Mantra sues to tape flashers

Mantra Entertainment, which presides over the Girls Gone Wild
franchise, is suing for its right to chronicle women in the act of exposing
themselves in public.

Mantra said police and public officials of Panama City Beach, Fla., harassed
and threatened to arrest a GGW crew in town partly in preparation for a
planned live pay-per-view event March 13.

According to George Meros, with law firm Gray Harris of Tallahassee, Fla., Mantra
has sued in the Northern District of Florida for a temporary restraining order
and injunctions to prohibit law-enforcement officials from Panama City Beach
from further harassment or intimidation or threats of arrest for the action of
Mantra in filming matters within public view or for uttering nonspecific
innocuous statements such as "go wild."

At least as far as the PPV event goes, the point is now moot (though
GGW also has a video, DVD and Web-site business to keep stocked with
flashers).

The PPV event has been moved to South Padre Island, Texas, but Mantra
spokesman Bill Horn said the reason was that the site producer -- Mantra is
teaming up with World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. on the production -- decided that the
Panama City Beach venue's electrical system was not up to snuff.

The Florida federal court has been kind to Mantra. Last December, it won a
key case when the judge ruled that it did not violate privacy rights by
including a 17-year-old exposing her breasts on a Panama City Beach
street.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.