Divorce Lawyer Seeks to be the RIAA of Porn

The Hollywood Reporter legal blog, THR,Esq., has an interesting post about a Chicago lawyer who appears to be singlehandedly trying to do what the RIAA did for the music industry -- file lawsuits to go after anyone who uses peer-to-peer networking to download copyrighted porn.

The lawyer has filed at least a half-dozen lawsuits within the past two weeks targeting hundreds of "John Doe" defendants, accusing them of stealing copyright movies ranging from gay erotica to the cult classic, "Debbie Does Dallas."

The lawyer, John L. Steele, has set up a website as the Media Copyright Group in Chicago. The site advertises that the company "tracks, identifies and pursues damages against people who pirate copyrighted media via P2P networks." THR, Esq. has the lawsuit he filed on behalf of Hard Drive Productions, owner of the website Amateur Allure.

What makes all this even more interesting is that Steele's law firm website utters not a word of any of it or mentions any practice relating to copyright law. Rather, the site describes both the firm and Steele as a family law attorney who also handles consumer bankruptcies.

Steele's not alone in going after porn pirates, says THR, Esq. In Texas, lawyer Evan Stone has filed lawsuits against hundreds of alleged pirates on behalf of film and video companies.

So if you are sharing porn on BitTorrent, watch out for the copyright patrol.

Newspapers adopt Creative Commons licenses

The Town Online group of Massachusetts newspapers, purchased earlier this year by GateHouse Media, recently rolled out redesigned, more blog-like Web pages, and with them, Creative Commons licenses allowing sharing of content for non-commercial uses.

In an article posted at PressThink, Lisa Williams, editor of H20town.info, writes that this is the first newspaper chain or major newspaper to release content under Creative Commons, a more flexible alternative to traditional copyright. She quotes media critic and blogger Dan Kennedy:

"For newspapers to give up copyright is a remarkable step," says Dan Kennedy, who teaches journalism at Northeastern University and is a longtime watcher of the Boston media scene. "We all understand that it's okay to link to them, but this seems to say that it’s also okay to copy and paste entire articles. Is that what they want?"

Williams seems to think so. She writes:

"Sharing content, letting non-professionals submit content, and connecting with a global network of open-source tinkerers reveal a picture of a firm that’s open to the wide world of the web. That doesn’t sound like your average media company."