UK Sex Sells News

Golden Eye, a company associated with pornographic film-maker Ben Dover has revealed plans to extend its remit to chase suspected file sharers with demands for large sums of money.

The move follows a Court of Appeal ruling which overturned a previous block on Golden Eye offering its services to other rights holders. Golden Eye keeps about 75% of all payments.

Spokesman Julian Becker said he now planned to travel to the US to offer to enforce US firms' copyrights in the UK.

I look forward to travelling to adult conferences in Los Angeles and Vegas in early January to offer Golden Eye's services to other producers.

The court ruling brings to an end a legal dispute between Golden Eye and the Open Rights Group (ORG).

Becker said he now intended to contact alleged infringers - identified by internet addresses linked to file-sharing activities - in the New Year. Recipients will be told they are suspected of accessing one or several adult films via peer-to-peer networks and will be invited to negotiate a lump sum payment. Golden Eye had originally indicated it wanted to demand a £ 700 penalty, however this was blocked on the grounds that the sum was excessive .

The Open Rights Group expressed concern at the appeal's verdict:

Such a decision effectively means that someone who themselves has no interest in a claim can acquire personal details to obtain large sums of money.

In this case Golden Eye are not a firm of solicitors, and thus are not regulated in the same way solicitors are.

Well, many readers may have heard of research being carried out by Professor Phil Hubbard on Sexual Entertainment venues. The initial results are in, and although the full results are not due until March 2013, I have been given permission to produce a synopsis of the report. I will say at the outset of this post that the majority of the report is not surprising and does no harm to the industry; there is one sticking point which I will discuss in more detail and explain why I feel that it is not likely to affect the industry.

There are 241 licensed premises regularly offering lap dancing or striptease in England and Wales. Nearly half (43%) of those applying for a Sexual Entertainment Venue (SEV) license have received no formal objections at all. This doesn't really come as much of a surprise: most people are not bothered about the venues and there tends to be only a small handful of complainants who may write in. Given that Portsmouth managed to obtain a massive response following a very vocal campaign by pressure groups to get the clubs shut down, with 113 against and over 3000 for the venues, the fact that some clubs receive no objections at all should not surprise anyone.

A survey of residents in towns and cities with lap dance clubs suggests that around one in five were not even aware there was an SEV operating in their town or city! Fewer than one in ten identified an SEV as a particular source of local nuisance, and in some locations this was considerably lower. Once again not a surprise, as we have seen previously from my report on crime that the belief that venues are an issue for police is a fallacy.

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