Dealing With Copyright Online: Porn v. Music 340
zzled writes "The New York Times (registration required, etc.) has an article on the porn industry's take on filesharing / copyright infringement. 'Many companies that distribute X-rated material say they do not worry too much about consumers sharing among themselves; they often unleash their lawyers only when someone is trying to profit by copying their goods and trying to sell them.' ... The article isn't particularly brilliant or insightful, but was an interesting read, especially with the explicit comparison to the approach taken by the music and movie industries."
The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
without piracy:
- Normal customer base (x)
Most people think:
with piracy:
- Paying customers (x')
- Pirates (y)
The equation created is x' = x-y meaning piracy has cost you y sales. It's just not that simple. It's more like this:
with piracy:
- Paying customers (x')
Pirates:
- Those who would have payed if no crack was avaliable - (a)
- Those who won't pay, but heard of it through piracy - (b)
- "Try before you buy" who then buy - (c)
- "Try before you buy" who decide it's not worth it - (d)
- collectors who pirate, but don't use - (e)
- New people refered/introduced to by pirates other than (a) - (y)
- Those who won't/can't buy your program, but donate in other ways - (z)
I'm not saying anything about anyone's morals, right or wrong, simply how their actions affect the developer.
The equation now looks like this: x' = x - a + c + y + z*(whatever ratio you consider these donations to be worth)
Note that b, d and e won't pay no matter what, and so are simply free advertising, and not a lost sale.
So the only thing those people could cost you is an injury to your pride. Not such a bad thing in my books, perhaps even a good thing. Pride can be quite a detriment.
Also note, every group except x and d can bring more members to every group.
The question is: Is a > c+y?
(Ignoring z, since in most cases it can only be 0: How do you "donate" back to MS? Note this isn't a piracy problem, but rather companies refusing to accept the reality of the world: that these people exist.)
In my experience, b, c and y are huge factors, while a is very minor, especially in the "shareware" arena where freeware competition is often abundant.
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:4, Funny)
Pretty good analysis, but once you got to (c) you exceeded the attention span of the average consumer and music industry executive.
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:4, Funny)
Damn.
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Before, I'd have expected them to be about on par, but this article does make a rather convincing arguement...
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
perverts - the lost part of the equation (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
They know they have a product that people will buy. They know how to sell it. They also know that it has a limited shelf-life. They keep producing new content and selling it. Pretty straightforward stuff really.
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:3, Insightful)
Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
But besides, your formula is far too complex and with too many variables that are impossible to even guess. It's a safe bet that there are some people out there who illegally download files to save money, and who would buy the product if they couldn't download it for free. It's not necessarily a safe bet that, by allowing piracy, you'll end up with more overall sales.
Re:Devil's Advocate (Score:5, Insightful)
King set some ridiculous terms for continuing his "experiment". He demanded that atleast 75% of the total number of downloads where paid for (and at $1 each). There is just no way that could work...
Baen discovered that (less known) authors sold more (of their other books) if they gave away a novel. More people got to read something the author had produced, and those who liked were more likly to buy another book by that author than before they knew who she/he was. King isn't unknown to most, so this wouldn't apply to him at all.
King set out to "prove" that downloaders where filthy thieves, and make a buck on those few who weren't. But when in all likelyhood less than 75% of the internet "population" have a means to pay for online content (no credit card), and a significant portion of the people downloading the first chapter might even not like it, the 75% demand was just ridiculous.
So he didn' provide anyhing for free... it had more in common with extortion than a free gift.
- Ost
Just what everyone needed (Score:5, Interesting)
For those of you who aren't already in the know The Drake Equation defines the possibility of Extraterrestrial Intelligence in terms of a whole bunch of probabilities.
And just like the above equation, nobody has nailed down exactly what those probabilities are.
Still, it has officially turned it into something you can calculate, and scientists the world over like to talk of The Drake Equation.
Re:Just what everyone needed (Score:2)
That, BTW, is from a good book called "Yes, we have no neutrons" [amazon.com]. The relevent section begins on page 63 or so.
Ok, well (Score:3, Insightful)
l = p * c * x
Where l is the amount you lost to piracy, p is the amount you make per copy sold (not the retail price), c is the number of copies pirated and x is the percentage of people that would have actually purchased your product had it been impossible to copy.
