SANTA MONICA, California – Just days after Paris Hilton’s T-Mobile Sidekick was hacked, spreading her topless photographs across the Internet, a sex tape featuring Fred Durst hit the Web along with reports that it was the work of the same hacker.
Though the explicit clip features the words “T-Mobile Terrorist” on it, the Limp Bizkit singer said the footage was definitely not stolen from his PDA.
“If you look on Paris’ thing, I don’t use T-Mobile,” Durst said with a laugh on Friday, referring to the list of Hilton’s phone numbers that also leaked and included his contact information (see “Paris Hilton Apologizes For Crank Calls, Fergie Wants Revenge”). “No, no, [my listing in her Sidekick] is just old, years old. Somebody that was repairing my computer was smart enough to go through anything he could [and found the movie]. What can I say? I’m not proud of it.
“Everyone, probably everyone in this building, has done something similar to what I did, and nobody cares about it,” he added during a break from recording the next Limp Bizkit album in Interscope Records’ studio. “But if you’re high-profile, or on someone’s radar … then it matters. What happens to me happens to me, and I have to live with it and go on.”
Durst said he’s been contacted by at least one company seeking his cooperation in selling the video.
“When those things happen to people, there are companies that approach you, say, ‘Hey, man, you wanna make some money off this? People are gonna see it anyway,’ ” Durst explained. “I said, ‘Absolutely not, I don’t wanna make any money of this. This is ridiculous.’ So when you see [celebrity sex tapes] out there with big company names on them, you can know people gave them permission to release it.”
David Hans Schmidt, a Phoenix-based publicist who once represented Tonya Harding and who has represented celebrities in the selling of nude photos in the past, tells a different story. He said the thieves contacted him in September and he’s been negotiating with them and Durst’s agents ever since.
“I was close to turning something illegal into something legal and then these hackers reneged and went out and put the tape on World Wide Web along with my home telephone number,” Schmidt said. “Now we’re gonna get ’em. Government agencies are meeting with me this weekend.”
Schmidt refused to elaborate about the deal because he worried it might hinder the investigation.
Durst said he hopes people learn a lesson from what happened to him and Paris.
“If you wanna know how not secure you are, just take a look around,” he said. “Nothing’s secure. Nothing’s safe. It’s just helping us get better, causing awareness for homeland security. … I don’t hate technology, I don’t hate hackers, because that’s just what comes with it, without those hackers we wouldn’t solve the problems we need to solve, especially security.”
Limp Bizkit are nearly finished with their fifth studio album, which will mark the return of original guitarist Wes Borland (see “Wes Borland Back With Limp Bizkit”).