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The Pornographers vs. The Pirates
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on how pornography is again leading the way and showing Holywood how to fight back against piracy. From the article: 'Some producers of porn are starting to share revenues from online movies with the distributors of their DVDs, who might otherwise feel endangered by digital distribution online. Bolder yet, one large studio is allowing fans who buy movies online to burn them from their computers onto DVDs, with some protections included, of course.'"
And you thought it was just pirates vs. ninjas?
Clicked pie.
People who love porn would not mind DRM or any other restrictive technology - most porn lovers don't wish to have their names advertised, and a bit of money is not an issue.
Not so with what the RIAA calls Pirates.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Come on, you were expecting something else in his mouth, weren't ya?
The Pornographers versus The Pirates!
Pirate: Arr! Bend over me matey while I prepare the long guns to pilage that booty!
Porn Star: Oh! Don't pilage MY booty, at least not until my sorority girlfriends come over to help me repel borders! Oh!
I know no-one who has bought porn - but everyone has watched it.
Why hasn't porn gone bust like the movie and music industries say will happen to them?
If a legitimate market can keep porn afloat an inherently embarrassing purchase - then everything else doesn't need to worry
http://skeptobot.blogspot.com/ - A site for the Renaissance man and woman
Downloading a paid product is not a new thing. It has worked for software in years. I don't see why it shouldn't work for other kinds of data like movieclips and images.
Of course it's easier to share it with a few thousand closest friends on Internet when you don't have to rip it first. But is it really the ripping part that is hard? Isn't that the easiest part? Why is that so bold, as the summary says?
Well, it's good to see the pr0n industry finally taking safe sex seriously
I think it has more to do with the fact that since no politican can afford to be seen lobbied by a porn cartel, they have to come up with fairer solutions...
...is that porn movies are better acted, the dialog is more natural and they feature less contrived and often more thought provoking plots than most over-hyped 'blockbusters'. That and more titty ;-)
Submitter forgot to include link to article http://www.digg.com/movies/The_Pornographers_vs._T he_Pirates
Coming to a XXX shop near you. :)
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Do you think your father will openly tell you that just last week he purchased a subscription to this fantastic bondage porno site? Do you think your boss will tell you that ten minutes ago, between meetings with clients, he spent $19.95 for the "Girls Gone Crazy: Kansas City!" and "Eugenia's Booby Paradise" video combo he saw advertised on TV last night? Do you think that the Republican senator who just rallied against sexuality in video games, and who also just bought some photos of girls fellating horses, will let you know? Probably not.
Then again, you likely don't understand the true size of the market. Even if they have a 99% piracy rate, that 1% of sales is so much that they're all very well off.
...is called "Making so much money it don't mean a damn thing if piracy happens."
Seriously, free porn has been electronically available since the 80s for anyone with a minute amount of knowledge and dedication. Who are the authors fooling?
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
"Holywood" - is that some sort of nasty pun aiming at a profitable male porn star or just a typo?
Do people intentionally buy porn? I assumed the whole industry was funded by IE users accidentally installing premium rate dialers. I guess now that broadband is so popular the porographers need to find another revenue stream.
Pornography has always been a huge business, and they have always been on the bleeding edge of technology. Look at the internet. Long before their was the World Wide Web there were dial-in BBS's where people could download pornography. When VCRs came out, pornography was almost immediately available on video cassettes.
The pornography business' profit margin is much higher and that allows them much more freedom to innovate in their distribution. That, and they have no doubt that people will continue to consume their product.
I doubt they'll ever eliminate the pirates, but they will lead the way technologically for flexible video distribution.
Free as in speech, free as in beer, or free as in lunch?
The biggest advances in internet technology are made because of porn, file-sharing, P2P, search engines, image formats (more porn per mb), movie encryption etc.
But there is one thing I don't believe, Porn isn't going to stop piracy, it created it! (One of the best things on the web!)
If porn proves to be the key in stopping piracy, then I truly think porn will create world peace...
And... why burn on DVD for personal use...???
Isn't porn something you only watch once, you know the whole story and get bored? Isn't that the whole reason we watch porn, because the same woman every night bores us!?
My blog: http://www.redcode.nl
Guy I know used to have a well known server with free illegit porn. This server got to be quite well known around the world. One of the reasons he stopped was that a Yugoslav guy with some Yugo-mob connections came to his door to politely request the removal of content that the Yugo considered to be his copyrighted works.
Now the RIAA and MPAA have done some nefarious things to convince people to stop sharing music and movies, but getting the mob involved.. I haven't heard that one yet. Even when they get Uncle Sam involved, there is a chance of due course.
Use Adsense for Charity
`buy movies online to burn them from their computers onto DVDs, with some protections included, of course.'
I need to use protection for (ahem) solo-sex now? Oh god! What if it's too late?
