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Tactics in the Porn Industry's Fight Against Piracy

Posted by Zonk on Sat Mar 31, 2007 05:27 AM
from the interesting-times dept.
The Internet Technology
An anonymous reader writes "A C|Net article discusses the technological innovations being used by the porn industry to ensure they stay relevant (like streaming HD-quality feeds and remote interaction), as well as profitable. Live performances and cutting-edge technology combine to ensure a steady stream of revenue in the age of free downloads. 'Now Kink.com is on the cutting edge of the fight against video piracy. While mainstream entertainment outlets like Viacom and NBC complain noisily about YouTube, Kink.com, with neither the resources nor the mainstream appeal of its giant counterparts, is in an even tougher fight: Protecting the content it produces that's continually copied and reposted on the dozens of Web sites that traffic in poached adult material.'"
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Tactics in the Porn Industry's Fight Against Piracy 50 Comments More /

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  • The idea of "remote interaction" sounds very promising. :D

  • Summary: they stream live shows (Score:5, Informative)

    by null-und-eins (162254) on Saturday March 31 2007, @05:46AM (#18554449) Homepage
    Unless you are interested in the business story of a porn outlet, there is almost nothing in TFA about copyright. They move to live streams (although at higher resolution than most non-porn streams seem to offer), to make it more difficult and less interesting to copy content. Editors: Why was this omitted from the summary?

    • They move to live streams (although at higher resolution than most non-porn streams seem to offer), to make it more difficult and less interesting to copy content.

      Honestly, how would that help? Doesn't anyone know about downscaling? A lot of porn video clips still seem to be 320x240 (or at least less than 640x480) in either MPEG-1 or WMV. So all anyone has to do is capture the stream, downscale it to a more reasonable picture size, re-encode it and sell it on their site. You also don't need the massive amounts of bandwidth or storage that these guys need. Realistically, do you really need HD video to watch a woman getting screwed by three hung guys?

      • Re:Summary: they stream live shows (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Ilgaz (86384) on Saturday March 31 2007, @06:33AM (#18554605) Homepage

        They move to live streams (although at higher resolution than most non-porn streams seem to offer), to make it more difficult and less interesting to copy content.

        Honestly, how would that help? Doesn't anyone know about downscaling? A lot of porn video clips still seem to be 320x240 (or at least less than 640x480) in either MPEG-1 or WMV. So all anyone has to do is capture the stream, downscale it to a more reasonable picture size, re-encode it and sell it on their site. You also don't need the massive amounts of bandwidth or storage that these guys need. Realistically, do you really need HD video to watch a woman getting screwed by three hung guys?

        Those low res files you talk about are leaked by Porn industry themselves. :) Yes, they are that clever to use a technology (P2P) which was called evil by MPAA to suit their own promotion.

        You would be surprised that porn industry are the first ones to use DVD technology in its full feature set like multiple angles.

        Massive amounts of bandwidth? Once I had a friend working for a huge network vendor. He said their best customers are porn industry and funny that they could be counted as people "running the internet" after all those dotcom crashes.

      • Re:Summary: they stream live shows (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ichigo 2.0 (900288) on Saturday March 31 2007, @06:49AM (#18554679)
        According to TFA, they stream live shows at 1080i. I'm assuming they'll have some kind of interaction down the road, which would make a capture of the stream have less value. This is what people have been saying music artists should move to, i.e. selling concerts instead of recordings.
        • It's a solution for an edge case. I don't want a "live" performance of Lord of the Rings. I want the epic movies that took years of hard work to produce. If the pre-recorded film industry is wiped out by piracy and this lame "solution" is the replacement, I'm not going to be a happy camper.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by jamienk (62492)
            >> I want the epic movies that took years of hard work to produce.

            I want the same, except a version that is much harder to make, takes even more years, requires higher paid actors, more expensive/elaborate visual effects, has music composed and played by the most expensive possible musicians, plays only in theaters that allow you watch in a personalized jacuzzi with a team of fluffers keeping me interested, and who's bottom line production costs (not including marketing) is over $1bn USD.

