The homemade sex tape of Paris Hilton, “1 Night in Paris,” has reportedly made millions for her co-star, Rick Salomon, and presumably satisfied untold hordes of Internet voyeurs.

But all that may come to an end.

XPays, the company that owns the Internet rights to the movie, has filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court against 843 “John Does” in an attempt to keep anonymous funsters from copying and distributing unauthorized, free copies of the skin flick over the Web.

According to the lawsuit, Rick Salomon originally owned the copyright to the movie in 2004, but licensed the worldwide distribution rights to his brother, Jim Salomon. He, in turn, assigned the Internet rights to a company called Merlin Designs Limited, which then assigned its rights to Xpays.

The movie has become a favorite among those partial to celeb porn videos, and won several AVN awards in 2005, including the best selling and renting title of the year.

The lawsuit targets individuals, who at this point can only be identified by their IP address over the Internet, for downloading the movie and making it available for anyone on the Web. Xpays' primary claim is copyright infringement.

Not only does the company claim it has lost lots of money, it also says in the lawsuit that such illegal distribution of the sex tape allows minors to “download adult entertainment content without being subject to the age verification process that most adult content-providers require.”

See, it's not just all about the money. It's about the children.

Xpays is asking the court to prohibit folks from copying and distributing the movie over the Internet and to destroy all the copies of the movie that have been downloaded by the defendants.

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