• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, June 15, 2010

Adult entertainment company Perfect 10 is a "copyright troll" that aims to "entrap" Web companies, the file-hosting company Rapidshare says in new court papers.

"Perfect 10," Rapidshare alleges, "seeks to foster the spread of infringing copies of works that it owns over the Internet in order to entrap and shakedown websites and services where copies of its images may randomly end up."

Rapidshare made the allegations late last week as part of a counterclaim against Perfect 10, accusing the company of engaging in unfair competition and unfair business practices. Rapidshare's filing was made in response to a copyright infringement lawsuit brought against it last November by Perfect 10.

Rapidshare allows users to upload large files to a site with a unique URL. People can then share that address with others who wish to download the files. Perfect 10 alleged in its lawsuit that people used the system to transfer its videos and photos and requested monetary damages and an injunction banning Rapidshare from making available images or videos owned by Perfect 10.

While the case is only in its preliminary stages, so far Perfect 10 hasn't made much headway in court. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Huff in the Southern District of California declined to issue an injunction against Rapidshare, ruling that the company didn't appear to contribute to piracy by users.

Huff noted in her ruling that unlike some peer-to-peer sites, Rapidshare isn't easily searchable. She also criticized Perfect 10 for not giving Rapidshare enough information to allow it to remove infringing files.

Rapidshare now argues that Perfect 10 "entraps" companies by allowing subscribers to download images without also taking steps to prevent people from sharing them. "Perfect 10 also fails to send takedown notices to sites and services where unauthorized copies of its images allegedly appear, or sends notices that are intentionally deficient to thwart efforts to actually remove the images, and seeks to entrap the site or service if it fails to find the relevant files on its own," Rapidshare adds.

But even if Perfect 10's notifications to Web sites were defective, that doesn't mean that the company acted unlawfully by suing for copyright infringement, says Seattle-based Internet law expert Venkat Balasubramani.

"It's really tough to bring a counterclaim for unfair competition based on a plaintiff asserting a copyright claim," Balasubramani says.

He adds that even though Rapidshare uses the word "entrap," the company hasn't alleged facts that would show that Perfect 10 misled users into downloading copyrighted material.