Wednesday, Feb 3, 2010    Text size: 

CANOGA PARK, Calif. — The Free Speech Coalition (FSC) announced today that Girlfriends Films is the recipient of its 2010 FSC Leadership Award. The award will be presented at the XBIZ Awards, to be held on Feb 10, at the Avalon Hollywood, 1735 Vine St. in Hollywood, CA.

The FSC Leadership Award goes to an adult company that exemplifies excellence and innovation in business practices.

The FSC said that Girlfriend Films, which was founded in 2002, has a long history of fair businesses practices and philanthropy. The company instituted its own anti-piracy efforts in response to distributors’ concerns over declining sales, and in the past nine months has taken down more than 20,000 URLs infringing on the company’s content. It has also earmarked a portion of annual revenues to donate to various charities, as well as hosted fundraising events for several charities.

“We’ve won awards for movies but nothing can be more satisfying than this one,” Girlfriends Films president Dan O’Connell said. “There’s no higher honor than being so prominently recognized as being the leader in the kind of exemplary work and innovation that the award stands for. This is a big industry and to be the company that receives this year’s award is just the best. I couldn’t be happier or more proud!”

Aside from a strong anti-piracy stance, O’Connell and the company also are staunch supporters of Free Speech and protecting the rights of adults that enjoy adult entertainment, according to the FSC.

“Though the adult industry’s mission is to make people happy and satisfy their private desires, there are always other people and groups who want to deny anyone’s access to our products, even though they are most often used in privacy. With attitudes held over from the dark ages, these folks have appointed themselves as Taliban-style ‘thought police’ and are never content to leave the rest of us alone. The Free Speech Coalition is the one group that is front and center in fighting for the rights of our industry and fans, and all of us should be actively supporting them,” O'Connell said.