Court documents filed in a bid to toss a lawsuit by Paris Hilton's former boyfriend say she directed the infamous sex video featuring the pair that surfaced on the Internet in recent months, and that the former boyfriend's lawsuit against the owners of SexBrat.com should be tossed because he wasn't the sole copyright holder as he first claimed.
Seattle-based Marvad, owners of SexBrat.com, want a federal judge to throw out a suit by Rick Salomon, on the grounds that the star of The Simple Life also held rights to the video and that it was sent to cyberspace without her approval.
The court documents say that Hilton could be seen and heard giving instructions while the tape was being made. "Unfortunately for Salomon," the filing said, "the video also depicts Ms. Hilton participating fully in the creation of the video. Ms. Hilton offered directorial comments and physically controlled and directed the camera."
The filing also said that Hilton could even be seen moving Salomon out of a frame so he would not block a shot.
Salomon claims Marvad violated his copyrights by distributing clips on SexBrat.com, which had withdrawn the tape and refused to show it after deciding it was copied and sold by the copy-maker, Donald Thrasher, without permission. SexBrat.com has since suggested the tape might have been copied otherwise. TrustFundGirls.com now offers showings of the tape.
Hilton's representatives declined comment when contacted by Reuters, the news wire said. Salomon's attorney, Martin Singer, told Reuters the Marvad filing was "great for the media but bad for the law." Thrasher has reportedly said Salomon agreed to sell the tape and received an estimated half of $50,000 in proceeds for it, according to Reuters.
Earlier this month, Salomon posted what he called the full-length, 38-minute video, on TrustFundGirls.com, selling access for $50. Portions of the video had turned up on the Internet last November. Celebrity Justice had reported Salomon released the full version believing the family would not sue over it.
Last week, SexBrat.com released another celebrity video of a kind: a video from the nude wet T-shirt contest dance Ohio newswoman Catherine Boseley took while vacationing with her husband in Key West last year. That turn, when images from the incident turned up on the Internet, led to Boseley's being all but forced to resign her anchor chair at Ohio's WKBN-TV earlier this year.
