Perfect 10 to Appeal Precedent Setting Piracy Case to the Supreme Court

[grimm]

LOS ANGELES - The Ninth Circuit's decision in the case of Perfect 10, Inc. v. Giganews, Inc., et al. which allowed defendants to copy and sell trillions of dollars in copyrighted works without permission because they used a computer to do so, has been appealed to the Supreme Court, according to Perfect 10 President, Dr. Norman Zada. 

"This is an extraordinarily important case, because for the first time, an appellate court has allowed defendants to copy and sell movies, songs, images, and other copyrighted works, without permission or payment to copyright holders," said Zada. "In this particular case, evidence was presented that defendants were copying and selling access to approximately 25,000 terabytes of unlicensed movies, songs, images, software, and magazines," noted Zada. "Even though the Recording Industry of America ("RIAA") filed an Amicus brief which described defendants as "blatant copyright pirates," the Ninth Circuit nevertheless allowed defendants to copy and sell trillions of dollars of other people's intellectual property because their copying and selling was done in an automated fashion using a computer. Nowadays, everything is done via computer. Not surprisingly, there are now at least eighty-eight websites that are doing the same thing as the defendants did in our case," added Zada. "These exploiters of other people's property are fearless. They are copying and selling access to pirated versions of pretty much every movie ever made, including films co-produced by treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin. You would think the justice department would do something to protect the viability of this nation's movie and recording studios, as unfettered piracy harms jobs and tax revenues, but they have done nothing," said Zada.

"Copyright holders have nowhere to turn other than the Federal courts, whose judges are ridiculously overworked. For years, Congress has failed to provide the Federal courts with adequate funding. As a result, judges can make mistakes," added Zada. 

Prior to this case, no court had ever allowed a defendant to make untold millions by selling access to content they did not own. In fact, in 2011, the justice department seized $175 million from Kim Dotcom, the website operator of megaupload.com, and filed charges of criminal copyright infringement against him and his associates for selling access to movies and songs which they did not own. "Perfect 10 provided evidence that defendants here offered more than 200 times as many full length movies as did megaupload.com. But our evidence fell on deaf ears," said Zada.

"The court not only allowed defendants to continue to copy and sell access to Perfect 10's content without permission or payment, it awarded Defendant's $5.63 million in attorneys fees for successfully defending the suit, which bankrupted Perfect 10, a company that had been creating content for twenty years. Prior to this case, no court had ever awarded fees to an alleged infringer, unless they were found to either own the copyrights at issue, or established a fair use defense. Neither was the case here."

Perfect 10, which started in 1996, featured tasteful images of naturally beautiful models. It was one of only three adult magazines allowed to be sold to the United States armed forces. Models featured in Perfect 10's magazine or on its website, perfect10.com, include Marisa Miller, a Victoria Secret and Sports Illustrated cover model, Sophia Rudieva, Miss Russia 2009, Hungarian actress Zita Gorog, who appeared in the film ‘The Underworld,' French actress and Madison Model of the year, Isabelle Funaro, and Evelina Papantoniou, runner up in the 2001 Miss Universe pageant. Hollywood studios have requested permission to use Perfect 10's magazine or some of its content in many of their films and TV shows, including American Pie, Spiderman I and II, Men in Black II, The Forty-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, The Way of the Gun, Hollow Man, Superbad, Death Race, Sopranos, Dawson's Creek, and the Howard Stern show.

Dr. Zada is the son of Lotfi Zadeh, the creator of fuzzy logic. He taught as a professor at Stanford, Columbia, UCLA, and U.C. Irvine. In the mid 1980's he ran various financial competitions, including the U.S. Investing Championship, and "Money Manager Verified Ratings," which was covered in Barron's on a quarterly basis for several years. Dr. Zada is also known for his simple explanation as to why the United States budget cannot be balanced over an extended period of time.

"Our only hope left is a request for review by the Supreme Court, a petition for which we just filed. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court rarely grants such requests," added Zada.