|
US porn producer cashes in on German P2P lawsuits |
|
|
|
|
Written by Admin
|
|
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 |
|
The Southern California-based adult film company John Stagliano
Inc, better known as Evil Angel, has apparently hired a German
anti-piracy company to track down and sue file sharers. A recently
leaked contract shows that Evil Angel ordered Germany's Digiprotect
to track more than 800 individual film titles, ranging from "Euro
Hardball 15" to "She-male Domination Nation". The contract shows
that Evil Angel assigned exclusive P2P distribution rights of these
movie titles to Digiprotect, which in turn can use these rights in
lawsuits against individual file sharers.
Germany has become a kind of battle ground for P2P enforcement in
recent years, with companies like Digiprotect and associated
lawyers starting more than 100,000 criminal investigations against
individual file sharers. Most of these investigations are later
dropped, but the rights holders use them as a launch pad for civil
enforcement, billing file sharers anywhere from a few hundred to
several thousand Euros. Critics contend that these lawsuits are not
about stopping infringement, but about making a quick buck, and
Digiprotect's own slogan "Turn piracy into profit" seems to
support this argument. German prosecutors have recently decided to
put an end to these lawsuits by only opening cases with at least
200 films shared because their offices have been burried by
thousands and thousands of lawsuits each month, costing the German
tax payer millions. It's somewhat ironic that John Stagliano is
also at the center of a different kind of lawsuit in the US.
Stagliano has been indicted for distributing obscene materials via
mail and online. Adult industry magazine XBiz reported back in
April that Stagliano's lawyer thought this kind of lawsuit was "a
waste of the government’s resources."
Recommend this article... |