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
My C:\Porn directory is well over 90GB and I have never paid to d/l porno.
That's kind of the beauty of the whole thing. For each person who pays a site membership, there will be hundreds who get to leech. And who is going to go to court and say that they feel violated because someone ripped off a copy of a video of them actually being violated.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
They should start copying what the porn movies are doing. First look at the stories. Pornmovies have better stories 9 times out of 10.
Next you hear all these Oscar winners that lovescenes are the most difficult to play. If that is the case, start giving Ron Jerremy a life-time achievement accadamy award.
Also note that in porn movies all nudity is functional.
I still think it is strange that you are not allowed to see two people having sex, yet it is normal to see people get killed in movies.
If people know that Kill Bill is not real, They might recognise that Deep Throaght is also just a movie.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Without the porn industry we would use Betamax instead of the internet and have bad sex with computers, buy Blu-Ray players and our children would get pregnant by _not_ going to church.
You have to pay some respect to them for keping this world in the shape we like.
Damn, can you even imagine how much music would suck without the nvention of decent porn?
Me neither..
"Bolder yet, one large studio is allowing fans who buy movies online to burn them from their computers onto DVDs, with some protections included, of course." Why would you need condoms with your porn???
Uncle Sam would have to admit that he cared for porn, doubt that will happen soon.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When I first got into the adult industry, I fought really hard to "protect" my copyrights. Any time I found my photos elsewhere on the internet I would have my lawyer send out threatening letters, I would try to sue people. I would get peoples websites shut down.. it cost a lot of time and money and mostly I just pissed people off.
Eventually I figured out that in most cases when people copied my photos and shared them.. it increased revenue because people would come to my site looking for more. I then restricted any lawsuits to people who would charge money to access content they stole from me.
I think the music and movie industry could learn the same lesson.
when all our advances in technology can be linked to porn or the military?
What about pornographers versus ninjas?
It is interesting to me that pornographers like to peddle their wares, even when flying in the face of a morality question. A whole thread discussion could be started just talking about that, but this isn't my point.
My point is, that many would argue that is it immoral to steal. Many would consider pirating a movie, no matter its content, to be immoral. I just think it's interesting to point out that the pornographers want their cake and eat too, by combating piracy, since what they do is considered immoral also.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
You know, I see this argument again and AGAIN on /., that porn is the bleeding edge of technology but this is fantasy. There is no evidence to corroborate this except the memories of people obsessed with getting porn in new formats. Seriously, where are the data and studies that show pornography pioneers new communications technologies?
Porn capitalizes on the advent of new technologies, sure, but this is quite different than saying porn substantially (or singhandedly) advances it.
This being one of the few articles you can encounter where no one comments with an inside point of view because they work in the industry.
finally porn videos are starting to use protection ;)
What?! But I thought most slashdotters were against DRM!
What are these people bitching about? It's ridiculous to see 100% of pircacy as lost revenue.
Newsflash: Most people don't pay for porn. Most people don't need that much porn. Most people aren't your target market.
The way I see this is that a (relative) minority of people actually pay for porn. Everyone else just gets it from P2P and that ain't gonna change.
"Bolder yet, one large studio is allowing fans who buy movies online to burn them from their computers onto DVDs, with some protections included, of course." ...for someone to crack the protections on a blockbuster DVD and redistribiute that file on teh internet? The whole online copyright debate has always been about getting shit for free and forcing content creators to look elsewhere for money because consumers are no longer a good source. All it takes is one person to whine that the donloadable version of Rocky XVII is too expensive and how they would pay for it if it were half that price (half seems to be the magical price point people are willing to pay for anything - "cd's $10", "I'd pay half that", "OK, cd's $5", "I'd pay half that", etc.) and in the meantime they are going to pirate the movie. It's a never-ending, viscious cycle that is only going to be broken when content simply becomes too expensive to create or becomes too crappy due to all the product placement that people are no longer willing to pay to see Rocky "Pepsi-Cola" Balboa in Rocky XXVII. I like Jeep (I own a Liberyty, really want a Commander) and I like Tomb Raider but I thought the blatant product placement of the Jeep Commanders in Tomb Raider: Legend was really tasteless. Jeep also made a huge deal about the modified Jeep Wrangler in Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life (big coup since the vehicle Lara Croft used in the first Tomb Raider movie was a Land Rover).
This is terrible news! If Pirates are now fighting Pornographers as well as their age-old enemies the Ninjas global temperatures will be sure to rise even further! My advice: buy land in Alaska.
Furthermore, Pornographers are well known for their ability to quickly subvert any new technology for pornographic ends. This suggests that the Robots will soon be enslaved, forming a fearsome Robot Ninja Pornographer alliance! What hope is there now for the noble Pirates? The monkeys certainly won't be any help. How could a mere monkey hope to oppose a Robot Ninja Pornographer?
