Callis
An adult entertainment website has filed suit against a Madison County resident, for allegedly hacking into the company's sexually explicit material.
Plaintiff Lightspeed Media Corp. filed suit against Lucas Shashek on July 2.
According to the lawsuit, Shashek was identified as a Madison County resident over the age of 18 who belongs to a hacking community, where hacked usernames and passwords are passed back and forth.
Members in the community work together to ensure other members have access to normally inaccessible and unauthorized areas of interest, according to the complaint.
The defendant gained unauthorized access to the plaintiff's private website by hacking usernames and passwords to access the member's sections of the plaintiff's websites. He downloaded the plaintiff's private content and disseminated the information to other unauthorized individuals, the suit states.
Since the defendant accessed the website through a hacked username/password, he would not have been required to provide any identifying personal information, according to the lawsuit.
The defendant's hacking and redistributing not only substantially devalued the plaintiff's work, but also gave hundreds, if not thousands, of other individuals the ability to access the private content at no charge, according to the lawsuit.
The plaintiff sustained damages through the prevention of these sales and devaluation of the plaintiff's content, the suit states.
The defendant appropriated and converted access to the plaintiff's member's only website to his own use and benefit in express violation of duties and obligations owed to the plaintiff, according to the complaint.
The porn company claims the defendant continues to benefit from the "unjust benefits of the plaintiff's protected content without paying fair value for it," and this "violates the fundamental principles of justice, equity and good conscience," according to the complaint.
Lightspeed Media claims Shashek converted the plaintiff's content, became unjustly enriched at the expense of the plaintiff, and was negligent in his allowance of this hacking to occur via his internet access connection, the case states.
The plaintiff seeks a judgment in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendants for actual damages.
Paul Duffy of Prenda Law in Chicago represents the plaintiff.
The case is assigned to Madison County Chief Judge Ann Callis.
The case is Madison County Case number 12-L-927.