Fellow photographer Philip Warner, aka Lithium Picnic, is being sued by SuicideGirls.com, an "altporn" Web site on non-compete grounds. Lithium Picnic signed a contract with a non-compete clause, and now SG claims he is running a Web site of his own in competition with them, which would violate his agreement. The competition being Apneatic.com - a website owned and run by former SG model, Apnea.
"As for the ownership claim, he helped me register the name for my site in 2003 before it was a paysite, I even had the URL of apneatic.com posted at the top of my SG profile. There were no issues with it at the time. After they kicked me off the site I decided to open a paysite of my own since alt modeling is one of the major ways I support myself in college. Philip just registered the name for me he did not materially participate in the business, and he said as much to Paul Loving in his reply. This was a clerical error and has been corrected."
This could be just another legal fight if it wasn't a coercive tactic from SG to bring a highly respected photographer in our community for both his work and intergrity to his knees! SG is asking for $100,000 for breach of contrat
Sadly this case is part of a too familiar pattern of SG using legal threats, intimidation and other shady means to create and preserve a monopoly on the "altporn" genre.
Lithium Picnic will have to spend thousands of dollars just to defend himself and clean his name from this allegations. This is no longer about right or wrong, it's about who has the deeper pockets. As a photographer, I am disgusted by those tactics!
"As for the ownership claim, he helped me register the name for my site in 2003 before it was a paysite, I even had the URL of apneatic.com posted at the top of my SG profile. There were no issues with it at the time. After they kicked me off the site I decided to open a paysite of my own since alt modeling is one of the major ways I support myself in college. Philip just registered the name for me he did not materially participate in the business, and he said as much to Paul Loving in his reply. This was a clerical error and has been corrected."
This could be just another legal fight if it wasn't a coercive tactic from SG to bring a highly respected photographer in our community for both his work and intergrity to his knees! SG is asking for $100,000 for breach of contrat
Sadly this case is part of a too familiar pattern of SG using legal threats, intimidation and other shady means to create and preserve a monopoly on the "altporn" genre.
Lithium Picnic will have to spend thousands of dollars just to defend himself and clean his name from this allegations. This is no longer about right or wrong, it's about who has the deeper pockets. As a photographer, I am disgusted by those tactics!
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
philosophocles:
that's messed up... It sucks that this kinda stuff is going on because it creates a rather difficult moral dillema for me. Can i continue to contribute money to a company that seems to have the moral fiber of Wal-Mart? *shrug* I dunno. It's dangerous water to tread writing about it. Good to see people care. Thanks for the info
analogcolor:
I think this is a bad situation for both parties. And it makes me really sad that this is disallowed discussion around here. 