearing a formal dress and a top hat while posing in front of a window.

Coton, who was outraged at the use of her image, immediately demanded that Burge stop use of the image. Burge said that the error was with his designer but said that he had recalled the DVDs and was changing the cover art. However, according to Coton’s attorney, Richard Harrison, they had not changed the art on the disc itself and were continuing to sell copies of it with Coton’s image.

Coton sued Burge and TVX citing a wide range of torts including copyright infringement, misappropriation of image, defamation and infliction of emotional distress.

The case had dragged on for the past three years, with Burge and TVX being found in default, and it eventually proceeded to bench trial on damages alone in July.

Coton had asked the court for some $434,000 in damage totalled but the judge awarded $129,173.20 in the case, saying that some of the claims were impermissible double recovery and denied punitive damages citing that Burge’s actions lacked malice.

This is a breaking story and I will have a more thorough evaluation of the judgment later as well as a more thorough write-up on the case itself. In the meantime, feel free to review the order granting final judgment for yourself.

Congratulations to Lara Jade and Richard Harrison for a hard-fought and very important win.

1: SCO Appeals. Yes. Them Again.

First off today, the SCO Group, which recently lost its bid to claim that Linux was an infringement of its UNIX operating system, is appealing the verdict hoping that the Appeals Court will again grant them a reprieve. The company had sued IBM claiming that the company had unlawfully used its Unix code in Linux only to have Novell sue them claiming that SCO didn’t hold the rights to their version of Unix. After a trial, the verdict came back in favor of Novell, effectively ending the case but SCO, which is currently deep into bankruptcy, is not appealing that ruling.

2: Porn CEO: Don’t Fight Piracy With DRM

Next up today, Ilan Bunimovitz, CEO of the Private Media Group, a company that produces adult content, has said that media companies should not “punish” consumers with DRM and, instead, target sites redistributing their work legally. This comes as the company is launching an iPad application which, since Apple will not allow adult content in their app store, is built using HTML5 and is completely DRM free. According to Bunimovitz, pirated and free content is available no matter what, making DRM useless for fighting piracy.

3: Pirate Bay Hacked, 4 Million User Records Looted, Site Is Down

Finally today, The Pirate Bay suffered some downtime recently but it wasn’t due to any action by copyright holders, instead, a cracker used a SQL injection to gain access to private information of The Pirate Bay’s users. The site rectified the security hole but took the site down for maintenance while they were making some repairs. The attacker has said he will not give the information to the MPAA or the RIAA and that he is not trying to sell the data at all.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Wednesday evening at 6 PM ET for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Friday right here on Plagiarism Today.

1: US Top Court Sides with Publishers on $18M Deal

First off today, the Supreme Court has unanimously overturned an appeals court ruling throwing out a settlement between authors and newspapers,allowing the deal to go through. The sides struck an $18M settlement after authors sued claiming copyright infringement for the newspapers’ inclusion of their articles in various electronic databases without permission. The settlement was tossed because the Appeals court ruled the lower court had no jurisdiction over non-registered works, which the settlement covered, but the Supreme Court sharply disagreed.

2: Government Denies Wi-Fi Operators Copyright Exemption

Next up today, the three-strikes portion of the Digital Economy Bill in the UK is now even more controversial as the government has refused an exemption for public wifi providers, including libraries, cafes, etc. meaning the services can be shut down if too many instances of infringement are reported. Many fear this will result in fewer organizations offering such services.

3: Free Porn on ‘Tube Sites’ Puts a Big Dent in Industry

Finally today, the porn industry, after seeming invulnerable to the piracy and economic issues that have plagued other content creators, is now in a tailspin as well. Much of the blame is being placed on so-called “tube” sites, which are YouTube knockoffs for adult content, that often provide pirated content for free. This has resulted in thousands of takedown notices and even a few lawsuits being filed.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

Want the Full Story?

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

Note: Due to a limited posting schedule during the month of October on days where I can not write regular post, I am taking time out to highlight some of the older posts that have become pillars of the site.

In 2006 I posted an article contrasting the tactics of the porn industry with that of the RIAA, which at the time was in the thick of its lawsuit campaign against individual file sharers. I highlighted the tactics that the industry used to stay competitive in the age of file sharing, including watermarking content, constantly putting out new works and operating within well-definied niches and proposed some of their techniques as methods for non-adult content creators to mitigate the damages of illegal file sharing.

