If you are signed up to the Eurocreme newsletter, you will know that we have recently introduced downloads to EurocremeStore. This is to make our films more accessible to those who may not want to wait for delivery of a DVD, or may not be able to take postal deliveries.
With piracy crippling the entertainment industry, I spent a few minutes surfing the net to find out how the new download service was being used by the content thieves. Thanks to Google, I instantly found a number of sites offering DirtyBoy, our latest DreamBoy production not yet out on DVD, but available for download. The first sponsored link claimed over 10,000 downloads of the title. If that is true, that’s several times the number of genuine sales we will make of the title over its lifetime. And that’s just one illegal site! You will also notice a number of helpful links to other of our pirated films.
OK, so let’s find out who the nice people pirating our films are… Click through the first link and you find a site called Prime Download.
It looks like a tidy, reputable site, offering lots of our films for free. So let’s go ahead and get the download…
Bugger! You have to join the site, so it’s not an anonymous theft. Well…I’m horny…what harm can there be in joining? Let’s sign up…
So I have to accept the terms before I become a member. How odd…apparently I should assume that all the content offered on the site belongs to Prime Download. And without their express permission I can’t use what I download! Oh well, let’s live dangerously and accept the terms. I want this film for free!
Oh…not quite for free. It turns out you have to pay for the download. Still, it’s quite cheap. Perhaps this is because the owner doesn’t bear any of the costs of producing the film, paying the models, etc. So let’s go ahead and buy the download. So I enter my credit card details and my home address. I receive some RAR files that then have to be stitched together using some other software that I don’t have. Back to Google to learn more about piracy, and more signups and downloads. And I still haven’t seen the film!
Not horny any more, I start to worry about the payment I made to Prime Download. Surely nothing can go wrong. I mean it’s a reputable site, no? And I’ll be covered by the Consumer Credit Act if someone clones my card? Hmm… I better find out who’s running that site. Who owns the domain name? Damn…it’s privacy protected with no contact details anywhere on the site. The site that took my payment, prime-payment.com, is also privacy protected. So I have no idea who took my card details and home address!
In a bit of a panic now, I click the original Google link that took me to Prime Download. Now it takes me to a different site, Download River…
I can also download DirtyBoy from here, if I was still in the mood. Actually it looks pretty similar to the first one I gave my card details to. So who owns this site?
Ah well at least there is a registrar listed here that I can contact about the first site. So let’s see who they are…
So now I’m at the point where I need to call my credit card company and tell them that I think my card may have been compromised. They will need all the details of the sites I visited. Oh a new card will be with me in 7 to 14 days. If I’m not at the office when it arrives, someone else can sign for it as long as I give them my passport.
I spent some time tracing back a few other similar torrent sites, and found the ultimate owners to be in China, Russia, Ukraine, etc. None of them had any contact details. Many of these sites are linked to organised crime, including drug trafficking and credit card fraud. They are big business to the owners, and of course none of the money they make ever finds its way back to the people who made the films.
If nothing is done about this, I fear we may be headed for an era devoid of quality entertainment, because it just becomes impossible for the creators to make a living from it. It is totally within the powers of the search engines and ICANN to take down these sites. Why don’t they?











