If you illegally downloaded a copy of Dexxxter -- the porn parody of Showtime's serial-killer drama Dexter -- it might cost you a bit more than your dignity if Pink Lotus Entertainment has its way.
Pink Lotus Entertainment, the proud producers of pornographic movies such as Not Another Asian Porno, Horat, and Girls With Daddy Issues, filed a lawsuit a few weeks ago in South Florida District Court against 53 anonymous internet users who they allege acquired illegal copies of Dexxxter, according to court documents obtained by New Times.
The 53 currently anonymous people are identified by IP address only in an exhibit attached to the lawsuit, which, according to IP address maps, belong to internet users from Miami all the way to southern Georgia.
Several of the IP addresses land in South Florida areas, including Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.
According to the Palm Beach Post, the Dexxxter lawsuit is just the tip of the iceberg, as they report there are more than 1,300 people identified so far in film studio cases in Broward County and Miami-Dade County circuit court lawsuits.
The 1,300 number, the Post says, includes nonpornographic movies like The Expendables, and independent filmmakers have also banded together to cast out lawsuits.
Slyck,
a technology news outlet, has been tracking all sorts of online
copyright infringement lawsuits, which includes several thousand more
claims than what's going on in South Florida.
In the Pink Lotus Entertainment lawsuit specifically, they allege that internet users are using the peer-to-peer protocol Bit Torrent to share Dexxxter across the net, and now they want some cash for alleged copyright infringement.
What some people would call "downloading porn," Pink Lotus Entertainment alleges a "civil conspiracy to commit copyright infringement, which was comprised of a series of transactions involved in the distribution of the Video."
In most cases involving alleged copyright infringement, the companies that enter the lawsuits will send the defendants letters asking for settlements -- avoiding the release of their names at court proceedings -- and will ask that they dish out a few thousand bucks to make the problem disappear.
However, since the lawsuit simply alleges IP addresses as defendants, it gets a little tough when these companies send out letters to the owners of the IP addresses, since they don't really know who was downloading the copyrighted material.
The Post says that includes a grandmother in Palm Beach County getting a letter for allegedly downloading some copyrighted porno, although the paper hasn't identified the specific cases it mentions.
In the Dexxxter case, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz ordered late last week that a scheduling report must be done by September 12, which includes the intent to begin discovery, as well as a proposed date to begin a trial.
The worst part of the Dexxxter lawsuit, however, may be the fact that the critics say it wasn't even any good.
"Dexxxter is quite possibly one of the worst pornos you could watch," Movies on Film reviewer Joshua Richey writes. "Not only is it unwatchable from an acting standpoint, the sex scenes are so bad that they'll cease to have any blood flow to your naughty bits."
Regardless, it's really tough to tell how the lawsuit will end up. Most of the time, studios hope that people will cough up the money they ask for in the letters, while judges are still throwing out these types of cases with regularity.
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