No unlike the Drake equation, we can get information that will allow us to make good guesses at the second two factors. It
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been known to play with high-end graphics and sound packages for kicks. I'm certainly not a professional artist by any stretch, but do enjoy seeing what these packages can do. So instead of paying hundreds or thousands for them just to play, I downloaded them from a p2p app.
Now a bit later, the small start-up I worked for needed some graphic work done for their web site, and I recommended they pick up a copy of the same program, since I had some semblence of familiarity with it and found it quite powerful.
So, my company buys the product whereas they may not have, and I most certainly wouldn't have bought it for myself (too pricey). One sale because of piracy.
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
This goes a long way toward explaining why software producers the world over long ago came to terms with infringement by individuals. Technologically it is easy to copy-protect software media: so why don't they? Back in the 80's copy-protection schemes were the rule, not the exception (I know, I wrote and cracked enough of them.) The answers are a. such protection PISSES OFF LEGITIMATE CUSTOMERS which is a dumb idea in a competitive environment and b. would lose them free advertising that they couldn't buy at any price. Sure, while they might prefer that every single copy of their program executing upon any computer system anywhere in the world be paid for up front, enlightened businesses accept a certain level of copyright infringement as a cost of doing business, a cost that may have hidden benefits. Look at the recent Intuit Corporation debacle with Product Activation: it cost them so much business and so much face that they eliminated the activiation requirement and the president of the company issued a formal apology to Intuit's customers! Big mistake, Indy, big mistake!
Another question. Why aren't there mass lawsuits by the likes of Microsoft, Adobe, and the rest against thirteen year old female Limewire users? I'll tell you why. It's because
Now, when it comes to true piracy, the selling of bootleg copies for profit -or- the mass utilization of un-paid-for software in a corporate environment
Re:Finish your reason!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry about that. I guess I should have used the Preview button one more time.
Comparisons drawn between the music industry and software vendors have limited utility when talking about copyright, and copyright enforcement and how it affects their business models. Yes, they both sell "intellectual" property. Yes, those works are copyrighted. But there are very important differences.
When buying music, consumers simply don't care which particul
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not going to get into whether online piracy is right or not. I just think that the porn industry's situation seems different than that of Hollywood and the record industry, and that whatever works for the porn industry might not work for other media makers.
I'm going on hearsay now, but it seems that there are a ton of porn movies released all the time. Such a bulk of low quality limited distribution titles limits illegal trading. There's enough people out there interested in "Pirates of the Caribbean" that if you go online you're guaranteed to find a download at a decent connection speed. On the other hand, if you were looking for something like "Butt Knockers 2" I would bet my dog and fish you couldn't find it (especially since I made up the name...). The DVDs are released to such a limited audience, and there's just too many titles to be effectively traded online.
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Interesting)
As an aside, I would NEVER pay a cent for porn - with or without p2p. I do have a shitload of it now though. I would buy music, and since p2p, my buying has increased.
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody here ever heard of the Malayan Monkey Trap? It's a hollow log with a hole cut in it to the precise diameter of a monkey's empty hand. Next place a piece of fruit in the log. The first monkey to come along, will reach in and grab the fruit. The monkey being a monkey will die before letting go of that fruit. The hunter can now liesurly walk up to mister monkey and pack his ass into a nice little tote bag.
What the movie and recording industry is doing is precisely the same on a global scale as poor mister monkey. They don't give a flying FSCK if they're cutting their own throats by employing draconian measures to control the flow of their IP. They see themselves as an endangered species. Worse, in their terror they intend to keep complete and absolute control over who can and who can't use their product under any and all circumstances. In the end, unless they can build a monolithic body of law and enforcement which;
- Crushes all free flow of information,
- Eliminates the free creation and distribution of art outside their purview, and
- Makes illegal the holding of any IP, and/or any machine or method that allows the use of said IP,
They are doomed to go away because the evolving technology will simply flow around them.We are witnessing how frantic survival behavior results in blood ceasing to flow to the higher brain functions. This is fight or flight mixed with pure primate greed... plain and simple. Please stop talking about logic... start talking about how one manages that which is fearful, angry, and irrational. We can expect to see a lot more if this kind of behavior in other areas of global human endeavor, so this should be a good place to practice.
