HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Building on a meeting last year in Los Angeles at which a large gathering of content producers and others met to discuss ways to protect their content from thieves, the core members of the group that organized that meeting have formed a piracy enforcement company.

The new company is called PAK Group, Inc., and is a Washington for-profit corporation. A website for the company is not live yet, but according to the principals www.pak-inc.com will soon launch.

Rob Apgood, an industry attorney involved with the new initiative, told XBIZ that the main purpose of the company is to enforce copyright laws and to pursue copyright infringers on behalf of copyright holders who utilize the services of the company.

The main principals of PAK Group will be speaking on the Piracy Roundtable and Meeting at the upcoming XBIZ Hollywood ’08 Industry Conference, where they will outline in detail how the company will work and how copyright holders and others in the industry can become involved with it.

Other than Apgood, PAK Group principals slated to speak are Falcon Foto's Jason Tucker and Andrew Stoddard of Hush Hush Entertainment.

The Roundtable event will take place Feb. 6, from 2–3:30 pm, at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Unlike the piracy meeting, the Roundtable is not limited to content producers. Admission is open to anyone who is registered for the XBIZ Conference.

“This is a group that has come together to coordinate and direct its efforts on thwarting piracy,” Tucker said. “If you are a content producer, then you know that your hard work is being raped by people who don’t have a right to display it. If that frustrates you and upsets you, then this seminar will provide you a chance to join a group that will really do something about it.

“Remember, you can be part of this effort even if you are not a content producer. As a member of the community, you can help take a stand against those who cost all of us money.”

“We spent more than a year and a half investing in and building the infrastructure that allows us to document infringements with the push of a button,” Apgood said. “This business model capitalizes on our ability to quickly and efficiently document infringements, tie the infringements back to the producer's content, identify and show the copyright registration(s) being infringed, and generate the complaint for a lawsuit virtually instantaneously — while the other guys are hunting and pecking to make their claims.”

Keeping costs down is one of the main goals of the new company, Apgood added.

“I’m excited to have a role in this initiative,” Stoddard said. “It’s time we stand up as a group and do something about a problem that isn’t going away by itself. I’m also looking forward to speaking on the Piracy Roundtable and hope to see a lot of faces there.”

XBIZ Publisher Tom Hymes said he is confident that word of mouth will add to the interest in both the new company and the Roundtable.

“I encourage anyone who has a vested interest in this problem — and that’s pretty much everyone — to grab a colleague and come find out what this company is all about and what it means to them,” Hymes said.

In addition to PAK speakers, the Piracy Roundtable also will feature Eros Association President Fiona Patten and Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition.

For press and general inquiries about either the XBIZ Hollywood '08 Industry Conference or the XBIZ Awards, please contact Dusty Marie at dusty@xbiz.com.