Porn Valley- Put it this way. Until the law firm of Fattorosi & Chisvin, www.adultbizlaw.com came on the scene, there weren’t many options porn performers had at their disposal when it came to sympatico legal representation.

Don Hollywood’s had his share of time before the bar, but now that he’s been around the horn a couple of times, Michael Fattorosi’s becoming known as “the adult entertainment attorney.”

Fattorosi, himself a former member of the bar [he tended one], then became lawyer for real, also answers legal questions on oprano.com
Often times he hears people making statements to the effect: ‘thank God for Larry Flynt, because of him we have all these freedoms.’

“What people forget is before Larry Flynt came along, there was Sturman and Roth and Luros and Mohney,” points out Fattorosi who’s first contact with the industry, strangely enough, was the fact that he dated porn king Milton Luros’ grand daughter.

“I would go over to the house, and we’d sit and talk and he knew I was in law school,” Fattorosi recalls. “He kind of fascinated me with the discussions we had about the First Amendment and the cases and how he came up into the business and it was just something I thought, wow, here’s one of the pioneers in the business and nobody really knows.

“Even if you go to his Wikipedia page, there’s like, two lines. While there’s been volumes written about Larry Flynt and Sturman and Roth, there’s been nothing written about Luros.”

“And to an extent, people forget the fact that there were people before Larry Flynt who fought for First Amendment rights and it just had that personal connection for me,” Fattorosi continues.

In time, Fattorosi had a chance to meet Larry Flynt and negotiated a contract with him directly.

“I have the utmost respect for Larry Flynt and what he’s been through and what he’s suffered and sacrificed for the industry,” says Fattorosi.

“That’s kind of how I got started – meeting Milton Luros and getting to know him. I never knew this, but he was the first person to bring the Kama Sutra into the United States. He had the Supreme Court case.”

“I think he was arrested at LaGuardia airport- when he got off the plane- it went all the way up to the Supreme Court and because of him we have the Kama Sutra. Someone like that made me realize this is a legitimate industry with an interesting practice because it really is on the cutting edge.”

Fattorosi well tell you how he wishes he were more of a First Amendment attorney.

“I have the utmost respect for the lawyers in the industry like Jeff Douglas and Greg Piccionelli that do First Amendment work,” he adds. “I think they fight a really good fight for the industry.”

In the beginning of the year, Fattorosi practically went through all the positions of the Kama Sutra to move his firm to its new digs on Canoga in Woodland Hills with the nice luxury suite, a staff of five attorneys and a view overlooking a tennis court. But, you’ll discover, soon enough, it’s not just a firm with a pretty face.

“There are other things that we do besides adult law,” Fattorosi hastens to note. “We also handle music and civil litigation.”

To wit, Fattorosi’s firm has some major civil litigation cases against the city of Santa Barbara and the county of Santa Barbara. For instance, a woman was picked up and taken into the jail for being drunken in public.

“There’s an issue as to whether she was drunk in public,” says Fattorosi.

“She lapsed into a coma while in jail, No one checked on her and she ended up passing away several days later from a head injury. So we have a wrongful death case against both entities plus the EMT’s on the scene.”

That case is proceeding to trial on May 20th. There’s also a sexual harassment claim against one of the best known entertainment attorneys.

“He’s known for representing newscasters, national and local new,” adds Fattorosi. “Some of the biggest names in the industry are his clients.”

There’s also a case against the city of Compton. The firm’s representing a black individual who’s Muslim and the city of Compton has repeatedly bypassed him for promotion and kept him to a role where they’re not allowing him to advance his career.

“Even though he’s had excellent test scores and shone great interest in the community,” Fattorosi notes. “Basically they’ve held him down- we think- because of his religious and racial beliefs.”

A story’s appeared so far in the Compton Bulletin detailing the case but neither the LA Times or Daily News have picked up on it as yet. The case, Fattorosi will tell you, has prompted additional defendants seeking representation.

“Apparently there’s been more than one fire fighter this has been done to.”

And from the sounds of it, Fattorosi’s guy who heads up the firm’s music dept. has been quite active in placing songs in mainstream media on behalf of his clients. Which is only a small part of it.

“When people talk to me they just assume that all we do is porn,” says Fattorosi, noting that there a lot of people in the industry looking for attorneys that are adult industry-friendly.

[Particularly people involved with copyright, intellectual property or trademark beefs.]

Either way, Fattorosi says it’s been an interesting ride over the last four years since he’s had the firm.

“When a porn performer contacts you, what’s it generally about?” I ask him.

“Mostly just incorporating them or setting them up with an LLC and trademarking their names,” is quick the answer.

“Or website issues,” Fattorosi continues. Of which one imagines there are legions.

“Somebody may have their website name and the performer wants it back,” says Fattorosi, for example. For the most part, though, the majority of web issues deal with the common practice of porn performers being screwed for money by unscrupulous webmasters.

To which, Fattorosi says he can help.

“In almost every contract, if it isn’t written, there should be some amount of accountability from the webmaster to allow a performer to review their books,” he goes on to say.

“If not at least once a year to come in and show me the books. If there’s nothing like that in a particular contract we can go get what’s called declaratory relief from the court if we request to see an accounting. And if they refuse, we can always go to the court and ask for that.”

“But you don’t want to run the flag up the flag pole until there’s something there,” Fattorosi advises.

“A lot of times, honestly? The problem with performers is they’ve talked to someone else – this girl’s making $5,000 and this girl’s making $2,000. But there’s more that goes into running a website than just being a performer. They may not understand that the girl who is making $5,000 is putting in a lot of time, is doing content, is blogging, is chatting.”