Genda Bendte
"The Zen sig, I leave it to you, to bring the meaning..."
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:5, Funny)
Reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer wouldn't let go of the candy bar in the vending machine until they were ready to cut his arm off.
More complexity (Score:4, Insightful)
* Prescedent. This is a biggie, or has at least been cited as a big worry by the industry. What happens if people get *comfortable* pirating media over P2P? It's a social move that would be very, very difficult to reverse (view cigarettes -- extremely difficult to excise from society after having been introduced).
* The elimination of certain forms of marketing-driven sales. One of the largest United States macroeconomic benefits is the world's best marketing system. Yes, engineers like to insult marketers, but when it comes down to it, the fact that we can sell Elvis in Mongolia is why Western-produced products are valued so highly, and why so much wealth has been brought into the United States. In the past, it has been possible to sell relatively poor content very well with effective marketing, because one is able to ensure that people are unfamiliar with the product that they are buying until after they buy it. Furthermore, (for movie companies in particular) controlling the format in which viewers see content for the first time can be very important in shaping impressions and building word-of-mouth. If they see it in a darkened movie theater on a big screen with surround sound, they may weight it more favorably than the things they see on their old Zenith on VHS at home. If someone sees a poor-quality rip of The Matrix and doesn't pick up on all the fine CG detail, they may have a significantly lower opinion of the movie. First impressions translate into word-of-mouth, which translate into sales.
* Control is a big deal. The ability to produce a few higher-priced limited edition releases can be lucrative.
Re:The real math of filesharing (Score:3)
Assuming pirating from MS: donating back is easy - by providing user assistance to others (which you couldn't do otherwise, being ignorant yourself), and by developing apps and files tied to MS products (a pirate uses MS Word, and so everyone else who wants to read has to get one), and just by consuming other Windows products which at some point you will start buying (or your employer will do it for you.)
Donating back is not a problem, and MS knows it better than anyone el
Missing Poll Option (Score:5, Informative)
When it comes to buying games, I belong to both the buyer and the pirate group. I'll buy the game, discover that anti-piracy measures in it serve to inhibit gameplay, and have to go searching for a no-CD crack. Most recent example: KOTOR. I bought the game, I have the nice spiral-bound manual, etc. However, frequently while the game was loading, it would "fail" the original CD check. Sometimes it took upwards of five minutes just to start. Finally got frustrated, found a crack (took a few seconds), patched, and stored the CD elsewhere.
You know that you have a failure when your copy-protection fails to stop pirates, and inhibits the paying customer. Just in case anyone thought that the **IA was the only group of people who needed a reality check.
Re:Missing Poll Option (Score:3, Interesting)
It's enough that I've started looking into the No-CD cracks (or figure out how to mount the CD in a virtual drive).
Re:Missing Poll Option (Score:3, Insightful)
I belong to both the buyer and the pirate group. I'll buy the game, discover that anti-piracy measures in it serve to inhibit gameplay, and have to go searching for a no-CD crack.
No-cd cracking a game you bought doesn't make you a pirate, you aren't infringing on anyones copyright by removing the copy protection. You are of course circumventing copy protection, so the game company could DMCA your ass. I wonder how the case would go in court, trying to prosecute someone for trying to play a game they bo
Porn Sharing (Score:5, Funny)
the good old days (Score:3, Interesting)
I would have to agree that some were filthy, just think about dudes doing the do, and leaving a booth here for a second...
Anyway as for the sharing, I look at the RIAA in political terms, they're the Neocons pushing for war via WM
Re:the good old days (Score:3, Insightful)
And as this is New York City, there's no need for plain brown paper wrappers to conceal what these magazines are all about. We're not talking about Penthouse or Playboy, but covers that show closeups of ass-to-mouth and animal sex action.
And this is where kids go to
Re:the good old days (Score:3, Informative)
And as this is New York City, there's no need for plain brown paper wrappers to conceal what these magazines are all about. We're not talking about Penthouse or Playboy, but covers that show closeups of ass-to-mouth and animal sex action.
And this is where kids go to ge
Re:the good old days (Score:3, Interesting)
LOL
Yes, there are beastiality pics for sale in the bodegas of New York City. I've seen it with my own eyes. And yes, I've lived most of my life in the area, and just moved out of Brooklyn a matter of months ago.
