Posts Tagged ‘Lawsuits’
Golden Girls Gone Wild
Just in case anyone needed proof that “Girls Gone Wild” guy Joe Francis was, in fact, made of greasy grimy gopher guts, here’s a story for you.
Inside Edition (no stranger to sleaze themselves) reports that numerous individuals have received DVDs from Francis’ insanely profitable series of “reality” porn. If you aren’t familiar with these “films”, they basically consist of drunken college girls taking their tops off and also engaging in more explicit sexual activity, usually while on Spring Break or at Mardi Gras or some other Bacchanalian pursuit. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
After Keri Moret, wife of Inside Edition correspondent Jim Moret, received some GGW vids that she hadn’t ordered, Inside Edition did a little digging and found Diane Datillo from Kentucky. Datillo, a grandmother of two, opened her mailbox one day and was surprised to see some unwanted X-rated flicks. Keri Moret says that when she called and attempted to cancel the charges to her credit card, she, “totally got the run-around,” before being able to get a refund, which was Datillo’s experience as well.
Francis, pleasant human being that he is, was asked about these incidents. “Wow…when I left for jail this is what happened while I was gone…This makes me so angry,” he said. He was in jail for something he may or may not have done in Florida; it’s not clear. He’s been sued quite a bit: insurance fraud, tax evasion and filming girls naked who were underage, among other things.
So it’s all a big misunderstanding, right? Um… not quite. Inside Edition reports on a case from 2004 where GGW paid the Federal Trade Commission millions to settle charges that they shipped DVDs to people who hadn’t ordered them, although the company did not admit any wrongdoing.
Why so worked up over this? Porn is legal, and protected by free speech, and so forth. Francis has made a fortune – millions, if not billions, of dollars – filming “real” girls getting naked and fooling around with each other while drunk. “Sleazy” is too nice a word. And if that isn’t enough, you have several cases that Francis’ organization charges people for DVDs who haven’t asked for them, signing them up for monthly subscriptions. Many of these people probably either don’t notice the charges for a while, or are too embarrassed to call and get refunds. If this story is true, they also make it incredibly difficult to cancel the orders. This isn’t Hugh Hefner, or even Larry Flynt. Larry might be a tad on the weird side, but he’s not coercing girls who are barely out of high school to perform sex acts on film – and some of these girls, according to the lawsuits, are actually underage. Francis is a dirtbag. If he’s guilty, prove it, and put him in jail.
image: mondaymorningmediaquarterback.com
Lucas Sues Stormtrooper Creator
Terrible opening paragraph: It’s a storm in a Stormtrooper’s helmet. Lawyers for George Lucas’ Lucasfilm Ltd. and a British prop designer faced off in London’s High Court Tuesday over rights to the molded white Stormtrooper uniforms from the “Star Wars” films.
On the one hand, Lucas has enough money, right? But on the other hand you have to enforce your copyright/trademark/whatever everywhere or you risk losing it.
But can’t we all just get along?
image: StarWars.com
