Apparently the photo agencies are tired of this shit. From SplashNews:

We hit Perez Hilton with a multi-million million dollar copyright lawsuit yesterday.

Five celebrity photo agencies - Splash, Bauer-Griffin, Flynet, INF and London Entertainment Pictures warned Perez last December that we could no longer accept his unlawful use of copyright pictures without payment or credit.

He and his lawyers have refused to pay up and refused to take down unlawfully obtained photos. They don’t even have the decency to respond.

Most bloggers out there are decent, honest business people who understand the photographers need to earn an income and we thank all of you who do pay and credit and we are happy to supply you so you can entertain your readers.

But the time has come to show Perez he can no longer get rich off the back of other peoples’ work.

News reports and some boasting from Perez put his income at over $800,000 a year from advertising revenue and his appearances on TV shows, TV programs etc.

He says he gets up to 4 million unique visitors a day. Yet he doesn’t pay a cent to anyone whose material he uses to get fame and fortune.

$800,000 a year? Honestly, I think that’s a pretty gross underestimate. Even his cheapest Blogads go for $1200/week. His most expensive go for $9000/week. He has at least 10 running at a time. Let’s assume they are all priced at $1200. That’s $624,000 right there. That is not counting what he’s charging for advertising on his background (probably over $2000/day, although he doesn’t have one running each day), for ads in his feeds, and for personal appearances. He’s paying hosting costs and maybe some modest web design costs, but his overhead is negligible. He’s easily clearing a million annually in pre-tax earnings.

Check out the rest of the details after the jump.

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It’s just that it’s funny every time.

[Photo credit: Buzz Foto]

Ha. WireImage is less than amused with Perez Hilton’s refusal to pay to use their images. The blue-haired gossipist gets no more title than “Guest” in the photos from The Pearl nightclub opening in Vegas. That’s gotta hurt.

This afternoon, the paparazzi agency posted an open letter to AOL/Time Warner and all the folks behind TMZ.com on their blog. TMZ links to Mario Lavandeira’s (aka Perez Hilton) blog automatically in their Hot Links section. While I adore TMZ, X17 makes the fair point that TMZ’s parent company, AOL Time Warner, has, in other contexts, appeared to be very concerned about piracy, but their TMZ property doesn’t seem concerned at all.

In fairness, TMZ links to a variety of blogs that use pirated images, present company included. Why is X17 focusing on Lavandeira? Well, probably because he’s making more $$ off it than anyone else, and also because he’s been asked repeatedly to strike a deal with X17 and refuses. Lord knows he can afford it; he’s currently charging $1200/week for a Blogad at the bottom of the page. Ads at the top go for $9,000/week. He also manages to get his hands on their photos before they even finish distributing them to magazines — I think he still probably has a friend or two at that celeb weekly he used to work for in Florida … It’s driving the kids at X17 fucking crazy.

Anyway, interesting open letter, reprinted after the jump without permission.

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No joke. I saw him in the Salt Lake City airport this afternoon, at baggage claim. BRIGHT PINK. Neon. You CAN’T MISS HIM around here. I think that’s what he wanted.

Finally in my hotel room after a day of travel and chicken wings. More on today’s journey later.

Thank you to Evil T for being such a total rock star around here today.

Perez Hilton’s war on the man who lanced Lance Bass, Reichen Leimkuhl, continues. Perez ran this not-so-blind item today:

Riddle me this: What not-so-bright professional pretty face is making up lies in a transparent attempt to save his relationship with his meal ticket? The power bottom - who loves to engage in various illegal activities, various friends of his who have partied with him confirm exclusively to PerezHilton.com - has a history of lying. Several moles in the celebrity weeklies tell us that during his recent split with a former boy-bander, whose publicist confirmed the news, the former military brat was still claiming the two were together. Obviously one party has more to lose from the demise of that relationship and he’s going to do whatever it takes to save it.

P.S. Not only did the not-so-bright homo hook up with a fellow reality TV star recently, but the two have also hooked up in the past!

It is sooo on.

Shocking exactly no one, Londoner Leona Lewis won X Factor tonight. X Factor is kind of like the British American Idol (which is strange, because AmIdol was based on the British Pop Idol, so I’m not really sure how this show came about, but they’ve still got Simon Cowell there, along with fellow judges Sharon Osbourne and some small old guy who reminds me of that little gay man who was Karen Walker’s nemesis on Will and Grace). Anyway, Leona’s been a stand-out in the U.K. since the start of the competition, but her profile has been relatively huge in the U.S. thanks in large part to Perez Hilton, who raves about her almost daily on his website.

Her first single in the U.K. will be “A Moment Like This” (yeah, that’s right, the same song Kelly Clarkson used as her first single…cute, guys). But, I’ve gotta hand it to her, as much as I love me some Kelly Clarkson, this is the first time I’ve been able to listen to this song without rolling my eyes. Her voice is so incredible you kind of forget that the lyrics sound like you wrote them in sixth-grade English after the seventh-grade football star smiled at you in the hall. I’ve linked that video here, but I’ll hand you over to Perez for some others.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IRFPaEYStE]