            As for music,
          • I found your comment intriguing. It appears to be genuine.

            I respect your opinion but completely disagree with it. I feel that a world without copyright would result in vastly greater creativity. I think what you are describing is entertainment. Entertainment is fine but we seem to have sacrificed everything on its altar.

            BTW I was a great fan of Tolkien as an adolescent (The Silmarillion remains my favourite) but I didn't go anywhere near the LoTR movies. I know I would have detested them. So maybe that's in
        • Live streaming 1080i? I know it's possible in the rest of the world where 10-100Mbps is common, but how would they get that to US customers still living in the stone age?
      • Realistically, do you really need HD video to watch a woman getting screwed by three hung guys?

        This is a question you really don't want to ask the slashdot community, trust me....

  • it's a euphemism. (Score:5, Funny)

    by User 956 (568564) on Saturday March 31 2007, @05:49AM (#18554463) Homepage
    Live performances and cutting-edge technology combine to ensure a steady stream of revenue

    Oh, so that's what they're calling it these days.

    • Re:it's a euphemism. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2007, @06:13AM (#18554531)
      Live performances and cutting-edge technology combine to ensure a steady stream of revenue

      Oh, so that's what they're calling it these days.

      It's called a money shot for a reason!

  • When you can't do it live use invisible watermarks (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MaelstromX (739241) on Saturday March 31 2007, @05:56AM (#18554491)

    Kink.com's solution is live shows.


    That's one idea, and a good one. However not all porn can be live, it's simply not feasible for certain types. I would say the best way to prevent piracy and ensure that SOMEBODY finances the production of the stuff would be to slap it with invisible, personally identifying watermarks. If they are spotted on pictures and images found in the wild, so to speak, your subscription is cancelled and you don't get a refund.

    Although that might make people want to give them all away the day before their subscription ends, so that part I'm not sure about yet. :)

  • I find it curious... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ralf1 (718128) on Saturday March 31 2007, @06:58AM (#18554705)
    That the last 3 articles I have read on Slashdot about porn industry technology challenges and advances have all referenced kink.com. As many porn sites as there are, this seems like an odd coincidence. Sounds like a subtle advertising campaign to me.
    • Actually, I think it just reflects the tastes of the average slashdotter... we tend to be more discerning and have more sophisticated interests.
      • Somehow it makes sense that S&M would be considered "more sophisticated" than regular porn. I have no idea how that works, but it has a ring of truth about it. And now I have a horrible set of mental images involving men with waxed moustaches and PVC smoking jackets. "I say!"

  • Broken search (Score:3, Informative)

    by Technician (215283) on Saturday March 31 2007, @12:41PM (#18556871)
    The main fight a few years ago was burying free content in the endless link maze of search pages. They paid each other for the traffic so in the search lottery, The less you paid to get people to your sight and the more you set along the better you did. Having any real content to keep people at your site was just a waste of bandwidth, so there was seldom any content. The gravy was if you got anybody into your paid site. You could spend all night going from link to link to link to link and not finding any free content.

    The old tech was to wear you out until you settled on a pay site.

    Other than the lawsuit campaign buy the RIAA it's the same thing Media Sentry does seeding P-P sites with dead content to the point where finding free content is a waste of time. They hope you give up and just use a pay site because that is where the content is located. A bunch of sited trying to make a buck on links or content is trying to find out how to compete against free and pirated content which keeps growing anyway.

    Notice how in spite of the death of the old Naptser, that new music content keeps poping up that isn't pirated? Free content that isn't illegal is nice. Keep it up.

    Any new tech for pay content, I would'n know about.. Haven't been there if it involves any DRM.

    • Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)

      by an.echte.trilingue (1063180) on Saturday March 31 2007, @06:14AM (#18554537) Homepage
      I think the point is that they are not doing anything to "fight" piracy and condemn immoral pirates (if you bother to RTFA you will see that kink.com never talks about fighting piracy and they never call it wrong), they are trying to evolve their business model so that it is profitable in the age of modern technology. This is what the rest of the movie/recording industry should be doing as well, but since the "big four" have a voice loud enough to get politicians to change the laws, they are trying to support their obsolete business model through litigation. The adult entertainment industry, which does not have the luxury of such a public voice, is finding ways to innovate.

      So the message is not, "hey you dirty immoral pirates take a lesson from us porn starts", the message is "hey you silly family entertainers, if a bunch of us porn stars can turn a profit with the help of modern technology, why can't you?"

      • For example if you move to BluRay production, the "total quality" media will be 50 GB and the pirates using P2P (which as I tipped, they sometimes leak their own) will know there is a 1080p version out there.

        That is why Sony and Toshiba (Bluray vs HD-DVD) are speaking with that industry now, I believe lots of HD-Camera/Equipment vendors too.

      • Re:Irony (Score:5, Funny)

        by ari wins (1016630) on Saturday March 31 2007, @07:14AM (#18554769)
        It's not that ironic, the porn industry tends to be a missionary when it comes to new technology. Remember how everyone was saying sony was going to take it doggystyle because there was a blurb about the porn industry shifting to HD-DVD? As of yet, I don't see a dirty sanchez appearing on the Sony name, at least not from that "war".

        You can't expect the *IAA to do a reverse cowgirl on their stand either, to do so would be to open themselves up to ridicule across the media band, not just in sixty-nine articles on /. It's really too bad, because it seems like their trying to play a rusty trombone, but they're felching it up. The profits they could receive from the menage-a-trois of dvds/online distribution/set-top sales(vod) would provide a real shocker if they could do so in a non-intrusive manner. I'd much rather be dry-humped then have to use the provided glory hole and hope there's not a pitbull on the other side.

        Sure porn piracy runs rampant, has for decades. But, umm, how much do they sell in a year? If you want to try fellatio on my conscious, it's not going to happen. I'll never pay for porn.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by a_nonamiss (743253)
          This may be the first post in the history of /. that manages to be both informative and erotic.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Artifakt (700173)
        If there is any Irony, it's not so much the porn industry's actions, but the anti-piracy fight from the rest of the industry. The RIAA and MPAA started pushing terms like theft and piracy to influence the mainstream consumers, and a lot of their advertizing is aimed at 'wholesome family values' types. (Like the movie adds that say "You wouldn't steal a purse..." - last time I saw it, I looked around the theatre and realized a couple of the people in there probably paid for the ticket that way). What's ironi

      • Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)

        by cliffski (65094) on Saturday March 31 2007, @07:52AM (#18554921) Homepage
        so how does someone writing a book do this then? "live readings" may not exactly be as profitable.
        And how does this apply to people making software, movies or games?

        With all other situations where people break the law, efforts are made to enforce it better. With copyright infringement, the call goes out to "change your broken business model". why?
        All business models will fail if people are allowed to break the law. No shop can employ enough security to prevent everyone shoplifting at once. Show me a business model that is not dependent on the law being adhered to.

        The games industry is adapting to mass piracy by abandoing the open platform that is the PC, in favour of online games and consoles. For the singleplayer RPG or flight sim fan, the way piracy has forced a 're-evaluation of the business model' is just to wipe out the entire industry. Not exactly the optimal solution for consumers.

        • Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)

          by an.echte.trilingue (1063180) on Saturday March 31 2007, @08:23AM (#18555063) Homepage

          so how does someone writing a book do this then? "live readings" may not exactly be as profitable.
          And how does this apply to people making software, movies or games?
          Books are a false parallel since technology is not threatening their existing business model: print books are still much more popular than e-books an will remain that way for a very long time. I suppose you could argue that people are reading less due to alternative activities (such as TV and the slashdot), but in that case authors are just losing out because nobody wants their product. Besides, the greatest literature or the english language (Shakespeare) was produced at a time when plagiarism was common, accepted practice. Seemed to work well enough to keep him writing for his entire lifetime.

