Malibu Media. Okay, I’ll wait while your eyes finish rolling all the way. Anyway, the makers of porn under the banner of X-Art have also attempted to build a business in the far stickier industry of copyright trolling. Malibu has a long history of using potentially fake witnesses, failing to serve defendants properly, and running away from any case in which it gets pushback from the accused.
Well, one of those Malibu accused, a Mr. W.M., did in fact fight back, demanding in a countersuit evidence that he downloaded the videos as accused. When Malibu failed to produce any evidence, the court found for W.M., ordering Malibu to pay him $50k. Malibu failed to do as ordered, leading the judge to double the award to just over $100k. At the time of the previous post, the payment processor had only managed to collect half of that amount.
But now W.M. has finally gotten the justice he so richly desires, having been fully paid out per the judge’s order, but only because he essentially sent Malibu to collections.
The extra work increased the initial judgment from $48,656.73 in costs and attorneys’ fees to $108,271. After several turnover orders, the full amount was eventually recouped through payment processors Epoch and CC Bill last month.
“The undersigned attorney for the judgment creditor certifies and acknowledges full payment of both judgments, as well as all costs and interest,” collection attorney Joseph Stewart informed the court.
Malibu executive Colette Pelissier took this all quite well, by which I mean she is whining about having to pay the judgment at all, accused the defense team of “extortion” (oh, the irony), and seemed to blame the loss on Chicago for… reasons? She even wrote a letter to the court a few days before the final payments were made, asking it to rescind its order entirely. That was very much not done.
Despite this letter and the earlier critique, the turnover order wasn’t scrapped. Although Malibu refused to pay voluntarily, the payment processors used by the company restrained the funds and eventually handed them over to the defendant, effectively ending the case.
Whether Malibu’s boss still plans to fight the issue and follow up on the “extortion” and “unjust enrichment” threats is unknown. For now, however, they’ve lost this battle, and we have a feeling that it might be best to leave things here.
From Torrent Freak’s mouth to God’s ears and all that, but Malibu Media has never shown it has much sense on these matters.