.evom ton seod gis eht
...is in the form of customer approval. They will approve of easy and affordable methods of obtaining licensed content, and will thereby protect the bottom lines of the content providers. They will shun pirated media in favor of supporting the people who give them the good stuff, they way they like it, pr0n or otherwise.
I bet you thought I would say something else about "protection." I thought about it, but you know...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Porn is like crack. You hand it out freely to people, then those who really like it but too 'right' to just take it will buy it. Just like those 'tards who steal to buy/get crack. There a ton of people addicted to porn. The porn industry is able to stay afloat because they keep their product out in the open (even if people are embarrased to buy them) to download, watch, burn, etc. VHS is dead and I don't think will be coming back so DVD & downloading are the only alternatives. HD-DVD and Blue Ray are due out soon as well. I'm guessing they'll end up backing both formats so as to reap more profits.
On a side note...I can guess that porn stars don't get nearly as much pay as a Hollywood star. With that said I don't see a porn star living like crap either... So it begs to reason wtf Hollywood stars think they deserve to get paid an ever increasing amount of $$ because a movie that was written by someone we will probably never remember(or know) was a huge hit. IMO the movie stories and ALL the people involved make a great film, not just one crappy actor. Example: MI3...was good, not because of Cruise, but because the movie was put together well (very action packed), the plot twists also helped. Screw Cruise.
"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."
So, like, they don't know about USENET, right?
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
Hollywood has the same problem that the games industry has -- people have come to expect Teh Shiny, and Shiny is too expensive.
If you try to make a summer-blockbuster action movie with less than a $50,000,000 budget, the mainstream audience will ignore it with one big "meh".
Besides, the economics of theatres have shifted over the last 20-30 years. It used to be the cinema made a fair chunk of the profit from ticket sales (like 50%). That's down to less than 10%, or in a lot of cases *nothing* in the crucial first weeks. Theatres make ALL their profit from the "food" they sell, which is why you can buy a tiny tray of stale Nachos for six dollars and a half litre of Pepsi for four dollars and fifty cents.
For movies AND games, I wish the content-producers would spend more of their budget on making engrossing content and less of it on Shiny and special effects. But that's life.
Yet both groups manage to come up with advances.
The porn industry is truly amazing in many rights in regards to the way it's content is protected. It's almost a self-policing industry. Everybody pretty much know's who's is what in regards to content, especially niche content(insert_niche_here). The air is thin at the top. Don't be surprised to see "Barry the one-legged albanian pimp" show up at your door with something semi-automatic(although concealed) if you poach his content; seriously.
The simple way to eliminate piracy is to get everyone to pre-buy copies of a film before it even gets made. If not enough tickets are sold, then the film is not made and everyone gets their money back.
All the investors get a DVD and the right to download the film. They can share the film if they want because they invested in its creation.
This will also elimate financial flops because it all works on pre-sales. No pre-sales no films.
Currently production companies raise money for films by pre-selling to the distributors. So why not take this one step further and pre-sell to the consumer.
All you need is a product pitch and a delivery date. It could cost $10 per share. People already buy product online so why not extend this to reversing the entire film making/funding/selling process.
This could extend to TV as well.
People who think they would then just sit back and wait for others to invest would find that no films get made. So if they want stuff they will have to invest in it.
These investors do not receive profit, but rather user rights or copy rights. The production company can still sell TV / Cable and other Rights to profiteer off their work and fund the product pitch for the next project.
So the porn industry has concepts and technology way ahead of the curve? THAT'S never happened before. (That dripping sound is sarcasm)
... that the Internet is for porn? =)
Shouldn't they act *more* like raging pricks?
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
" allowing fans who buy movies online to burn them from their computers onto DVDs, with some protections included, of course.'"
'Protections included' -- Does that mean the dvd's come wrapped in condoms?
When Jesus said "Let the children come unto me" this is NOT what he had in mind.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
The demand for the products that the pr0n industry produces far dwarfs the demand for the crap that the (MP|RI)AA -- (Note how cool it is that I used a RegEx and actually used MORE characters instead of less to say the same thing. I am 1337, bow down.) put out. Basically if you've got everyone chomping at the bit for your product and you know they're going to sell hard and fast, then you're not going to be averse to letting a little product slip through your fingers. Especially if youre product is cheap. Unlike Hollywood, the porn industry puts out "first run" movies for about $40 and then progressively drops the price the older the product is. If you're a smart porn conneseur, you can buy movies that are one or two years old for only $10. Let's see Hollywood do THAT. It'll never happen. And you know why? Because the music and movie industries KNOW that their product is total crap in terms of demand. Yeah, some morons want the pap, but they don't want to pay outrageous prices for it. And based on the fact that both the RIAA and the MPAA are looking to outlaw the sale of used product more than twice (meaning you can't sell beyond one person) beyond the original sale, I'd say that there's going to be a whole lotta thievin' goin' on... Have a nice day chumps.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I have not watched porn before. So this article doesn't bother me.