So if anybody is full of shit, baby, it is you!
Or are you going to stand there and tell me what I did and didn't see, in any number of stores in Brooklyn or Manhattan? Been to them all, have you?
Re:the good old days (Score:3, Interesting)
In any case, what has to be made clear here is that we're talking about pictures of animal sex acts, not the act itself. It's legal for instance to photograph many criminal acts, and to then distribute those photos, but the act itself remains illegal, yes?
And as the other AC points out, hehe, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Some of those very same bodegas sell
Re:Porn Sharing (Score:5, Funny)
Your Honour. (Score:2, Funny)
Got Porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Got Porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Got Porn? (Score:2)
Are you sure about that high definition part? I've been told that most porn companies aren't going to HD if they can help it. Apparently fuzzy displays help many models look good, and you wouldn't want to meet them in real life.
My source was the author of this piece [theinquirer.net], but the article gives a different impression from talking to him in person. Make what you will of it.
Re:Got Porn? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Got Porn? (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently, I spent a week at the University of Sydney, coding a search engine for a small chairty site, in Python. A lecturer/programmer who was holding lectures and tutorials for us, named Dr James, explained some of the more common tricks.
In the beginning it was rather quaint, with things like blocks of text at the bottom of a page that was the same colour as the page's background (and thus rendered unnoticed by most porn-hungry surfers) containing copius amounts of popular keywords, with actual relevancy taking a backseat to the ad-revenue-generating "hit words".
Then, Google came to the forefront with the Stanford-educated founders' special pafge ranking algorithms (which factored in links to and from the page into an "integrity" score of some sort). The porn folks started creating hundreds of near identical, yet slightly differently located pages (on different domains, and more importantly, different machines), all containing links to one another, resulting in one very confusing, un-trustworthy conglomerate askuing for your hard earned cash. This became the monster that is the experience of going around in circles in these pages, trying to actually get to the.... uh... honey (I recall someone writing an article about the same phenomenon within warez circles). To my knowledge, Google then began to look more thouroughly at content in order to discern what belonged to one "conglomerate" and what was legitemately a seperate entity; looking at headers and IPs was totally uneffective at this stage.
I was only truly impressed when I heard about this scam: porn merchants actually writing scripts that served dynamic content based on who visited. This ability is obviously legitimately useful and indispensable for many sites providing dynamic content (Slashdot being one of them), but these chaps set it up so that is it was one of Google, Altavista, Yahoo, whoever's machines pulling down a web page for indexing, they got a different page than any surfer who came along. One result was when people searched for Disney, one of the first results' descriptions in Google appeared as Disney's official site, and then when clicked on by anyone, was - surprise surprise - an eshop for a knock-off merchandiser's product-line. Eventually some angry Disney executive contacted the search engine and IIRC legal action was taken.
Suffice to say, the development of search engines' technology has been fueled by those out to make a quick, slimey buck. The result, however, is not simply better protection from the sleaze; there is a "side-effect" of search results picked even among all-legit sites being vastly superior in relevancy, and a general improvement in the state of computation linguistics which can be applied for other purposes.
Free samples are a must for content sellers (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumers are not going to turn over money for content when they can't look inside the box to see what they're getting. If a content pusher doesn't have some free samples floating somewhere, there's no way they're going to be able to convince consumers that they've got the goods inside their sealed box. There has to be a free preview of some kind.
You're never going to buy a CD from an artist you've never heard sing, therefore some form of advanced sampling has to exist. I guess the porn industry realizes that the same rules apply to them, and since they don't quite yet have the ability to broadcast on the radio, they're letting filesharing do the job for them.
Re:Free samples are a must for content sellers (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Free samples are a must for content sellers (Score:2)
content
1. Desiring no more than what one has; satisfied.
2. Ready to accept or acquiesce; willing: She was content to spread her legs for fun and profit [perfidious.org].
Re:Free samples are a must for content sellers (Score:2)
I suppose one could argue (Score:5, Insightful)
Though they seem to be giving it away - tons of web sites bill free porn for me, I just need to give them my credit card number to verify my age....yeah...
Re:I suppose one could argue (Score:2)
Porno (Score:5, Interesting)
-Just my 2 cents.
Re:Porno (Score:5, Insightful)
Smart (Score:5, Insightful)
These guys are smart, aren't they?
