SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) - Online platform Patreon is tired of its paywalled material ending up on another website.
It filed a lawsuit Nov. 14 in San Francisco Superior Court against John Doe defendants, hoping to punish "thieves seeking to pirate content." The company says it knows the piracy website's address but won't put it in court records, since doing so could drive traffic there.
"Much like an art gallery that limits entry to paid ticket holders, the Patreon business model requires the ability to establish and maintain content exclusivity - that is, the ability to allow paid members to access creator content and to prevent access by non-members."
But thieves who use a scraping tool are undermining its efforts and damaging its business, Patreon says. The defendants are accused of recruiting Patreon users to steal content on their behalf, funneling the content to their website. They also break into the Patreon accounts of users who have compromised login credentials, the suit says.
These defendants can then generate advertising revenue thanks to their crime, the suit says. All of this is also in violation of Patreon's user terms, it says.
The site calls itself a public archiver for Patreon and states: "Contributors here upload content and share it here for easy searching and organization. To get started viewing content, either search for creators on the artists page, or search for content on the posts page. If you want to contribute content, head over to the import page."
Nathan Walker of The Norton Law Firm represents Patreon.