Needed: An RIAA for Porn

Found on Wired on Wednesday, 28 January 2004
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A California publisher of a pornographic magazine and website sued Visa, MasterCard and other financial institutions Wednesday, saying they facilitated the illegal sale of pirated sex images flooding the Internet.

"The defendants in this case ... are knowingly providing crucial transactional support services for the sale of millions of stolen photos and film clips worth billions of dollars that belong to Perfect 10 and third-parties," the suit reads.

The publisher of Perfect 10, Norman Zada, said in an interview that he had lost $29 million since setting up his business in 1996, including $8 million on legal fees. He said the problem was that he was spending thousands of dollars for nude photography sessions while many Internet sites were stealing his and other images.

That's a pretty new approach: instead of going after rival webmasters and the guys who leech images, they sue the banks. Next time someone breaks into my house, I simply sue the thief's bank because we all know that money is the root of all evil in this happy world.