When people in the industry talk of copyright, there is none of the grand speechifying about revering artists and rewarding creativity, and the near-tearful paeans to the yeoman key grips and stunt men, as is favored by movie and record executives. Instead, there is just this: We spent a lot of money to get this stuff out to the market. Somebody else is making money off of it. We want the money.
"We haven't gone after Joe Citizen who's sharing something he printed off something from the Hustler Web site with another guy," said Paul Cambria, a lawyer who represents Hustler, Vivid Video and other companies on copyright issues. He does send out some 20 letters a week, he said, warning for-pay Web sites to remove material owned by his clients.
Cambria suggests that the mainstream entertainment industry is much more combative when it comes to consumers partly because the songs and movies are so carefully and expensively made and distributed. Movies in his industry, by contrast, are often made in a few weeks, and on budgets that a major studio may spend on coffee and pastries, so piracy is not taken quite as seriously. "Maybe a classic is one thing," he said, "but they're not all classics."
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