Flava Works Studio Gets Aggressive In Court With Piracy Defendant

Published on June 19, 2011 by QueenGossip   ·   7 Comments

Over the course of the past few weeks, a US Federal Court in Illinois, held Preliminary Injunction hearings in a lawsuit filed by, Flava Works, Inc. against Marques Gunter, for copyright infringement. Last fall, Flava Works announced the filing of a copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit against Marques Gunter, who operates a porn file sharing and social video bookmarking site dubbed, MyVidster.com. The complaint stated that Defendant, Gunter created a social networking website through which site members can bookmark and store video files of copyrighted material directly to MyVidster.com and/or post links to third party websites. Read Civil Complaint

Marques Gunter (photo right from MySpace profile) is a self-taught programmer and salsa dance instructor from Indianapolis, Indiana, who started MyVidster with funds from his salsa dancing school – Salsa Indy, LLC.

In Marques Gunter’s testimony he claims that MyVidster is not a porn site and then later contradicts himself and states that “over 60% of the content is pornographic.” Gunter continues and claims he makes very little money from the site, claiming he generates less than $24,000 a year, yet later in his testimony states he has over 80,000 members.

Flava Works’ attorney impeached Gunter several times while on the stand, asking such questions as: “Which lie is true?” One of Gunter’s claims was that no files are stored on his server; but after questioning he admitted that he did have to remove Flava Works’ files from his server. Gunter also offered at least 30,000 users free backup storage space (for them to store copyrighted works on his server for when the host site removes them), yet continued throughout the hearing with a prepared statement claiming that “users cannot upload to MyVidster.”

Despite Flava Works and other studios sending dozens of DMCA take down notices, and identifying repeat infringers for Gunter on his website, not one single customer of MyVidster has been removed from the site. According to Gunter of the three years he has been in business none of his members have violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and none of his 80,000 users are repeat infringers.

“The sheer arrogance of Marques Gunter astounds me. Gunter believes he’s legally protected because if copyright protected files are available elsewhere, they are fair-use. His reasoning is delusional.” – Flava Works’ CEO, Phillip Bleicher

Flava Works is also suing the web host Voxel.net for failing to remove MyVidster.com from its’ servers despite several DMCA notices alerting Voxel.net that Gunter was a repeat infringer. Under DMCA, safe harbor no longer applies to sites that fail to remove Repeat Infringers. Gunter has since then moved to an offshore hosting company in an attempt to escape from US Copyright Law.

The court is expected to rule on this matter within a few weeks.

Flava Works, Inc. was founded in 1999 and is owned and operated by CEO Phillip Bleicher. It began with its CocoBoyz.com website showcasing African-American men in nude and erotic photos and videos. In 2000, Flava Works started Thugboy.com and a year later expanded with the creation of the CocoDorm.com. Flava Works moved its operations to Miami, Florida, in 2006 and continues to operate a satellite office in Chicago, Illinois.

Tags: Flava Works, Illinois, Indiana, lawsuit, piracy