Get Greg Piccionelli talking about legal issues surrounding adult entertainment, and you’re likely to be detained for a while. As perhaps the industry’s leading go-to guy for legal matters ranging from copyright infringement and trademark disputes to Fifth Amendment rights and free speech, Piccionelli’s name has become synonymous with "keeping things legal," popping up in countless articles and being called upon whenever someone finds themselves in a pickle. Known as much for his advocacy for free speech as he is for his wildly printable quotes ("I think obscenity is on its last legs;" "The adult entertainment business will save the music business;" "The adult business is the most democratic of all big businesses in this country"), Piccionelli has, in his own way, become a kind of "porn star," and he’s not afraid to let you know it. "I’m probably the most experienced online adult entertainment attorney, period," Piccionelli declares. "But it’s only because I’ve been doing it longer than anybody else."
If that sounds like self-congratulatory chest thumping to you, consider just a cursory sampling of cases that Piccionelli been associated with over the years. From his work on the landmark Perfect 10 vs. Cyber Age case and canned spam actions brought against Internet pornographers on behalf of companies like Microsoft, Earthlink, and America Online to his counsel on behalf of Red Light District in last year’s copyright infringement suit regarding the illegal pirating of the Red Light District-owned Paris Hilton video 1 Night in Paris, Piccionelli’s experience in walking the walk has in turn given him the bragging rights to talk the talk.
A native of Southern California, Piccionelli (who jokes that he was "one of the six or seven people that were actually born in Los Angeles") attended UCLA for his undergraduate work. For a while, he even toyed with the idea of being a rock ‘n’ roll musician, playing in a band called Intelligence, until, he says, he realized the time had come for him to "get a career that paid as opposed to playing in rock bands for the rest of my life." He considered entering medical school, but having worked alongside Senate majority leader David Roberti during his early college days, Picionelli found himself leaning toward law.
His background in the arts soon came back into play for him, though, as he determined that "the only thing that floated my boat in many different situations was law with respect to intellectual property, because it was the common denominator." Enrolling at Loyola, he tailored his law studies around intellectual property issues and free speech, and graduated in 1983.
Adult entertainment law’s mutability
Following graduation (magna cum laude, it should be added), Piccionelli took a job as a free speech attorney with the firm of Weston, Sarno, Garrou & DeWitt, and – ever the Renaissance man – spent his nights toiling in post-graduate work in, of all things, molecular biology. But porn would soon derail that. The law firm dealt with a good many cases related to the adult industry as well as the Internet (as Piccionelli recalls, "I had become pretty much familiar with the importance of the adult entertainment industry and the nexus between adult entertainment and new communications technology"), so by the time a buddy of his emailed him a scanned Playboy centerfold in 1994, Piccionelli says, "the light bulb went on in my head, and I said, ‘OK, [the Internet] is soon going to be a medium for adult entertainment." Not long after, Piccionelli convinced senior partner Bob Sarno to jump ship, and the two colleagues founded Piccionelli & Sarno, a law firm devoted to intellectual property and entertainment matters. One of the firm’s specialties? Adult entertainment, with a wide array of services ranging from entity formation and contract negotiations to copyright, trademark, and patent issues.
Building associations with attorneys not only in other states, but all over the world, Piccionelli broadened the scope of his company in a manner that he felt suited the industry. "I structured the firm a little different than most law firms," he says. "Law is rapidly moving away from a state-to-state practice to a multistate practice because of businesses all over the country that are on the Internet. We can’t, as attorneys, practice in somebody else’s backyard. Internet law and adult entertainment law are global issues."
With Piccionelli & Sarno established, Piccionelli soon began to build a solid reputation for the firm, making it a pioneer in matters of e-business, adult entertainment, traditional entertainment, and new media concerns. Piccionelli himself has been rewarded with a number of American Jurisprudence awards and citations, including awards in Constitutional Law and Alternate Dispute Resolution, as well as induction into the prestigious Order of the Coif. In the same time, he’s managed to pen some of the industry’s most respected articles and guidebooks, including the frequently cited 1991 work "News Gathering, Intangible Property Rights and 900-Line Telephone Services: One Court Makes a Bad Connection" (written during his tenure as managing editor of the Loyola Entertainment Law Review) and 2004’s monumental Adult Webmaster Legal Resource (cowritten with Fred Lane), a virtual bible of information pertinent to triple-X business folk operating on the World Wide Web.
