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Among many recent legal letters, we were most impressed by those from representatives of Cameron Diaz, regarding her recent litigation with some nasty man who is trying to make money marketing a video that, from descriptions, shows Ms. Diaz topless. We're thinking they must get paid by the word — either that or they're trying to stretch their billable hours. Seriously, endless.

Hey, legal friends: there's this thing called "reporting," not that we're any sort of experts on it ourselves, but we see them try it at newspapers, so we know it's probably okay to report on things that are illegal. Anyway, we didn't know about any of your "injunction" business because, hmm, we're not psychic, and why would we?

But now we know, and so we won't do anything that we didn't do in the first place.

Ms. Diaz's also lawyers seem to think that publication of their letter infringes their copyright. Setting aside, of course, issues of fair use — and decades of fairly obvious precedent about the ownership of letters — shouldn't non-published copyrighted works must be registered prior to infringement? At least that's what I seem to remember — I was pretty baked during that year I (unfortunately) spent as a paralegal.

We are litigation counsel for Cameron Diaz. We hereby demand that you, your company and anyone acting on your behalf (collectively, "You") immediately cease and desist from any further unauthorized exploitation of any video footage, pictures or photographs of Cameron Diaz which were taken at a photo shoot in or about 1992 on the Internet or elsewhere. Specifically, we have learned that each of Your websites, www.gawkerarchives.com, www.fleshbot.com, and www.defamer.com, are posting a link to [WEBSITE], the owners of which are unlawfully selling the Video and Photos to its subscribers for a fee.

[...blah blah etc.]

Mr. [John] Rutter was charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office with attempted extortion, grand theft, perjury and forgery. In a nutshell, Ms. Diaz alleges in her lawsuit and the evidence clearly indicates that Mr. Rutter had no authorization from Ms. Diaz or anyone else to use or profit from the Video and Photos in any way and, that in order to facilitate his wrongful scheme, he forged Ms. Diaz's signature onto a fake model release. Ms. Diaz immediately recognized the signature as being completely different than hers, and we believe that the full weight of the evidence - - including the sworn testimony of the other models and Rutter's assistant, none of whom have any recollection of model releases being signed at the shoot and did not see Ms. Diaz sign any model release, a forensic handwriting expert's opinion that the signature is not Ms. Diaz's, and computer files seized from Mr. Rutter's apartment - - supports the claims against Mr. Rutter and his co-conspirators.

As You are no doubt aware, Ms. Diaz is a highly popular, talented, acclaimed and sought after actress in the motion picture industry, has appeared in numerous highly acclaimed motion pictures, and has garnered enormous domestic and international popularity for her performances.

[Ed. Note: They left out "pretty"! We were watching Charlie's Angels last night and we were thinking, gee we sure like that Cam Diaz. She's pretty and smart!]

[...] [W]e demand that You immediately comply with the following:

(1) e-mail to me a written acknowledgment that You have ceased and permanently desisted from using, publishing, distributing, selling, licensing or otherwise exploiting the Photos and Video in any manner, including any other websites that You are affiliated with;

(2) inform every identifiable person and entity who viewed, purchased, copied and/or downloaded a copy of the Photos and/or Video from one of Your websites of the following:

(a) You never had valid rights to use, distribute, publish or otherwise exploit the Photos or Video, and therefore they never had valid rights to download or view any portions of it, and they still do not have any such rights; and

(b) those who copied or downloaded the Photos or Video must cease and desist from any further distribution, publishing or exploitation of the Photos or Video in any manner, or face liability and damages based thereon.

(3) provide to me a detailed accounting of any and all monies that You and any affiliated websites have received from the use, publishing, distribution and any other exploitation of the Photos and/or Video;

(4) destroy all copies of the Photos and/or Video in any media, whatsoever, including but not limited to any and all videotape, film, compact discs, DVD's, computer floppy discs, electronic mail, and provide to me a written confirmation of same; and

(5) provide to me a list of websites that You are affiliated with, a list of names, e-mail addresses, and other contact information of those persons and other entities who copied or downloaded the Photos and/or Video from Your websites and/or have published, distributed or otherwise exploited the Photos and/or Video.

[...]

Sincerely,



[LAWYER-TYPE PEOPLE]

cc: Ms. Cameron Diaz, et al