Kanye West's lawyers are chasing down an alleged sex tape, saying the film was "stolen" from his computer. The rapper's legal team has warned that anyone who hosts the video or posts a screenshot is violating West's "rights of privacy and publicity".
The 20-minute video began circulating last week, Radar Online reported, showing West and a woman who is a "dead ringer" for his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian. The tape is being "shopped" to adult websites, a source said, and "Kanye will do anything to make sure it stays private."
West has now involved his lawyers, who sent a cease and desist letter to at least one entertainment website. The tape was "illegally obtained and believed to have been stolen from Mr West's computer", Lisa M Buckley wrote to AllHipHop. The site was ordered to remove a screenshot of the video and give up, in writing, "the identity of the person or persons who have approached you to sell, post, advertise, market, publicise, display or otherwise disseminate" the clip.
Although it's not clear if Kardashian is in the video, she is already notorious for a sex tape leaked in 2007. Several pornography companies have already stepped forward regarding the Kanye West tape, offering as much as $1m (£600,000) for it, and TMZ claims a second video is now also on the market.
Stolen material has become a major problem for musicians and celebrities, who are increasingly targeted by computer hackers. In 2010, a German teenager hacked computers belonging to Lady Gaga and Justin Timberlake, stealing unreleased songs, and last year a Florida man released nude photographs of Scarlett Johansson after breaking into her email account. Both hackers were apprehended.
