An adult film company known variously as a “copyright troll” and “the Steven Spielberg of porn” is campaigning in Honolulu to stop alleged piracy of its “high-end, artistic and performer-inspiring motion pictures” distributed on sites with names like “Tushy,” “MILFY” and “Vixen.”

Strike 3 Holdings LLC of Delaware has filed 132 lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Honolulu since 2022, court records show. While the suits say they’re meant to protect cinema that’s “had positive global impact,” others including lawyers and judges have a different view of Strike 3.

They say the producer coerces people to settle lawsuits quickly for fear of being outed publicly for watching Strike 3’s prurient fare, which people allegedly download and share through a peer-to-peer file-sharing program called BitTorrent.

Civil Beat reviewed a number of Strike 3’s cases and found a typical pattern.

First the company’s lawyer files suit against an unnamed John Doe defendant, identifying the defendant only as the subscriber assigned the internet protocol address used to download and share the movie. Later, court records show, Strike 3’s lawyer requests the court’s permission to subpoena the internet service provider hosting the allegedly offending IP address to obtain the John Doe subscriber’s name. The court usually grants the request. Not long after that, Strike 3’s lawyer files a motion to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice — a sign that the case has settled or that Strike 3 has decided to move on.

All but about two dozen of the 132 Hawaii cases filed since 2022 are closed, court records show, suggesting that they have likely settled.

Not every case proceeds exactly that way. For example, in one of the cases that’s still open, which was filed in December, a court order indicates parties sent the judge letters objecting to the disclosure of their names. U.S. Magistrate Judge Wes Reber Porter construed the letters as requests to quash the subpoenas and refused to do that. But Porter did say the letter writers could proceed anonymously, based on other federal judges allowing defendants to do so in similar porn piracy cases.

Although the law disfavors parties engaging in litigation anonymously, Porter wrote, courts have recognized that “an allegation that an individual illegally downloaded adult entertainment may relate to matters of a sensitive and highly personal nature, including one’s sexuality.”

The porn purveyor is filing these lawsuits all over the country, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila of the Northern District of California wrote last month in an order related to a Strike 3 lawsuit filed in San Jose. Davila granted Strike 3’s subpoena request but was highly critical of the company.

“Strike 3 has filed thousands of similar lawsuits and requests to subpoena subscriber information from ISPs,” Davila wrote. “At least one federal judge has also openly characterized Strike 3 as a ‘copyright troll’ that uses its ‘swarms of lawyers (to) hound people who allegedly watch their content through BitTorrent.’”

If “the ISP outs the subscriber, permitting them to be served as the defendant” in public court documents, Davila wrote, “any future Google search of their name will turn up associations with the websites Vixen, Blacked, Tushy and Blacked Raw.” 

Strike 3 Alleges Copyright Infringement ‘On A Grand Scale’

Strike 3 has been engaged in this sort of litigation for years, leading the New York Post to call the company “the Steven Spielberg of porn.”

Since 2022, Strike 3 has mounted its campaign in Honolulu with the help of Christian Kamau. His firm, Virtuesq, says it merges “modern legal expertise with the spirit of Hawaii.”

Kamau did not respond to a call  for comment.

Kamau’s latest complaint on Strike 3’s behalf was filed May 29 against “John Doe subscriber assigned IP address 76.39.47.10.”

The lawsuit is almost identical to the others filed on Strike 3’s behalf in Honolulu. It alleges the defendant didn’t simply share a graphic sex film or two with an intimate friend. Rather, the complaint alleges, “Defendant is, in a word, stealing these works on a grand scale,” using BitTorrent to pirate “25 movies over an extended period of time.”

While the complaint asks the court for a jury trial, that rarely happens, said Jeff Antonelli, a Chicago lawyer who specializes in BitTorrent copyright cases. He recently published a blog post titled “Can You Afford to Ignore a Strike 3 Holdings Notice in Hawaii?”

The short answer is “No,” the blog post says.

“This is a real notice and should be taken seriously,” the blog says. “It is crucial to address the situation promptly.”

“If a Billy Goat Gruff moves to confront a copyright troll in court, the troll cuts and runs back under its bridge.”

U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth

In an interview, Antonelli said that while civil lawsuits usually settle rather than going to trial, Strike 3’s complaints are in a special class. BitTorrent cases almost never go to trial, he said.

“I have never come across a legal practice like BitTorrent copyright infringement,” he said.

A typical settlement might be around $750 to $1,000 per movie, Antonelli said, although he said it could go higher.

At least one federal judge has backed a defendant standing up against Strike 3’s request to subpoena the alleged pirate’s ISP records. U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth of the District of Columbia said Strike 3’s need for discovery didn’t outweigh the potentially non-infringing defendant’s right to anonymity, which is the legal test in the federal Second Circuit. 

Lamberth also had some choice words for Strike 3 and other “copyright trolls,” describing them as bullies who would pick on the weak and flee at the first sign of a fight.

“If a Billy Goat Gruff moves to confront a copyright troll in court, the troll cuts and runs back under its bridge,” Lamberth wrote. “Perhaps the trolls fear a court disrupting their rinse-wash-and-repeat approach: file a deluge of complaints; ask the court to compel disclosure of the account holders; settle as many claims as possible; abandon the rest.”