The article was an instant hit and reached the front page of several social news sites, including Digg. It became and still remains one of the most popular articles on the site, likely due in large part to it having keywords which are fairly frequently searched.

However, I wish the article were still true. The porn industry is in a funk and it has responded by using RIAA tactics, especially in asia.

That being said, much of the article still holds true and the basic tactics to mitigate against file sharing are still valid, they just weren’t enough to prevent the rush of free competition, both legitimate and illegal, from eating away at their bottom line.

In the end, there is a lot of debate about how much of the porn industry’s problems are owed to piracy versus the democratization of the media and increased competition. In that regard, the porn industry has a lot in common with mainstream journalism.

The sad part though is that, in the past, the porn industry has led Hollywood through technological shifts and even copyright disputes. However, this time it doesn’t seem to be able to do that, at least not without the same heartburn that the movie and music studios are enduring.

1: Porn Studios Set To Target 65,000 Movie Uploaders

First off today, we previously reported on action being taken by U.S. and Japanese pornography studios in South Korea, which saw them send out some 10,000 complaints to alleged file sharers. The studios were upset when prosecutors decided to go after just 10 file sharers, making the odds 1-1000 of being successfully prosecuted even if you were on the list.

Well, the studios have upped the ante and have sent 65,000 notifications and are demanding action on them. They are also filing lawsuits against 80 Web sites they accused of aiding in the infringement.

The studios have also reported to have gathered IP addresses for some 100,000 users downloading pornography illegally within the country but have not indicated if any of them will become targets.

2: Music Rules!

Next up today, the RIAA announced the launch of its new education campaign, “Music Rules!”. Targeted at teachers and parents of students in grades 3-8, the course offers tips for respecting intellectual property and online safety.

The course deals with a variety of intellectual property issues but is targeted mostly at music, as one might expect from the name and organization behind it. However, the course has already been widely panned as “propaganda” with many feeling that it is an attempt by the RIAA to indoctrinate children on copyright matters.

It remains to be seen if schools will actually teach this plan though the RIAA claims to have reached out to over 55,000 schools and is working to reach out to 30,000 additional teachers.

3: The Libertarian Case against the Google Book Search Deal

Tune in every Saturday morning for the live recording of the Copyright 2.0 Show or wait and get the edited version Monday morning right here on Plagiarism Today.

Later, in July, she filed a lawsuit against the company behind the DVD, TVX Films, with the aid of a Tampa lawyer, Richard Harrison.

There has been little movement on the lawsuit. According to Harrison, TVX Films has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds but not much else has happened.

However, a forum posting earlier this month on Model Mayhem has pointed to another controversy with TVX films and, possibly at least, another set of legal troubles for the company.

A Potential Pattern

In the forum, a poster named Manuel Rego highlighted the cover of TVX Films’ movie Sunny (NSFW), which appears to have used a photograph entitled “Flowers” (nsfw) by a Russian photographer known as “Roge”.

According to Rego. he was able to get in contact with Roge and said in another posting that the photographer had no idea that the photo was being used and that he was upset about it.

No word about whether or not the photographer involved is considering action against TVX films for the use of the photo.

The forum conversation also discusses, and in fact started with, another image used on the cover of the TVX film “StarBabe” that appears to come from pinup photographer Octavio Arizala (noisy site and nsfw), also known as Winkytiki.

The cover photo on the Starbabe DVD seems to be a doctored version of a photo he shot of a woman holding a science fiction pistol. The photo can be seen on his Web site in various places though I could not find a direct link to the photo.

According to Harrison, who sent me the link to the Model Mayhem forum, “If you look at the three cases (Lara Jade and these other two) you will find that all three had their work on Deviant Art website and all three
photographers reside outside the U.S. Seems like a deliberate pattern, and not sheer coincidence, to me.”

Harrison goes on to say that he does not represent any of the other photographers involved and can not comment on what action they might be taking.

I sent an email to Arizala for comment but he did not respond before the posting of this article. I will update this piece if he does.

It is unclear what, if anything, will come of these allegations. However, photographers and models are being encouraged to take a look at the TVX site, linked in the original forum post, and see if your work has been used by them. I would add that is especially true if you are an international photographer that has used deviantArt and takes photos that might be of interest for this type of use.

Clearly though, there is much about this case that is unresolved and I will continue to bring you more updates as they come to light.