Tactics in the Porn Industry's Fight Against Piracy 113
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.'"
When you can't do it live use invisible watermarks (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Summary: they stream live shows (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
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:Irony (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Irony (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Pay for it.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Here's the description of the file:
Re:Irony (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Summary: they stream live shows (Score:3, Interesting)
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 want music that costs WAY more to make than then standard billboard chart-toppers of today -- I want the artists to use custom-designed microphones that require years of R&D by the top engineers, I want pre-amps that costs millions to be used, I want a format that requires a special, proprietary player, I want the artists to be paid hundreds of millions of dollars just for signing the contract.
As for porn, what I want will require the slave-economy to be re-established in the US, and for a massive colonial war to be waged in order to set up the perfect international geo-political situation that would provide the legal, historical, and yes, moral space in which the films I desire to see would be possible.
But then, we can't always get what we want can we? The Lord of the Rings was possible because the legal, historical, economic, technological, and cultural facts on the ground were conducive to it's production. If things change, then it may become impossible for such an epic movie to be made again. But then again, the geniuses and moneyed people no longer conspire to write classical music, design and build massive tombs, create bejeweled swords, or memorize and chant epic histories of their peoples. Those things are now left to the museums.
Re:Right, picking chicks up at clubs is SO much sa (Score:2, Interesting)
Just trying to think of the numbers here. But I'm guessing that your average prostitute's number of unique sex partners far exceeds that of your ordinary promiscuous woman. Also, I would think that the average risk factor of the average prostitute's client would be higher than the average risk factor of a typical libertine's partner. By risk factor, I mean having riskier sex and therefore more at risk to be infected with something.
Think about it. I read in the Post that they busted a brothel where the prostitutes work 10+ hour days, seven days a week, with a "session" lasting an hour. Let's assume a little slack time and guess that she is having sex with 7 different guys per day, 6 days per week. Sure, there will be some repeat clients in there, but your average promiscuous woman would generally not have 30 or 40 different sex partners per week. That is my assumption, anyhow.
So I'm guessing that a visit to your local brothel carries a higher STD infection risk than taking home some drunk chick from the bar.