Re:Smart (Score:5, Funny)
For those who aren't registered (Score:4, Informative)
Published: February 8, 2004
HOUSANDS of Web sites are putting Playboy magazine's pictures on the Internet - free. And Randy Nicolau, the president of Playboy.com, is loving it. "It's direct marketing at its finest," he said.
Let the music industry sue those who share files, and let Hollywood push for tough laws and regulations to curb movie copying. Playboy, like many companies that provide access to virtual flesh and naughtiness, is turning online freeloaders into subscribers by giving away pictures to other sites that, in turn, drive visitors right back to Playboy.com.
When Mr. Nicolau is asked whether he thinks that the entertainment industry is making a mistake by taking a different approach, he replies: "I haven't spent much time thinking about it. It's like asking Henry Ford, 'What were the buggy-whip guys doing wrong?' ''
The copyright rumble is playing out a little differently in the red-light districts of cyberspace. That neighborhood is increasingly difficult to confine, what with a fetishwear-clad Janet Jackson flashing a Super Bowl audience of millions, and Paris Hilton making her own version of a "Girls Gone Wild" video. Professional peddlers say they are hard pressed to compete.
Still, the business of being bad is very good, especially for the biggest players. Though the industry has felt a financial squeeze during the economic slowdown, it nonetheless has sales of as much as $2 billion each year, said Tom Hymes, the editor of AVNOnline, a business magazine for the industry.
And the pornography industry, which has always been among the first to exploit new technologies, including the VCR, the World Wide Web and online payment systems, is finding novel ways to deal with the threat of online piracy as well. The mainstream entertainment industry, some experts say, would do well to pay attention.
Music executives say their campaign of lawsuits has been successful. They say they have spread the word that downloading free music infringes on copyrights and that there could be consequences for large-scale file sharers.
But the pornography industry has been dealing with Internet copyright issues since the 1980's. By comparison, the movie and music businesses are relative newcomers. Mr. Hymes said companies in his industry had come to realize that suing consumers and promoting "draconian laws" were not the answer. "No law written can stem the tide," he said. And so, he said, companies are seeking ways to live with the technologies that threaten them and are trying to turn them to their advantage.
That is not to say that the companies have not been harmed by free copying and distribution of copyrighted material online. Mr. Hymes's magazine warned recently that such companies were "losing incalculable amounts of cash" to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks like Kazaa, LimeWire, Grokster and Bit Torrent.
"As the networks continue to grow and even more sophisticated programs are created, the P2P networks might prove a bigger threat to the revenue stream of the porn world than all the censorious right-wingers in the country put together," the article stated.
Maybe. But many companies that distribute X-rated material say they do not worry too much about consumers sharing among themselves; they often unleash their lawyers only when someone is trying to profit by copying their goods and trying to sell them.
When people in the industry talk of copyright, there is none of the grand speechifying about revering artists and rewarding creativity, and the near-tearful paeans to the yeoman key grips and stunt men, as is favored by movie and record executives. Instead, there is just this: We spent a lot of money to get this stuff out to the market. Somebody else is making money off of it. We want the money.
"We haven't gone after Joe Citizen who's sharing something he printed off something from the Hustler Web site with another guy," said Paul Cambria, a lawyer wh
RIAA take note... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:RIAA take note... (Score:5, Funny)
Dear god, someone think of the sanity of the users. I mean, every once in a while someone's accidently falls for a forged email by sheer bad luck and a bad situation. ( forged subject line containing something you are interested in and a faked sender with a name you recognize... ) Now, last time I saw a spam mail it contained some nice pictures of 7 men ... "enjoying" eachother's company on a Monday morning. Nothing too bad really. Now, imagine waking up one Monday morning, logging on and instead of 7 men yanking eachother's crank and/or enjoying a ride up the rectal railroad, you get hit with a Britney Spears MP3. :(
Think of the kids as well and how we are to explain it all! I can explain why men like other men. I can NOT explain why Britney Spears is famous and rich.
subtle differences b/w pr0n and music (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah but... (Score:3, Funny)
Who the fuck listens to pr0n?
LK
Re:Yeah but... (Score:3, Funny)
They built THIS city.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:They built THIS city.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Real Lessons here... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, yeah. Too late.
