CHATSWORTH, Calif.—Immoral Productions' studio was raided Thursday evening by eight officers from the Los Angeles vice squad who issued the studio a citation for streaming a live webcam show without a permit. Although several performers were at the location at the time of the raid, no show was actually taking place then, and no arrests were made.
The officers who conducted the raid told an independent contractor for Immoral who was present that the reason they had come was because the studio was not licensed as a photography or internet studio and was shooting commercial webcam content without the requisite permit for such. Told that no movie was being shot there at the time, they informed those present that they were aware of this because they had been following Immoral owner Dan Leal on Twitter and waiting for him to return from Prague to mount the bust. Leal, however, was not present when they arrived.
"They told me they'd been watching my live shows; that they had a membership and they've been watching my live shows," said Leal, who spoke with one of the officers later. "They told me they were looking for me specifically. They told me that they had to cite me, that they really didn't want to go through the time and effort, but that they had a complaint, and they were only doing their job, so they had to cite me for filming without a permit. And I said, 'But it's a live webcam show.' I said, 'What you're saying is, because I'm being cited for shooting a live webcam show, every other person who shoots a live webcam show in the entire Los Angeles area would have to go to FilmLA and get a permit? And he said, 'Yeah.' And I said, 'Okay, then; if that's the case, and you're telling me that everybody who does a live webcam show in Los Angeles would have to use a condom, right? Including married couples, right?' So we shot our show with condoms last night."
According to Leal, the infraction was "filming without a permit for a live webcam show."
Leal estimated that at any given time, there were about 60 live shows going on at one webcam network, and that there are three big networks in the area, plus likely dozens of models doing independent shows on their home computers.
"A guy from FilmLA just told me that every single person who shoots for profit or gain, which is every single person on webcam, by definition—by doing a webcam show, by definition, is doing it for profit or gain," Leal stated, "which means every single webcam show, under this law, will be forced to have a permit and use condoms."
"Then you've got to talk about getting insurance in order to get the permit," added attorney Michael Fattorosi. "It's ridiculous."
Leal plans to fight the citation and currently has a court date set for June 7.
"I'll have my television show from HBO there; I will," he advised. "And they'll have a permit."
