LOS ANGELES — File-sharing service RapidShare has filed a counter-suit against Perfect 10 accusing the company of being a “copyright troll” that runs “essentially a paralegal service masquerading as a porn company.”
In court documents filed Friday, the German-owned company says it wants a court to order Perfect 10 to pay $75,000 in damages for engaging in unfair business practices that has harmed its reputation.
“It is ironic that a website that has a policy of selling access to billions of dollars of other people's property, without paying them a dime, would now attempt to seek damages from the very entities whose property it has abused,” Perfect 10’s Norman Zada told XBIZ.
“If I were RapidShare, after being identified by both the Congressional Anti-Piracy Caucus and the Recording Industry Association of America, as one of the six worst infringing websites in the world, I would not get all that optimistic. Perfect 10 is very confident that we will prevail in the end.”
RapidShare says in the suit, “Perfect 10 doesn’t adequately protect its copyrights and instead allows infringing copies of its content to metastasize all over the Internet.”
RapidShare claims that Perfect 10 chooses not to employ commercially available technology and software that could deter infringement of its images. Instead the company “seeks to foster the spread of infringing works that it owns over the Internet in order to entrap and shakedown websites and services where copies of its images may randomly end up.”
In addition, “Perfect 10 engages in unfair business practices by tactily promoting allegedly unauthorized use of its works online and then seeking to capitalize on that use.”
RapidShare says Perfect 10 deliberately sends notices that don’t comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or that omit material information, which makes it impossible for Internet service providers to identify unauthorized works.
According to the suit, Perfect 10 has damaged its reputation by allowing unauthorized files to remain on RapidShare’s servers for a period of years. In addition, the suit claims Perfect 10 is deliberately withholding information that could allow RapidShare to remove infringing works.
Therefore, the counter-suit calls for an injunction to order Perfect 10 to include the identification of the infringing files and to send takedown notices to RapidShare to the correct department.
RapidShare wants the court to award damages sufficient enough to deter further unfair and unlawful business practices, attorneys fees and a trial by jury. In May, a court denied Perfect 10’s preliminary injunction against RapidShare, saying it has not met its burden of proof of showing it would likely succeed in its copyright infringement claims.
