American Pie 2's Porn Rip-off

August 3, 2001 -- All you sweaty-palmed Web geeks who plan to download American Pie 2 from the Internet before it hits theaters Aug. 10 may get more than you bargained for.

An apparent Internet bootleg of the Universal sequel is actually a French-language porn film with some stills from the Pie 2 trailer added in. Sacre bleu!

The adult film, which "borrows" the name of the soon-to-be-released sequel, first appeared last week as a compressed DivX file on Hotline, a Napster-like service from Hotline Communications that enables users to swap digital music, movies, and other files, Variety reports.

Hotline President and CEO Jack Kay told Variety that the company is "aware" of the problem but "in this particular circumstance, powerless to stop it."

The easily traded porn copy isn't stressing Universal out as much as are the actual non-porn copies of the R-rated sequel to the hit 1999 teen romp that are being downloaded even as you read this.

According to several network security providers, stopping the online spread of the film may prove to be impossible, since several new services like Grokster and Gnutella, which allow users to download directly from other users, can't be blocked the way a central download system like Napster could be.

"The buzz is going to do more for ticket sales than what has been lost," says Kay, adding, "The notion that people are going to sit in front of their PCs and look at bootleg copies of movies, it's just dumb."

Reuters/Variety contributed to this story.