The road less traveled is paved with porn.
Not many lawyers are so quick to get their hands so, er, "dirty" when it comes to pornography and obscenity issues, which makes Piccionelli’s professional dedication to the adult industry rather unique. When asked what he gets personally out of his participation in the skin trade, Piccionelli responds, "It’s kind of the road less traveled. I can tell you that every single day there is an interesting issue to deal with on behalf of adult entertainment issues, and at least every week there is a new issue that is thrown in my direction that no lawyer anywhere in the world has ever had to deal with. I’m always the kind of guy who roots for the underdog, and the adult business has been the orphan stepchild of the entertainment business."
It won’t be that way for long—at least by Piccionelli’s predictions. Citing porn’s relatively inexpensive production costs in regard to its profits as compared to that of the mainstream movie and music industry, he says, "I think what we’re going to see now in the coming years is that there is an economic dynamic that favors the adult business over other business. Sex sells, and the cool thing about it is that Internet marketing makes it possible to sell even more. The adult entertainment industry commands more eyes on the Internet than any other business."
Referring to his oft-used line that "Not every person that buys toothpaste buys porn, but just about every person that buys porn buys toothpaste," Piccionelli adds that it won’t be long before cars will be sold on adult sites and the lines between mainstream and adult even more blurred. "The companies out there are going to become desperate to find means to connect their products with eyes and ears," he says. "The day is coming when that wall is going to break down."
Of course, in order for that to happen, the porn industry will need to make sure they are cleaning house and keeping their acts together. This includes, Piccionelli says, keeping children away from adult content, steering clear of obscenity charges, and figuring out how to deal with payment processing companies (like Visa and MasterCard) that don’t want to get sucked into the culture wars. "Probably the most important legal issue facing the industry is obviously what the government is doing to constrict it," he says. "What is the methodology that the government will employ to deliver to the religious right some kind of appropriate payment for their assistance in the election? If it turns out that they can get their act together and get a functioning law in place, it’s going to be a serious problem, especially for Internet porn. I think, at the moment, the rug’s not going to be pulled out from underneath the online industry, but I’m not … sure that if we fast forward five years from now that everybody that is able to process for the type of content they are distributing will be able to process for that type of content in the future."
Natural law
Piccionelli says part of his insistence on fighting the good fight for adult entertainment comes from the benefits the human population reaps from keeping free speech alive. Reflecting his background in molecular biology, he says, "The slight mutability in DNA allows things to survive any change that occurs in the environment—and the environment is going to change, because that’s the nature of the universe," he posits. "[The] First Amendment works exactly the same way, which is why we must keep the channels open and allow for the maximum amount of speech—because the likelihood of human survival may depend on one mutant idea.
"I’m a natural law subscriber," he continues. "And the reason the United States works as well as it does is because it has two natural law principles. One is maximum freedom to let whatever happens happen, which mirrors the DNA system. The other thing is survival of the fittest, which has led to the property system and to competition. And let’s face it: that’s how it works out there. That’s why I’m an intellectual property and free speech attorney, and why I will go to the mat for people’s ability to speak as broadly as humanly possible."
It’s a passion that keeps him pretty busy, though he still finds time to dabble in other areas as well. In addition to spending as much time as possible with his wife Anna (who, incidentally, is also a patent attorney), Piccionelli still stokes the flame of his passion for music; several of his compositions have been used in film and television. He says he is currently working on a new project that incorporates moan tones into its fold, and even reports that he is working on a full-blown rock opera as well. Of course, his first love will always be the law, and it appears that he’s not about to part with it anytime soon.
When asked what piece of advice he would give to those looking to become involved in adult entertainment, Piccionelli offers this, "I would say you should learn about the market. It’s a huge market; it runs everything from lingerie stores and gentleman’s clubs to audio text in Internet and magazines and escort services. So the idea would be to figure out what you want to do, and determine which market you want to go into."
And apart from that? "Well, this is going to sound very self-serving," he begins, "but the smart thing to do would be to get a hold of one of the experienced entertainment attorneys."
Somehow, we just knew he was going to say that.
