Alki David and artist posse wage legal war against CBS and CNET

By Jeff Hughes Published May 4, 2011

Alkiviades “Alki” David, wealthy entrepreneur and founder of FilmOn.com, has gathered up a group of recording artists and filed a class action lawsuit against CBS, CNET, LimeWire and the Lime group in regards to copyright infringement. The present lawsuit against CBS and the Lime Group actualizes a statement to sue which David made last year in December via YouTube.

The claims made by Alki David in the 2010 video include: CBS helping Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh put United States’ national security at risk; CBS single-handedly destroying the entertainment business and also manipulating the minds of the youth.

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At the time of the rant, Alkie David was being sued by CBS and the other three major U.S. TV networks for streaming their content on FilmOn.

The FilmOn founder and his fellow plaintiffs are arguing in this present lawsuit that CNET and CBS Interactive profited greatly from the distribution of LimeWire, the P2P software notorious for encouraging users to break copyright law. The lawsuit’s logic states that since CBS is the parent company of CNET which is linked to Download.com where more than 220 million copies of LimeWire were downloaded, the Defendants’ have had “direct contribution to and participation in massive copyright infringement of Plaintiffs’ works on peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) systems.”

David is participating in the lawsuit in his actor guise (The Bank Job, Fishtales) and the group of artists siding with him include Detron Bendross from 2 Live Crew, The R&B singer Rome and Jeff Thompkins who also goes by the moniker JT Money.

A statement from CBS Interactive read, “This latest move by Mr. David is a desperate attempt to distract copyright holders like us from continuing our rightful claims. His lawsuit against CBS affiliates is riddled with inaccuracies, and we are confident that we will prevail, just as we did in the injunction hearing involving his company.”

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