Slashdot Mirror
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.
a million nerds rejoice!
My right hand might be busy
And suing and losing is great Streisand effect publicity. Nicely done
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
In your story, you link to everything else - are you prudes? ;-)
Anyway, where do they get their stuff from? Its free and its not pirated? Hm...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
But hey, you got your own flagpole now.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
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.
In the article they say that those are teasers that are put there by the companies themselves as a form of promotion.
RedTube get a cut of all the people that sign up in this method too.
professional porn producers put in extra effort with things like lighting, camera quality/angles, timing and the physical attributes of the 'models'
sites like xvideo and the like largely consist of amateurs filming themselves in a darkened room with the camera shaking all over the pace.
The professional porn producers should utilise those kind of free sites and offer "teasers". Some of the indie one are doing just that.....
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.
From the judge in TFA:
I was under the impression that rights holders were either paid for the use of their song on the radio, or they paid for it to be played on the radio. In either case, you can't play something on the radio without a license. If this guy holds the copyright to something RedTube streams, he can file a DMCA complaint. If not, he can FOAD.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
*PHEW*
It's time for big business to realize that capitalism does not require anyone to give you money for your offerings.
No, but it works so much better when you can arrange it that way.
Corporations have money, but no political power. Politicians have political power, but no money. It's a "no-brainer win-win" for both sides.
Don't like it? Well, looks like you should have picked your parents with a little more care, doesn't it? Personal Responsibility, FTW!
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
>>>right hand might be busy
Really? I use my right hand for my mouse. Gotta navigate somehow through those Google Images.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I speak for the collective internet.....2 minutes later.
*FAP*
Porn wants to be sticky, information wants to be free...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
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.
You can't handle the truth.
But it doesn't matter. There wasn't even a DMCA takedown notice or anything with copyright infringement. This was a guy who tried to say that something was illegal simply because he couldn't compete with it.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
because now my girlfriend won't get sued by a prostitute for doing it for free.
(I'm an AC, because everyone knows that people with accounts here don't have girlfriends)
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.
Every claim but one got hammered with attorney fees.
The one that got dismissed, but not hit with attorney fees was a claim based on a California statute that bars a vendor from selling or giving a product away for less than the vendor paid for it. Again, the plaintiff lost that one, but the defendant didn't get SLAPP sanctions for that.
SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation. Anti-SLAPP laws are enacted to keep people from using crap lawsuits (or fear of them from) stifling free speech.
Reflect back on McDonalds' legal attack on the people who criticized its food. Anti-SLAPP laws are enacted to punish that kind of crap.
...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".
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
A pay site with only images, huh? That makes me feel nostalgic.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Then grabbed a sock.
--- Need web hosting?
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.
The sites only free because it's covered in advertising. If that were illegal, wouldn't that make the entire internet illegal?