Porn bills from producers lead to class-action lawsuit

This is not most people's idea of a good time—getting bombarded with messages from porn producers seeking payment for nonexistent downloads.

Alison Frankel, who writes for Thomson Reuters, recently wrote an article about Jennifer Barker, a Louisville, Kentucky woman who says she never watched a bunch of movies she's been billed for.

According to the article, she's "one of tens of thousands people who've received settlement demands from porn movie producers and their lawyers in the last few years".

To get even, Barker has filed a claim of class-action fraud, defamation and racketeering against Patrick Collins Inc., Malibu Media, Raw Films, K-Beech, and Third Degree Films.

According to Frankel's piece, this is what the allegations include:

"In effect, the pornography purveyors have developed a new business model using the court system to extort money from individuals who are merely identified by IP address and with no proof whatsoever that they downloaded copyrighted materials from the Internet...By extorting settlements of $1,000-$5,000 the pornography purveyors have developed a model whereby they can unlawfully gain more money than they can by selling access to their pornographic videos."

These claims have not been proven in court.

This is one of several class-action suits that have been filed against companies attempting to gain settlements from people who insist they didn't do any downloading.

Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.