It was almost exactly a year ago when I wrote for the Chronicle about Lara Jade, whose image had been used without her permission for a porn boxcover — and all the twisted, fucked up turns the story took. When I wrote the piece I actually got the guy from TVX films on the phone and asked him where the image came from.
(…) It’s not just that Lara didn’t want to be associated with green doors and deep throats and the “fun-loving” days of zero STD testing. Nor was it simply the violation of image use that capped the problems associated with becoming the unknowing face of a Sven Conrad (?) star vehicle. Perhaps one of the problems is that Lara is 17 and was only 14 when she took the self-portrait (with help from her mum). Or maybe, just maybe, that the porn film whose cover she’s on was made about eight years before she was even born.
At least, this was all the setting when Lara saw that one of her old self-portraits had been retouched to remove her watermark and placed on the online sales cover of 1982’s porn non-epic “Body Magic.” (…)
(…) Agustus explained the porn reseller distribution food chain by telling me that his company only sells repackaged classics with soft-core covers, and that they seldom change the covers but “only the back cover has to show who’s in the film.” And they don’t sell their product to individuals, but to other distributors and retailers.
After about 30 more minutes of quality porn chat time with Bob, and hearing about how I “wouldn’t believe the clowns who contact him” about all kinds of stuff (OMG, like me) and the viruses he has to deal with (from “Body Magic”?), I asked him where the photo came from. He told me he didn’t know, but that it “was AJ’s.”
“Who’s ‘AJ’?” I asked. (…)
If you missed this crazy article, read it now. It’s resurfacing for me because I was just procrastinating the book I’m working on and ogling hot blogger Katie West’s LiveJournal when I saw this entry about Lara Jade’s attorney contacting her this week, asking “The owner of TVX now claims that the model in your photo on the cover of “The Uninvited Guest” is actually Lara Jade Coton (suggesting that she posed nude and is somehow therefore not so innocent, I suppose). Could you please confirm for me whether or not the model is Lara Jade Coton?” Katie confirms that the model is indeed herself. LJ user Blackwell wisely commented, “What is odd is that they seem to think that if she did pose nude for you that gives them the right, or more of a right, to steal her image.”