          As for software, most people who write Linux get paid for their efforts. I am sure that whoever owns WoW does not really mind if people pirate their game since most of their revenue is from subscriptions to their servers. For things that people want, ways to get paid for producing them exist without needing to hobble technology.

          I think that people in some facets of the entertainment industry are going to have to accept that nobody is willing to pay them for what they do any more and they need to find a better way of making a living. Movies are probably a good example of an entertainment medium on the way out the door: why pay to go to a Lord of the Rings movie when you can be the Lord of the Rings in an on-line world?

          With all other situations where people break the law, efforts are made to enforce it better. With copyright infringement, the call goes out to "change your broken business model". why?
          No, that is not true. If it were then alcohol would still be illegal in the US. People break the law to get it changed all the time. It is called civil disobedience. In the US it is the only way to challenge an unjust law in court. The call for the music industry to change their business model is not based on copyright infringement, it is based on the fact that media companies base their business model on content distribution methods that are obsolete. Rather than adapting to the new methods, they are trying to hobble the methods. If we as a society allow this kind of thing to happen, you would have laws protecting steam-engine manufactures from rouge internal combustion engines.

          All business models will fail if people are allowed to break the law. No shop can employ enough security to prevent everyone shoplifting at once. Show me a business model that is not dependent on the law being adhered to.
          mercenaries?

          The games industry is adapting to mass piracy by abandoing the open platform that is the PC, in favour of online games and consoles. For the singleplayer RPG or flight sim fan, the way piracy has forced a 're-evaluation of the business model' is just to wipe out the entire industry. Not exactly the optimal solution for consumers.
          BS. I can copy a console game easily. The game industry is moving to consoles because with dedicated hardware you can get performance on a $500 console that you need a $3,000 dollar computer to replicate.

          • The games industry is adapting to mass piracy by abandoing the open platform that is the PC, in favour of online games and consoles. For the singleplayer RPG or flight sim fan, the way piracy has forced a 're-evaluation of the business model' is just to wipe out the entire industry. Not exactly the optimal solution for consumers.

            BS. I can copy a console game easily. The game industry is moving to consoles because with dedicated hardware you can get performance on a $500 console that you need a $3,000 dollar computer to replicate.

            The game makers avoid the PC because the profit margins are too low. Not because the consoles have better hardware. Or so my friends in that business tells me.

            Piracy is surely keeping the prices down, but the fix is obvious: Move much of the content online. Games where big parts are served over the net are much, much harder to pirate in the big scale.

            • Re:Irony (Score:4, Interesting)

              by cliffski (65094) on Saturday March 31 2007, @10:40AM (#18555955) Homepage
              so all games become online games, all single player games become multiplayer. great.
              kiss goodbye to flight sims
              kiss goodbye to civilisation as a singleplayer game
              kiss goodbye to RPGs.
              cool now I can only ever enjoy video games playing against jackasses online. Somehow, I dont think this is a bright future, and we have the people who pirate games to thank for it. Cheers guys.

              • Just to clarify, there is nothing to prevent companies to make single-player games served over the internet. Civ5 could easily be made as a server-client based game.

                • weird that a critique of my games is meant to serve as explanation for my point that you are unlikely to see a CIV 5.
                  And actually, my games sell quite well, despite the fact that you personally would dismiss them because of the screenshots. That's fine, but like it or not, games made by indies like me are all you will have to look forward to as single player games on the PC, as more and more big names (id, funcom...) depart the platform for good due to widespread illegal copying.
                  I'm not sure how you can tel
                • as long as there are enough opponents online when you want to play, that they want to fly the planes you want to fight against, on a map you agree on, where you have suitably matching skill levels, zero lag, and he doesnt behave like a jerk..... great!

