Under the agreement, Titan Media-produced DVDs will be the only U.S.-based gay adult film lines Calvista distributes to Australia’s 600 or so adult video stores.
“It [the deal] means that we will be the dominate gay brand in the Australian market, just as we are in the U.S.,” Io Group vice president Keith Webb told XBiz. “They [Calvista] are the premier and high-end distributor in Australia and have a great distribution network in place.”
Titan plans to begin shipping its TitanMen and ManPlay DVDs beginning May 1.
Webb said a recent visit to Adultex 2005, Australia’s largest adult trade show, generated keen interest in Titan’s titles. He added, however, that the company’s entire catalog of more than 70 films will first have to pass through Australia’s film classification board before hitting stores, a process that is already underway.
According to Webb, the agreement represents Calvista’s first foray into the gay adult market in Australia as well as the first time that Titan’s films — or those of any American gay movie studio — will be sold legally in the country. In the past, only pirated copies of the company’s productions were available.
“If you are pirating or illegally distributing Titan Media products in Australia, your time has come,” commented Gill Sperlein, general council for Io Group.
“With the assistance of [Australia’s Adult Industry Copyright Organization], we will hunt down and prosecute anyone violating Titan Media products with the same aggressive stance we have taken in the U.S. to protect our products.”
Piracy is a major problem in the Australian adult film industry. “We estimate that they account for over 80 percent of the adult films sold in Australia,” said Graeme Dunne, executive officer of AICO.
Earlier this year, the AICO filed suit on behalf of several U.S. adult companies, including Wicked Pictures, Calvista and Adultshop.com, in an Australian film piracy case and won an important victory for when defendants pleaded guilty to breaching the U.S. companies’ copyrights.
In that case, retail, online and mail-order businesses Kaosshop Pty Ltd., Platinum Interactive Pty Ltd. and their director, Theo Armenis, accepted liability for the infringements at a hearing in Australia’s Federal Magistrates Court.
“The decision is going to make other people doing this sort of thing stop and think, ‘Maybe it’s not worth it,’” Steven Vlottes, vice president of international sales and licensing at Wicked, told XBiz at the time of the victory.
Vlottes said his company was losing at least 50 percent of its Australian business due to rampant, unchecked piracy.