“So a lot of times what I have to do is educate the performer,” Fattorosi explains.

“As to the fact that if you just give a little bit of content to somebody once in awhile, then you can’t expect to make the same as someone who works all the time at their website.

“Part of it is educating people as to what’s reasonable and what’s not. I don’t want to waste my time chasing something that isn’t there. A lot of times the girls and the guys understand they have a career and that they have to invest their time and effort into their websites. It’s not about, oh, somebody take some pictures of me and I’m going to be making thousands of dollars per month. It doesn’t work that way. And any webmaster will tell you it doesn’t work that way.”

“And some webmasters are better than others,” Fattorosi concedes. “Some will promote the girls more and those that they promote more will make more. So even girls within the same cash program won’t always make the same.”

Hard to believe, too is the fact that there are disgruntled performers who are not particularly happy with their representation.

“Once in awhile we’ll get the performer who’s unhappy with their agent,” says Fattorosi.

“It’s usually intellectual property issues now. It’s trademarks and incorporations.”

“So there’s no truth to the rumor that you’re tutoring Anita Cannibal through law school?” I ask in a quick change of subject.

Fattorosi has a good chuckle but hasn’t talked to porn performer Cannibal for nearly a year so he’s wondering how she’s doing.

Fattorosi’s also in the middle of a few porno cases that are on the q.t. for the moment. Without naming names, one contract girl got shafted royally by her company. Another lost rights to her name due to some shenanigans.

“We’ve got probably four to five cases that are on behalf of performers that I think will be unique,” Fattorosi intones. “I don’t think anyone’s seen anybody file cases like this before. Those cases basically go to issues of intellectual property, and I think for the most part the performers I’m working with are really starting to understand the fact that they own rights, they own their name.”

“With the down turn in the industry and the lack of shooting, they want to get to the place where they can have their own websites and generate income from those things. Most of the performers, I think, are taking a different approach to the business now. At least the ones that contact me.

“There’s a lot of performers, obviously, that won’t contact me or see a need for it.”

But those that do- male and female- have a pretty good understanding of the business, Fattorosi thinks.

On the subject of content trades, Fattorosi’s got some thoughts and views gained from first hand experience. But we won’t go there.

“One of the things that I think annoys the agents is content trading,” states Fattorosi. “I’m not going to tell a girl not to do a content trade. I’m not going to tell her to do one. That’s really up to her and what she wants to do with the content.

“My only advice to the girl or the male performer- and it’s usually less with the male performers because they don’t usually have their own websites- is, make sure you can use that content and you can use it quickly. Don’t be in a position where you’re going to do a content trade with someone who already has a website and you’re six months to a year from being developed.

“You don’t want to be in a position where that content can be sold or put up on someone’s website where now it becomes stale for your website because everyone’s already seen it.”

“And also what I tell the performers is to make sure the model releases for content trades limits the right for everyone involved,” Fattorosi adds.

“It’s really up to them to fashion the deal. They can fashion the deal however they want. If they want to make it so that everyone can re-sell the content with unlimited rights, then make sure the document says that. If they want to limit it to only be to used on certain websites, then the model release has to say that the content is being shot and it’s only to be used on these several sites.”

“And that’s true for anybody in the industry- whether it’s true for the cameraman who is actually filming it- maybe he’s getting a copy of the content in trade; it’s certainly true for the male performer and the female performer.”

“You really have to sit down with the people you’re going to do this content trade with and figure this out before you get on scene, and do the scene,” Fattorosi also advises.

“If you’ve already signed the model release then go, well, I only want it shown on your website, that basically gives them unfettered rights to do what they want with the content. And if you’re doing a content trade, don’t leave the content trade without a copy of the content and without full copies of all the releases, the 2257 docs and IDs.

“Before you leave hoping to get a copy later and you don’t, you haven’t protected yourself. And make sure you bring with you a disc, a zip drive, some type of storage device that they can download your content for you when you leave. I tell most performers to use the little 2 or 3 meg USB drives. That way all the video and all the pictures can be downloaded. Or if they can burn it to a DVD, that’s even better. Make sure you leave the scene with a copy of your content however it is- DVD or saved to a hard drive.”

“Or a girl can even go out, spend a hundred bucks and get a portable hard drive that has a 100 megs worth of space on it.”

One of the most significant things for Fattorosi in recent months has been the re-launch of adultbizlaw, www.adultbizlaw.com

And one of the reasons behind Fattorosi re-launching it is the fact that he’s had a lot of people contacting him who don’t necessarily have large sums to retain an attorney.

“I wanted to give them a place they could go and get some information for free,” he explains. “And be able to join up and get some of the necessary contracts.”

“Or I’ve had people come to me saying I’ve spent all this money, got all this content but I don’t have the right model release or the 2257 documents filled out properly. For them that was a very expensive learning proposition. And I opened Adultbizlaw in order to give someone a relatively inexpensive way to get good, solid information before they try to go out and do this on their on and not have to plop down a retainer, They can do it on a credit card on a monthly basis.”

Describing it as an informational website, Fattorosi provides a $49 option that allows access to the website, gives 20 specific adult industry contracts, as well as 300 other business and personal contracts.

“They’ve got case law that then can read; they’ve got statutes that they can read,” Fattorosi points out. “We’ve got a do not ship list, so if they happen to be in the DVD market, or the toy market, they can see where products may or may not be shipped to.

“It’s there to protect the little guy, and that’s basically the way I look at it. It was never meant to be a substitute for solid legal advice and keeping someone on retainer.

“It was meant for the guy or the girl who maybe have a blog, or one that refers traffic out. And that’s what I think is really going to be a large portion of the future of this industry.”