James Delahunty
18 Feb 2010 6:05
Ventura Content filed a $6.75 million complaint against the owners of Brazzers on Tuesday, which operates adult entertainment "tube" sites. Ventura is the copyright-holding company for Pink Visual studios. Tube sites are YouTube-like video portals that host and stream thousands of adult videos for free to Internet users. Such websites are (unsurprisingly) among the most viewed websites on earth. The adult entertainment industry has been at odds with such sites for some time now.
In the lawsuit filed by Ventura against Mansef Productions and Interhub (owners of Brazzers), there are 45 examples of copyright infringing content on keezmovies.com, pornhub.com, extremetube.com and tube8.com. "These Tube Sites maintain the fiction that they offer a forum for consumers to upload and share their own original 'user-generated' adult video content; however in reality, they function as repositories for an extensive collection of infringing adult videos," Ventura states in the suit.
It goes on to compare the sites to file-sharing services such as Napster and Grokster, adding that piracy is a threat to the entire adult entertainment industry. "I think that the general consensus is that tube sites have really put a dent in the adult entertainment industry," says industry analyst Rhett Pardon of XBIZ Research. The online area of the industry is estimated to be a $6 - $12 billion business.
Through advertising and premium services, some tube sites are estimated to be making decent revenue. Pardon estimates that the tube sites operated by Brazzers make about $3 million a month.