Free Internet Porn Is Legal, Says California Appeals Court

wdef writes with the lead from a story that may bring you a big sigh of relief: "Free internet porn is not illegal. Nor is it unfairly competing with porn companies who'd rather you paid for your thrills, according to a California Appeals Court, which has dismissed a case against one free site, Redtube.com, as an unfair attack on free speech." Interestingly, this case was brought not by anyone objecting to pornography on moral grounds, but rather by a competitor who reasons that "free" is a hard price to compete with, unless it's against the law.

Comments

Striesand Effect

[Archangel Michael]

And suing and losing is great Streisand effect publicity. Nicely done

Retarded logic

[ravenspear]

They basically argued that for something to be "free as in speech", it has to NOT be "free, as in beer".

There are plenty of other people who feel this way, like the **AAs, the BSA, the AAP etc.

It's time for big business to realize that capitalism does not require anyone to give you money for your offerings.

Re:Why is there no link to redtube, eh?

[MoonBuggy]

According to TFA, some of the porn studios (evidently the ones who do understand this here intarweb thing) provide free content as a promotional tool for their paid sites.

Well, NO SHIT

[Chaonici]

The first time I heard of this lawsuit was yesterday, and I was absolutely appalled at the audacity of the plaintiff to assert that someone providing free porn was illegally undercutting professional porn studios.

Jesus Christ, I'm glad this lawsuit decided turned out the way it did. Think of the precedent it would have set had the plaintiff won. The recording industry could sue indies who release their music under a Creative Commons license, claiming unfair competition. Same with the movie studios and sites like Vodo. Or companies that sell encyclopedias versus Wikipedia. Or hell, Microsoft and Linux.

From the complaint:

"The ubiquitous distribution of free adult videos through redtube.com has had a massive negative impact on the business model of adult website proprietors,. Now that consumers have the ability to watch high quality adult videos for free on redtube.com, fewer are making the choice to pay other adult website proprietors for the same content."

If you have a difficult time competing with free, that's your problem. You have no business whatsoever trying to get the government to interfere on your behalf.

Re:Well, NO SHIT

[Kjella]

The short summary is that they're the SCO of porn producers. Hell, SCO claimed the GPL was unenforceable, unconstitutional and void because Linux was pummeling it, Their PR campaign made the Iraqi information minister look honest.

Re:Why is there no link to redtube, eh?

[Hatta]

Why link? We all have it bookmarked anyway.

Taken to a logical conclusion

[roman_mir]

anybody who offers ANYTHING below MY PRICE must be declared illegal.

You see, it doesn't have to be free, it just has to be less expensive than my offering, and presto, it would be illegal.

By the way, from now on I am selling EVERYTHING and ANYTHING costs at least a 1,000,000 dollars a piece or a pound.

consequence of bad law

[khallow]

It's worth noting here that this lawsuit happened only because of the California Unfair Practices Act, which is a remarkably bad piece of law. The "free porn" provided by Redtube was dumping of product below cost, an act which is considered illegal, not just "unfair" by the law. Not everyone will be able to count on free speech to defend their industry from the stagnating impositions of this law.

Re:consequence of bad law

[MarkvW]

It's not a bad law.

Imagine that you sell oil to people. You sell at a price that people are glad to pay and you have fantastic customer loyalty. Next, imagine that RIAA Oil Company decides to move into your market. They GIVE oil away for a full year. They can afford this because they are RICH. You can't compete with free. You try, but after a year, you are forced to go out of business. After you go out of business, RIAA Oil Company jacks up their prices. In a few years they recoup their losses. Prices are now much higher and consumer satisfaction sucks.

You are unemployed. Nobody cares about you because you believed in the imaginary thing called a free market. But people are worried for the consumers who ultimately are the ones victimized by the RIAA Oil Company's predatory policies.

The free market does not exist. What we CALL a free market is really a bunch of people who fight like mad to try to dominate the marketplace by forming cartels and monopolies. If we don't regulate them, they will regulate us--far more than any government can.

The California law wasn't enacted because liberal freakazoids had a theory that they needed to put into law (like the Tea Partiers and their theories). This law was the product of historical experience. Read about Standard Oil and what they did!!!!! Read about the Railroad companies at the turn of the 20th Century. Those businesses were absolutely ruthless and screwd consumers got these kinds of laws passed.

Free may be tough to compete with, but...

[gstrickler]

...prostitution has been competing against free for thousands of years, and it show no signs of a slowdown.

...radio and broadcast TV are free. Cable, Satellite, and PPV are alive and well.

...there is that whole FOSS thing. Microsoft and Apple just announced they earned how many Billions?

You just need a business model that allows you offer more value than "free".

Re:Anti-dumping laws

[_0xd0ad]

Anti-dumping laws are designed to prevent someone (who has the ability to make a high initial investment) from gaining a monopoly by selling product at a loss in order to drive competitors out of business. The intent of this, obviously, would be to gain a monopoly, then raise prices exorbitantly high and make back their original loss quickly. Then with their monopoly they would be fairly immune to up-coming competitors, since a high initial investment would then be required to enter the market, and the company dominating the market could simply drop their prices again to force small competitors to go bankrupt.

If you're profiting from it all along, you're not "dumping"... and if you do drive the higher-priced competition out of business and happen to gain a dominant position in the market, you still can't price-gouge anyway because if giving it away is a viable business option then there's no barrier to entry into the market. If you tried to gouge prices someone could just undercut you similarly.