Porn Valley- Jason Tucker leaves me a message at 5:27 pm:

“Gene, hey it’s Jason Tucker. I just woke up two hours ago and turned on the Internet and saw an interesting story. I got your message yesterday late. I’ve been busy all day yesterday so I wasn’t able to get back to you. I just shot you an e-mail. Yesterday afternoon, actually, asking if you were able to…when you wanted to re-schedule. I did the same thing this morning. Or this afternoon. So now I see this article and I’m a little confused. I don’t think you understand. This isn’t a conspiracy against you. And the whole world isn’t against you. I’m certainly not. I’ve been trying to make this work with you. So let me know what you want to do. I told you you can have the interview. I’m so totally amicable to that. I don’t see why it shouldn’t happen. I keep my word. We’ve gone through these scheduling conflicts back and forth. Your schedule, my schedule, Tom’s schedule. Let’s just make it work. Give me a call back if you want.”

Gene sez: Tucker reminds me of girlfriends I used to have who always managed to turn it on you to make it look like you’re the bad guy. Notice how he words this: “This isn’t a conspiracy against you. And the whole world isn’t against you.” This is very amusing coming from someone who fucked up a Sizemore interview twice with Mancow.

I didn’t seek Tucker out. He’s the one that came crying to me when I posted the Jersey Jaxin story. Tucker’s the one who offered an “exclusive” in exchange for pulling the Jaxin story. Or whatever “exclusive” means in his mind. Tucker’s the one who laid promises at my doorstep. Tucker also talks about scheduling conflicts. I was amenable to anything. Tucker’s the one that kept changing dates on me. First it was a Sunday then it was Wednesday then it was Friday.

Then Tucker goes on to say that he e-mailed me. Yeah, in an attempt at post hoc damage control at 5 pm Saturday after my story was already posted. Tucker made no attempt at communication either yesterday when I called early, or Saturday morning. Because if he had, there would have been no story and we would have proceeded along. By my posting this Sizemore anecdote, I just wanted the rest of the porn world to see what you deal with on a daily basis.

Oh, by the way, XXX calls to remind me about a lawsuit Tucker’s involved with. Apparently a company called Mansion Productions is suing him. A former partner of Tucker’s named Oystein Wright is suing Tucker for alleged embezzlement when he and Tucker ran Playa Solutions.

From Xbiz.com June 6, 2005: MARINA DEL REY, Calif. – One month after news broke that Playa Solutions founder Oystein Wright was suing company co-founder Jason Tucker, the company has announced that it will shut down its Digital Rights Management arm, PlayaDRM.

The company also amended its lawsuit by naming ideaFoundry owner Chad Myers as a co-defendant.

“It is with deep regret [that] we need to inform you that we need to give you your 10 days notice,” stated a letter the company sent to clients Sunday.

The letter went on to say that a partners actions had “severely crippled PlayaDRM’s ability to serve its clients in a manner deserved both financially and technically.”

“As of now, none of the protected videos are functioning,” Wright told XBiz. “Someone has done something to our system so that none of the protected video files work, and until the party who deleted that part of our database restores it, they will not.”

In other words, the 10-day notice is strictly a formality, since the videos have already been disabled due to technical problems beyond Playa’s control.

Wright added that Playa Solutions will exist on paper for accounting purposes only.

Playa’s difficulties first came to light on May 9, when Tucker announced he had been locked out of PlayaDRM.

News broke later that day that Tucker, along with his wife, Gail Harris, Tucker’s other company, Falcon Foto and up to 100 as-yet-unnamed co-defendants, had been named in a lawsuit filed by Playa Solutions.

Playa accused Tucker of diverting funds, shutting Wright out of the company’s computer systems to keep him from discovering the alleged diversion of funds, using company credit cards for non-business purposes and failing to account for them and blocking access to Protected Media’s copy of the Playa DRM licensing server.

In addition to announcing the shut down, Playa also named software programmer Chad Myers as one of the “John Does” mentioned in its initial lawsuit. Playa is accusing Myers of unfair competition for disabling computer code that he helped develop and Playa supplied to its customers.

While Wright declined to comment on the defendants, he said he believes the technical difficulties Playa is experiencing – and which are forcing the company to stop operations – are directly related to their actions.

He added that, while he regrets the inconvenience to Playa’s clients, there is nothing the company can do to fix the situation other than take legal action against those responsible.

He also stressed that Playa is a separate entity from his other company, Mansion Productions, which will not be affected this Playa’s situation.