I keep pressing F5 to see the porn on this page, but its not loading. What am I doing wrong?
In Soviet Russia the insensitive clod is YOU!
I'd say Elli (NSFW!) has it done right. But that's just my opinion. Elli and her ilk could dominate the rest of the commercial industry. And god bless 'em.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&wo rd1=pornographers&word2=pirates
Not even a contest.
As an aside: I thought pornographers embraced piracy for viral marketing and uploaded the "pirated" content themselves? "Hey, this DivX is crap. I want to see Jenna's boobs in high resolution! Where can I buy the DVD?"
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
The Pornographers vs. The Pirates.. I don't really understand the "VS" part. I mean, the only reason why there is content-piracy is the high-prices and ease of use of the unofficial (read: p2p) distribution channels - it's not like the "Pirates" want to fight the "Pornographers" (or any other content-producers) - they just want to have access to content without paying unreasonable prices (and YES, i know that this is a very subjective thing - when are the prices low enough for users and high enough for content producers).
So please, not "The Pornographers vs. The Pirates", but "The Pornographers For Innovative Content Distribution".
Cheers.
Nah.
There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
There are two types of people in the world - those who like porn, and those who pretend they don't.
Realistically speaking, pornography is only considered immoral by a small, highly vocal minority of crackpots. Not unlike the small, highly vocal minority of crackpots that consider copyright violation to be immoral. Of course, you have clearly placed yourself in both groups by your statements. Particularly, confusing THEFT (taking something away from someone else, so that you have it and they don't) with COPYRIGHT VIOLATION (a form of sharing that hasn't been approved by some particular third party). From that, I surmise that you are American, very likely a fundamentalist christian (that is, a christian who completely ignores the new testament), and probably opposed to any kind of individual freedom whatsoever.
Regina Lynn from Wired.com, http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70547-0.html, reported on the adult film industry's efforts to develop new DRM programs that users wouldn't find too objectionable almost three months ago.
The adult film industry has pretty much lead the way in American entertainment in regards to online distribution and DVD innovation.
It's not surprising that Hollywood is sitting back and letting the little guys go through all of the development costs in order to harvest the more refined product later on.What could be a better deal?
C|N>K
for my current fave pr0n site - bog standard DRM-free QuickTime. Disclaimer, I have nothing whatever to do with them except that they're the first and so far only site that's been good enough for me to plonk down some real folding money for.
Then you'll also lost a very huge proportion of fans, mostly screaming teenage girls that came in only because there's Tommy on the movie poster...
Holywood keeps hiring ultra-expensive actors because, no matters how much their performance sucks, they sell movies.
Both inventive and cheap movie could be done by hiring talented new comers, but nobody is going to see them, appart from a few intellectuals who still have taste, and maybe also from oversea marketing (here in europe people tend to still be able to enjoy a movie based on its artistic value and not on who's name is on the poster).
Holywood has got old and is easily frightened by risk-taking, So it sticks to known value.
Celebrity actors, popular book, or ridiculously high budget (or any combination of those) is all you're going to get.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...pornography is again leading the way
Yes, that's right:
Pornography made VCRs popular, jump-started the Internet, invented the light bulb and put man on the moon.
*rolls eyes*
It's amazing what lengths people will go to in order to legitimize their dirty little pasttimes.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
very nice song/movie :-)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=fe-Rv7iL6Sg
Paying for porn, the pure thought repulses me.
Anyone with a bit of selfrespect would never pay for pornography.
I mean it's even worse than buying a prostitute, it probably means you're even too unattractive even to the prostitutes.
The best porn/sex is FREE!
Banana in exhaust pipe.*
Dowload the torrent at 11.
* - only vs combustion powered robot types.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Can we stop pretending that these changes are positive? Who the hell cares about corporations? Why must we keep making compromises for them? If we banned DRM, threw out copyright laws, yes, really expensive-to-produce content will appear less frequently. So what? We're moving to a world where culture comes from the bottom-up, not the top-down. From wikipedia to Torrents. It's a paradigm shift. And if we want to stop the RIAA from suing grandmas, we have to be willing to accept a world without copyright.
Philosophistry
How is it that taking ass-to-mouths and getting bukkake facials qualifies these people as "Stars"?
Well, according to Futurama the order of respect that "Stars" get is:
"Movie Stars" "B-Movie Stars", "Porn Stars", then "TV Stars"
Do you consider TV actors to be stars?
But what do I care, I am oblivious to popular culture, including porn.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.