Free Music and Pay Porn in the future. (Score:4, Insightful)
Fundamental difference in material... (Score:5, Insightful)
Porn addiction versus music addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Music has a powerful network effect, a fashion effect. With porn, you get what you want (if you want any). With music, it's important to listen to what your social class listens to, or you aren't cool.
In that sense I think that popular music has a much more powerful hook than porn, because popular music hooks into the near-universal desire to be accepted by one's peer group.
As far as movie addiction goes, I don't see people camping for two weeks at the porn shop for the next blockbuster to come out, the way they do for Star Wars.
Re:Fundamental difference in material... (Score:3, Insightful)
If so, then I suspect that you're somewhat in the minority on that one.
I never thought I would be able to say this... (Score:5, Funny)
Porno Muzak !! (Score:2, Funny)
Laying Low (Score:5, Insightful)
I would expect that the porn industry would have a much more difficult time if they did want to take the same stance as the music business. Can you imagine US politicians standing up and proudly supporting them in the same way as they do for the music distributors?
When you operate at the fringes of your country's moral and legal tolerance, surely the last thing you want to do is attract attention or get involved in legal battles? Of course many will argue (correctly IMNSHO) that the music distribution also pushes the boundaries of morality and legality, but the key difference is that their core business is not directly about sex. Janet Jackson gave us a clear demonstration last week of just how hung up a good proportion of the USA is. In many other nations, this incident would have barely raised any eyebrows, but in the US it's apparently world war three.
Like it or not, the RIAA's campaigning has won over much public support or acceptance - for every slashdotter who sees them as a menace, there's probably a large number of other people who see them as perfectly reasonable. But pornographers wouldn't get that kind of response and they know it. They're more likely to get themselves shut down than anything else if they raise a stink. As much as I'd like to think their attitude is because the porn business is more enlightened, I think their real motive is more likely just self-protection.
Re:Laying Low (Score:5, Funny)
There's also the small matter of economics. The porn producers could spend $50,000 prosecuting one of thier consumers, or they could spend that amount to make five new movies.
Re:Laying Low (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Laying Low (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Laying Low (Score:3, Offtopic)
So I suppose that Britney sells all those albums because people think she's a good singer? Gimme a break... since at least the 50's (Elvis), and accelerating after MTV became popular (mid-80's), music has been about image (read: sex) more than music. The way they pimp out teens based upon their "sex ap
Porn is ruthlessly competitive (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't pay for porno (Score:5, Interesting)
I have over 4 GB of music on my HD righ now, I bought most of the CDs that it came from.
IMO it's also far more likely for people to buy music than pr0n. Someone could be in the mall and happen to see an old CD from an artist that they like and pick it up.
Nobody is going to see ideepthroat.com's greatest hits on the rack at Best Buy and impulse buy a copy.
Besides, the pr0n industry has already mastered online content distribution. The music industry has a LOOOOOOONG way to go.
LK
Re:11gb? (Score:5, Funny)
No I don't. I still have over 22 GB free.
LK
Porn and the Internet (Score:5, Informative)
A typical $10k porn movie can generate tens of millions in sale. Just need to slip some clips into a common p2p network with some taglines, and people go out to buy the whole thing. A friend of mine runs several porn sites, makes a comfortable living off of them, providing original content. (5-figure takehome salary, not too shabby) He points out how the movies he has clips of invariably end up his top sellers. And those clips are traded freely on P2P networks. He releases a new clip, putting it on KaZaa himself, sales for it boom in less than 14 days.
The net is a wonderful technology, if you let it be.
Re:Porn and the Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
Another poster also observed that the parent comment is a bit on the absurd side. Not necessarily that the fact is wrong even; but it's not like my personal Apache log shows "traffic on the net." Unless downix works for the NSA, and is leaking some classified information, there's really no way to verify what everyone on the net does.
BTW, I "5-figure takehome salary" could be $10,000... which I would actually call rather shabby (though if it's for part time work, it might still be good). Claiming something like "high 5-figure" would sound a lot more impressive (i.e. meaning >$50k).
I have this theory (Score:2)
If >= College-Aged students are doing it, they won't do nothing.
Based on the long and glorious tradition of warez and trading everything under the sun all through the history of computers, and this new data viz. Napster and Kazaa v. RIAA, this theory fits the data.
