from www.bleedingcool.com – Ker-Pow!

It’s one of the more successful porn productions of recent years. Batman XXX. A parody of the nineteen sixties Batman TV show with, well, lots of naughtiness. But there’s some naughtiness that Vivid Video and director Axel Braun won’t abide with.

Such as people who illegally torrent said video.

And now in the largest single suit of its kind, Axel Braun Productions is suing 7098 unnamed plaintiffs said to have committed such villainy. And Axel’s comment regarding such transgressors? “Fuck ‘em all”

“People don’t realize that when you pirate a movie it hurts all of the people who work very hard to get it produced — from the cast to the production assistants to the makeup artists. These are people who live paycheck to paycheck, and with ‘Batman XXX,’ that was a film I financed myself. So we are going after every one of them who pirates our content.

Braun even confesses that such suits have become a new form of revenue for adult DVD creators. Hmm, can Marvel really be far behind on that one?

The suit aims to subpoena internet service providers to give up the names of said torrenters. If any Little Bleeders do get a letter, feel free to contact Bleeding Cool in complete confidence…

from www.slyck.com – So we’re not really sure what the real story is here – whether there’s over 7,000 new BitTorrent lawsuits from a new company and adult title OR that the complaint filed follows virtually word for word the complaints filed by Thomas Dunlap (aka US Copyright Group). Let’s a look at all the angles.

First things first, the new BitTorrent lawsuits. Filed in US District Court in West Virginia, plaintiff Alex Braun Productions submitted a complaint for copyright infringement against 7,098 John Does. Their crime? Allegedly sharing the epic title, “Batman XXX: A Porn Parody”.

The complaint was filed on behalf of the plaintiff by Kenneth J. Ford – who happens to be part of a new organization called AdultCopyrightCompany.com.

This organization’s function appears to be very similar to the US Copyright Group – with the obvious exception that this company handles adult titles. Slyck reported on the emergence of this site in September of this year, noting the similarities between the two. You know what else is similar?

How about the fact that the AdultCopyrightCompany’s (ACC) initial complaint on Batman XXX is virtually identical to the US Copyright Groups? Ars Technica ran a piece last month showing that Steele-Law – another law firm suing BitTorrent users on behalf of adult producers – copied large amounts of Dunlap’s initially complaint. Dunlap followed up a few weeks later by faxing a $25,000 demand to Steele-Law. Why? According to Ars, an organization called Media Copyright Group, which uses Steele-Law to file BitTorrent lawsuits, is “confusingly similar” to the US Copyright Group’s name.

Slyck got in touch with the ACC, who said they did model their complaint after Dunlap’s, but the work is in the public domain. Makes sense, and our non-law school legal analysis would agree that there’s no copyright on legal proceedings. But it’s interesting to note that Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver is doing all the legal writing for anyone who wants to jump on board the copyright trolling bandwagon. Take a look and compare a recent USCG complaint with ACC’s complaint.