Porn Stars
VAN NUYS, Calif. - Evil Angel, home of AVN Award winners such as John Stagliano, Rocco Siffredi, Joey Silvera, Christoph Clark, John Leslie and Jules Jordan, has discovered counterfeit DVDs of their product.
Chris Norman, Evil Angel's general manager, says fake discs have been a concern for the company and among New York wholesalers, where the profit margins for product for the companies are sometimes 50 cents above wholesale. The margins also make finding pirated product easier because of the lower pricing.
When product below Evil Angel's usual wholesale price of $15 to $22, appeared, Norman says he hears complaints from distributors. On occasion, Evil Angel product does appear at prices lower than wholesale prices because, according to Norman, the company's releases are sometimes used to trade for other products. But in this case, the product was not authentic.
Norman says, "I told them this was pirated product. Someone needs to buy me some of this stuff so I have a trail… We came across pirated product. I hadn't anticipated finding pirated DVDs as quickly. It's quite scary."
The bogus DVDs, sent to the company from an irate customer who had bought the discs for less than $10, were not packaged in the company's red plastic cases and the artwork was a color photocopy. "Michael Warner at Great Western [Litho] does such a great job of printing," Norman adds. "Our printing tends to be like money in that it's so identifiable."
The discs are flimsy, DVD-5, not the high-quality and high-capacity DVD-9s the company uses. "It was our product, but condensed to fit on a DVD-5. By condensing it, the image quality was reduced and the features weren't there. All the motion menus were no longer motion menus… it was a direct rip-off of our product," he says.
One of the discs was also printed with contact information of Coast to Coast Video, but Norman was quick to add that he's sure Coast to Coast did not have anything to do with the discs. "It's obvious someone's trying to pin the blame on someone," Norman adds.
Marty Rothstein, with Coast to Coast, denies his company has anything to do with the fake discs. He adds that piracy has always been a problem in the New York market because the adult retailers in the area "want to buy it 25 cents cheaper than the next guy – they'll do anything to save a dollar."
Norman says he will "extend [a] reward for any information."
Evil Angel is no stranger to pursing counterfeiters. About five years ago, Norman says, the company had stopped an operation in New York that had been illegally their duplicating tapes.
"It's aggravating, it's frustrating – I can't think of enough adjectives to describe it," Norman says. "Ultimately I'm very scared that there's a lot of product floating around that could seriously damage out marketplace."
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