Tactics in the Porn Industry's Fight Against Piracy

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.'"

Comments

Re:Irony

[an.echte.trilingue]

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?"

Re:Summary: they stream live shows

[imroy]

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?

I find it curious...

[ralf1]

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.