          • why pay to go to a Lord of the Rings movie when you can be the Lord of the Rings in an on-line world?

            Because humans have always liked being told stories. Spending day after day spearing bison on the plains doesn't mean we didn't like sitting to watch somebody draw pictures of it in the cave. Spending the afternoon playing make-believe with the other neighborhood kids doesn't mean we don't like sitting as Grandpa tells a ghost tale around the campfire. My girlfriend likes filling our lives with all sorts

        • A service-based model has been shown to work very well for both games (e.g. World of Warcraft) and software (e.g. Red Hat Enterprise Linux, anything Google sells, etc.). I don't know how movies can adapt in a similar method, but that's not my problem. If anything, I'd suggest that the DVD for each movie be sold at the theatre after each showing for a decent price (e.g. $8 or so), and perhaps to stop making shitty movies as well. For music, CDs should be used a promotional items for bands' concerts and ot
          • I see, so it works for google and linux, so lets scrap the 99.9% of established businesses that aren't on your list?
            When I buy adobe photoshop, i dont need support for it, and I dont need updates. You still think they should give it to me for free?
            How exactly does that work, if the income is preuly from supprot, wheres my incentive to ship a bug free product?
            Stop trying to dream up a rosy business model that lets people take everything for free, it's not vaguely sustainable, at least not with the huge effor

      • Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Kjella (173770) on Saturday March 31 2007, @09:12AM (#18555327) Homepage
        Well, another reason is that porn is a damn saturated market with low production costs. I think I recall reading that porn DVDs were coming out at such a rate that you could run it 24/7/365 with no reruns and still only build a backlog. Pretty much no matter what your preference is, there are plenty to choose from.

        Compare that to your movie habits, it's pretty few and far between big releases. Also they're not very good substitutes, you're not going to take Star Wars and claim it's exactly like Star Trek and it doesn't matter which one you see, whereas "Blonde teens #13" probably isn't too far from "Young and blonde #11".

        So what's this mostly about? It's about differentiating themselves from their competitors, to give their customers something they're not getting from every porn producer with a video cam. Movies don't have that problem, it's not like there a dozen competing movies of Spiderman. Also, it doesn't lend itself well to being broadcast live and/or interactive. That's why I think the analogy is getting rather thin...

        • Compare that to your movie habits, it's pretty few and far between big releases. Also they're not very good substitutes, you're not going to take Star Wars and claim it's exactly like Star Trek and it doesn't matter which one you see, whereas "Blonde teens #13" probably isn't too far from "Young and blonde #11".

          Yet, Hollywood's intense aversion to risk does tend to produce films that are quite similar, repetitive and derivative even, since their goal is to find a formula that works and milk it for all its w

    • Parent message isn't a troll, you morons, it's a joke. And it's hilarious, if you'd quit being quite so hypersensitive.

      What I wouldn't give for a mod point right now. Mod parent up.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you want some real insight, then skip the hands on research on the internet and go for scientific experimentation instead. Don't try handling this alone, get you a well qualified research assistant and make sure all safety devices are used appropriately. Wouldn't want your research assistant sueing you over accidental exposure to the results of the experiment. If you and the research assistant work really well together and especially if they contribute as much or more then you do, you might should consid
    • O....k, I agree with most of what you're saying, but what is this bit about $5 account? I've done a little research of my own (ahem), and I don't see a difference at all between the motivation for someone to get a paid slashdot account (a little money to make the ads go bysies) and for someone to get a paid empornium account (a little money to make the dirty pictures that I want to see in a non-ad format go bysies). If you've lived in a western culture and have more than half a brain (which I'm guessing is
    • "absolutely ridiculous to focus on the 'tech side' like you are doing. absolutely dumb."

      Slashdhot is about tech. Try Jerry Springer.

      "what about the piracy that porn producers use against the actors?"

      What about you support your assertions?

      "Emotionally distraut" eH? This sounds more like Fundie anti-porn industry propaganda.

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