PornoTube, like YouTube, purports to respect copyright but hides behind the provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which places the burden on copyright holders to report offending material. Vivid's attorney, Paul Cambria, thinks that is unfair: "Vivid should not have to take responsibility for policing PornoTube on a minute-by-minute basis to protect its rights." Viacom makes much the same argument, and won concessions from Google on that point recently.

But Vivid is also making the additional claim that PornoTube is violating the federal Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act. Accusing PornoTube of violating the Child Protection Act is interesting because the requirements PornoTube is alleged to be violating were recently overturned. An appeals court ruled that requiring "secondary producers" of sexual content to record personal information for online video's so-called "performers" was onerous and unconstitutional. However, the judges expressed the view that the requirements could be legal if "secondary producer" was properly defined.

As a primary producer of porn, Vivid already complies with these "2257" requirements. Still, why would any porn operation seek greater regulation of its trade? Perhaps so. Vivid specializes in high-production-values, long-form porn. Anything that makes life harder for amateur competitors may serve the pros well. As for its customers? They just want things harder.

"We looked every which way to figure out how to participate in what Blizzard had created," said Kotick, "We couldn't find a way to duplicate it, but we could acquire the expertise." That would usually mean finding young talent that's successfully run a few massively multiplayer online games, like Three Rings. Instead Kotick turned to Blizzard, with its one-trick pony — hopefully for Kotick, it won't be going out to pasture any time soon.

By: Brian Crecente

The first episode almost didn't happen.

A two mile hike up the steep hills of the scrub and rock strewn wilds of Topanga State Park in 108 degree weather exhausted the female star, and the male star, burdened down with 60 pounds of faux plate and chain mail during the hike, was about to pass out.

"It was a nightmare," says the film's producer Dez. "They were both almost passing out, we didn't bring enough water and the only shade was next to these little boulders."

But the two stars mustered enough strength to film 35 minutes of sword fight before having nearly as much sex.

Geek porn may have not been born out there under that sweltering August sun, but it was most certainly conceived there.

And Dez was around to capture it on video: Two porn stars, one dressed as a thief, the other as a fighter, acting out one of dungeons and dragons longest running jokes: Rogues do it from behind.

Speaking to me earlier this month, Dez laughs at the title of the Premiere Whorecraft episode.

"Yeah, I know," he says, when I point out that the title shares a name with a pretty popular t-shirt slogan. "I had to do it."

Since filming that first episode last year, Dez has produced five more episode of Whorecraft, a send up to massively multiplayer online gaming that seem to share, at times, distinct similarities to World of Warcraft.

Dez, an enthusiastic gamer and self-admitted World of Warcraft addict, says he'd been playing around with the idea of creating a series of movies based on fantasy massively multiplayer games for a couple of years.

"I've been playing D and D and have been a huge gamer all of my life, since back in the days of Golden Axe, and I just felt it was time for something new," he said.

On Plot, Acting and Bears
Dez started in the porn business as an agent, then segued into making the films (he's performed in more than 600 movies) before finally shifting to directing. After putting out 60 movies, he decided it was time to persue his concept piece.

"People have made medieval porn and stuff, but no one has ever done the more creative aspects of fantasy gaming, like elves and knights," he said.

And Dez was sure there would be a market for it.

"People play these games and see these sexy elves, but they don't ever get to see the elves have sex," he said. "A lot of people try to roleplay in the game, but I decided to bring it out into the real world and do it right."

The six episodes, which range from 19 to 30 minutes long each, have logged a total of 20,000 purchases and about five times as many bit torrents, something Dez says he can't profit from or control.

Since filming that first short episode in the state park, Dez has concentrated on making his movies more plot driven and episodic in nature. He's even taken to having women from previous episodes appear for a short talking role as actresses only. Something nearly unheard of in the porn industry.

"All of the episodes link with each other, so we have reoccurring characters and that's really hard to do in the porn industry, it has such a fast burn-out rate," he said. "And very few actresses are actresses in our industry. They are not used to role-playing or acting they are used to going to the porn set and doing there thing then leaving."

Dez's movies also take much longer to film because they have so many non-sex scenes.

"With most porn it's like in one day you shoot five scenes and then you're done," he said. "These episodes take two weeks to film and then another week in post production."

And while the films are still most certainly hardcore porn, they do include some nice touches, like weapons and armor crafted just for the films, choreographed fight scenes, and in one of the episodes, a bear.

"That was two days of shooting, just to get the bear comfortable around everybody and it was a nightmare to do," Dez said, laughing. "The guy we rented the bear from, he did the tigers in the movie Gladiator. He's the body double for Russell Crowe, he's actually in episode four."

And it won't stop with bears, upcoming episodes will feature blue screen work with a dragon, perhaps, or maybe real tigers.

"The skies the limit for this stuff," he said. "Initially it was just for gamers, but I think we're attracting more and more people not into games now."

The Porn WoW Guild
While Mia Rose, an up and coming porn starlet who appeared in the second and third episodes of Whorecraft, has been too busy to do any recent episodes, Dez says she will be making a return.

In the meantime, another rising star, british porn actress Hannah Harper, is teaming up with Dez to star in his next movie and, perhaps, help him write it.

"I've always enjoyed that part of the industry," Harper said. "I've always liked working on the scripts, dressing up, setting up the fantasy. I did theater back in college in England."

While Harper hadn't played World of Warcraft before agreeing to work with Dez, she has since become a full-blown addict.

"The last video game I played with was Mario Brothers when I was nine," she said. "But my boyfriend and Dez have been playing World of Warcraft for about two years. I could never stand the appeal."

Harper decided to check the game out when the Burning Crusade expansion pack was released.

"I started playing when Burning Crusade came out and I got completely hooked," she said. "I played 15 hours straight, it was all weekend."

And like many hardcore gamers, she can't really explain her obsession.

"Friends of mine have asked me what do you do, what is so great about the game. I don't know. But I dream about it now."

Harper says she plays with her boyfriend, Dez and a few other porn stars. She plays a Blood Elf Priest "because they stand back a bit in combat."

When she started the game, every time someone attacked her she would panic and die. Now she knows to stick close to her guildmates, who are all close to level 70.

Harper points out that despite her late start in the game she's built up her character to level 26... one bar from 27.

"Initially I was doing the movie out of friendship to Dez, but as soon as I started playing the game I was like 'Oh my god, I have to do this,'" she said. "I can't sleep at night because I think about all of the things that could transfer so easily from the game to the movie."

From RPG to FPS
Dez insists that Whorecraft is a product of love, not money. He is a huge fan of the game and this is his way of showing that.

I've talked to my share of people pretending to be gamers, and Dez didn't strike me as one of those.

It's telling that when Dez received a cease and desist letter from Vivendi he seemed more worried about the possibility of losing his four high level characters than he was about any possible suit.

"I'm sure it's fair use, but I don't want to rock any boats," he said. "It's no biggie so I changed the name of the movies... I don't want to lose my characters, I've got two probably worth $5,000."

Now that Whorecraft's popularity seems to be taking off, Dez is exploring other games ripe for porn renditions.

His next geek porn project, he says, will be a a first-person shooter film that is "kind of counter-strikish."

"We're going to have demolitions experts on hand, guns firing blank rounds, I even have a member of the LA SWAT Team who's going to help," he said. We are really going to do it. It's going to be hot."

"I'm having more fun doing this than the straight up gonzo porn," he said. "I could have made some website, put some swords on it and then had some chicks blowing people and it would have done great. But that's not why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because it's cool and people dig it."