So the solution is to trade files but find ways to prevent young kids from doing it. And don't profit from it (the cops always bust the dealers).
Thoughts on Porn and Sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not so much the sharing of material that the companies I do work for care about, but the leaking of passwords onto online sites.
When a site gets released onto a list, and several hundred people end up downloading 100meg+ movies, that's essentially a slashdot effect for you. Before I ended up implementing a protection system for one company, they spent upwards of $3k/month in bandwidth overages. This was just for one day of password leaking.
Sometimes sharing porn is good press. That's why all of SW [shanesworld.com]'s images are watermarked, as well as all their videos. That's partly how the word is spread. Of course, making the news on roughly 10 different shows and being contravercial doesn't hurt either :)
I know of some companies that deliberately leak passwords out onto lists for short periods of time just to drive people to the site. That works quite well. Too bad the music industry couldn't learn from something like that.
But then, the problem with the music industry is that people only want to pirate well known artists. With porn, sex is sex. No matter whose ass is involved, as long as it's a fine one, people will watch.
And people will pay. Simple as that.
Re:Thoughts on Porn and Sharing (Score:3, Informative)
But then, the problem with the music industry is that people only want to pirate well known artists.
I think this also happens (to a lesser degree, of course) with Porn. There are a few pornstars that are more famous than the rest, and so I guess people that download porn (ok, me among them ;-)) could also download more flicks or pictures from those stars than from the rest.
Say, Jenna Jameson or Asia Carrera, for example. They're quite famous, and there surely are a lot of p2p searches that go for thes
Porn vs Music? (Score:5, Funny)
"Unleashing the lawyers" not necessarily uncommon (Score:4, Interesting)
Parts of the porn industry take "piracy" just as seriously as the RIAA and MPAA; a lack of publicizing of the lawsuits, etc. that have resulting might be more of an issue with the underground nature of the subject.
Busted for downloading porn (Score:5, Funny)
The good thing however is I ordered a premium cable package where they uncapped my modem. When the cable company reactivated my account, my cable modem was still uncapped but I am paying for the basic cable price! That $75 will have paid itself off in 2 months!
Of Dollars and Dildos (Score:5, Insightful)
All in all, it's really simple-- The recording industry has a larger power base and more money t protect than triple-AAA porn company. of course, the same can't be said about Playboy or Penthouse, which will rabidly go after infringers. It's not surprising that the companies behaviors reflects the size of their empires...
Re:Of Dollars and Dildos (Score:3, Interesting)
The porn industry knows well how to make a buck on the internet, while the music industry is just learning how to tie it's shoes.
Besides, the average career of a pop star is no match for a veteran in the porn industry
Re:Of Dollars and Dildos (Score:3, Informative)
So you are correct in general but wrong about the prices of the CD/DVD.
They are however perfect for the method they've chosen to distribute.
Two irrefutable examples... (Score:5, Interesting)
The two examples I always pull out are the Grateful Dead and x-rated material. Both had 100% "piracy rates" and both made a lot of money. By the logic of the MPAA and RIAA, both should have been decimated. But that was not the case.
Maybe they see it this way.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Porn dealers WANT their content to be distributed (Score:5, Insightful)
porn ISP (Score:3, Interesting)
I get tired of shitty half assed copies of music and select screener/movies I download - and actually BUY THE STUFF I LIKE. Fuck anyone that tries to mess with my choice - take a clue from the porn industry - generate a little INTEREST with GOOD CONTENT not DISinterest from lawsuits and antagonistic behaviour.
Porn makes money. Bandwidth costs money - the porn industry saves by relaxing their damn lawyer some of the time. Take a hint, RIAA (or I'm going to charge you for advertising your music next time I turn up my radio, or reccomend a song to someone).
What does it say (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure I want to know the answer and it's almost positive I'm not going to like it.
It just goes to show (Score:5, Funny)
It just goes to show. When you put porn and music together, bow chicka-bow-bow...
What Porn teaches us: Music industry's dead, good (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly what will/should happen with music. Just imagine: hundreds of different record companies, all with more or less equal access to the market. You'd have lots of new music--some great, some lousy, some that only you and a hundred others would love. And as much as I love Springsteen, it would be fine with me if he only made $5 million a year and several thousand other bands each made $100,000 a year.
