Report: Evil Angel Hires German Anti-Piracy Company

By Tod Hunter

Thursday, Aug 21, 2008 Text size:

VAN NUYS, Calif. — Informational website P2P Blog reports that adult production company Evil Angel has hired a German anti-piracy company to track down and sue illegal file sharers.

A contract, dated January 2008 and signed by Evil Angel's then-Vice President Chris Norman, engages German company Digiprotect to track DVD titles on more than 16 single-spaced pages, with release dates going back to 1999. In the contract, Evil Angel assigns exclusive P2P distribution rights of these movie titles to Digiprotect, which can enforce the rights in lawsuits against file sharers.

P2P Blog reported that earlier this month, representatives of law enforcement in several German states have chosen not to prosecute non-commercial file sharing. Companies like Digiprotect have started more than 100,000 criminal investigations against individual file sharers.

According to P2P Blog, "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."

In the U.S., Stagliano and Evil Angel pursued a piracy case against Kaytel Video that led to a $17.5 million judgment against Kaytel and an out of court settlement earlier this year.

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