Perez Hilton, the blogosphere’s most popular celebrity blogger is in hot water again over copyright infringement. According to Variety.com, the site went off line when its hosting company pulled the plug:

After numerous warnings against Hilton’s (aka Mario Lavandeira) use of copyrighted celebrity images, the Oz-based Crucial Paradigm took the site off line; it was dark for a number of hours before it returned to the Internet with a different host.

Hilton is currently named in four lawsuits involving eight photo agencies for his alleged theft of photographs that appear on his site, one that’s been a popular gossip destination for some 2½ years. Hilton frequently adds his own captions to the shots.

“One of the things the (Crucial) administrator in Sydney had told us the day before was if they received any more notices — any claim of copyright infringement — the site is coming down immediately,” said Matt Lum, owner of Hoodlum Productions, the L.A.-based company that manages Hilton’s site. “The action was taken, in my opinion, to insure Crucial some sort of proof if they were sued, some way to protect themselves.”

Variety.com says that the site is operating in quite a watered down version, without the sites archives, so that Perez might continue to blog on a temporary host. I visited the site to see what had changed and the difference was striking; it doesn’t look like you can comment at this point. What’s Perez Hilton without the site comments? I wonder if all this down time will ultimately affect readership or whether it will rally Perez’s supporters to become even more loyal to the site.

Via / Variety.com