The problem for the big five record companies (soon to be only three, through mergers) is that they're on such a scale that they simply wouldn't work on a smaller scale. The big 3 porn cos were small enough and nimble enough to adjust down. The big five are terrified. I spoke with a high-ranking executive at one of the big 5 and he said it's about 50/50 they'll be in business in five years. He said he's kind of looking forward to early retirement. But who cares? Get rid of them. In ten years or fifty, there will still be money to be made in music and there will be companies making it. It would be great if there are many small companies instead of a handful of big ones.
the pr0n industry... (Score:3, Insightful)
So the RIAA should recognize that most people don't have the time/patience to download 10 or more songs for an album, but hearing one or two might make them go out and by it.
Just my 2 cents from a pr0n freak. LOL.
Re:Pornographers are criminals already anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Adult entertainment is a well established film genre. Why isn't it an honest job? You wake up, drive to work, clock in, bust your hump (or hump your bust) all day, then go home, and cash your cheques.
True, there is a seedier side to some of the fly by night operations, but that's also true of import electronics, major label clothing, accounting and the stock market, as we've seen in the last few years.
Corrupting minds? Nobody is forcing anybody to watch porn. Actually, it's almost always segregated into its own section / room in a store to keep people from having to peruse it unwillingly. You have to willingly pay for it on TV.
Take your religious fundamentalist dogma elsewhere.
As for the illegality of piracy, go talk to the vice-president about halliburton. He wouldn't be doing all that if it were illegal, right?
Re:Pornographers are criminals already anyway (Score:5, Funny)
The acts performed in a lot of porno are not necessarily acts which it is a great pleasure to perform.
They are not intended to feel good for the participants (who get paid to do it); they are intended to make money. Sex is essentially a tactile thing, not primarily visual.
To make money it has to look good. We don't have 'feelies' yet.
The sort of sex act that feels good may well not look good on camera. Duh.
What happens if its presented in such a way that a *LOT* of people wind up thinking that this is what sex really is?
Unwittingly, they join the Voluntary Human Extinction Project [vhemt.org] since these 'sex acts' are almost always non-reproductive; semen is usually deposited on some external surface. Think of it as a 'Catholic' guide to birth control.
Pro-wrestling is similar. Except with less bodily fluids. How many pro wrestling fans draw on what they see in 'the ring' as a benchmark for their internal model of physics? Their estimate of what happens to a person when a chair is broken across their back, for example? Maybe people arn't that dumb.
However, in both cases, I think theres an underlying dishonesty.
I could have got human stupidity all wrong, of course.
Re:Pornographers are criminals already anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because people draw incorrect conclusions based o
Re:Pornographers are criminals already anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
Sex for any purpose other than reproduction is expressly prohibited by Christianity.
Nonsense. I'm not aware of any mainstream Christian church that says this. Most of the Christian world agrees that adultery is wrong, homosexuality is wrong, fornication is wrong, but sex is good and right -- even beautiful. My church also teaches that masturbation and viewing of pornography are sinful, but considers sex to be a critically important part of a healthy marriage, even when no procreation is involved.
Eve
Re:Pornographers are criminals already anyway (Score:5, Funny)
Corruption of minds? You obviously haven't seen some of the porn I've seen. More like comedy, with the wooden acting and unbelievable plots.
If it's not an "honest job or enterprise", how does it make money? Obviously, there's a demand, and they fill it..... (ba-dum-dum!)
He does sorta have a point (Score:2)
Re:Pornographers are criminals already anyway (Score:3, Interesting)
Not true. Believe it or not, some of us have real, moral contentions with the notion of "intellectual property." Some of us actually believe that while you can claim credit for creating art, you cannot morally exert control over what happens to that art after it is offered to the public. Some of us see a distinction between unallowed taking (theft) and unallowed distribution. Some of us actually believe that market value ough
"Making pornography isn't like it's an honest job" (Score:4, Insightful)
No, you're quite right, they should quit, join the military and kill people instead.
Re:Pornographers are criminals already anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
They lived quiet lives in the suburbs, worked hard (actually, if you ask me, very hard for the money they were making) and felt they were doing honest work.
There was actually an interesting sterility to it all...there was nothing dirty about what they were doing, it was their livelyhoods. If anything, she in particular, thought of it as an artform (and there definitely is a large market for much mor