For the most part, the VHS-Era was before the Internet and large-scale file-swapping. VHS tapes are also not digital content, and, thus, could not just be ripped and posted to the Internet by anybody with a computer. But, mostly, the fact that the VHS-Era pre-dated the "File-Sharing Era." Now, I'm guessing you are also wondering about organized crime, distributors and stores who were making bootleg copies of movies and selling them? While incredibly profitable to the criminals, they still had substantial costs involved with "manufacturing and distributing" their product, as it was an actual physical piece (not a digital file on a server somewhere). So, while hundreds and thousands of bootleg copies of VHS product hurt the bottom-line, it did not have the same destructive impact of today's Internet distributing massive bootlegs for free. Most VHS bootlegs were still being purchased (usually unknowingly) by consumers, who were also still buying genuine product as well. Today's Internet pirates and downloaders are category killers, slowly destroying the industry they are exploiting because nobody but the thieves makes any money whatsoever. And, again, the massive scale. Also, Internet piracy is very difficult to track physically, identify the thieves and shut down their websites (if they're even located in the U.S. to begin with). So, while not an "answer" to your question, my argument would be that, it was circumstances and the prevailing technology that insulated the industry during the VHS-Era, not anything clever the industry was doing.
ramsey, there was absolutely no reason for you to qualify your points with your consumer credentials. all of your points are valid and on point. 1. as i mentioned a few posts above, you are demonstrating that free market competition leads you to purchase what you perceive to be higher quality product. 2. by joining the content producer website, you are a paying customer and good citizen who supports the market. you are not a surfer enjoying illegal site rips. 3. again, you as a consumer who has decided that the cost of blu-ray is too prohibitive, are participating in the free market by helping to decide where the prices are set. Edited by - arkdvd on 8/16/2009 4:47:00 PM
I think a huge issue with pirating is search engine placement. I just did a search for this hot new girl with a big butt, I spotted on Jules Jordan's site. The first result for her name was not her agency, a DVD shop or production company, it was a Forum known for posting free scenes. This is a common occurrence for me when I search a title or star in google. The majority of first page results are tube sites, torrent sites and forums. Free porn is everywhere and it takes no effort to find and download it...
Here's a perfect example of what many of us are talking about regarding outright theft of finished product. We have a movie called Not the Cosbys XXX which has received 260,000 views of the G-rated promo trailer on YouTube and is selling pretty damn good. Not as good as not the Bradys XXX but very decent and in line with our other parodies. Most seem to love the movie and I am sure many after watching the clip on YouTube went out and purchased the DVD while others will soon purchase it through our agreement with AEBN. Now once in a while I like to read some of the comments left by viewers on YouTube and a response left by someone today sums up our entire situation. The response regarding our Not the Cosbys XXX movie reads: I went to the website and found out that its about 2 hours long and that you can download it on Vuze and that is what I'm bout to do. I seen the xxx trailer on their website and it was just like this one except it showed someone giving head it was crazy cool................... Don't Judge me...... LOL But seriously.. Don't Judge Me. END OF VIEWER's MESSAGE. So folks you do the math and figure it out. I would easily trade each tube and torrent theft for 5 cents however that will never happen on their end of things so those thinking that is the solution are correct and wrong at the same time. I just wanted those who read this thread to see something so wonderfully simple yet so patently fucked up. By the way we just held the full cast reading for Not the Bradys XXX #3 today and it was wonderful. We have some new surprises in that movie that some of you might love. If you want to see the trailer for Not the Cosby Show XXX visit YouTube and search for Cosby Show Porn. Thou Shalt Not Steal!!!! I hope it haunts every mother fucker who loves porn and/or music yet downloads for free.
Jeff, there is something I'd like to know. When you make those parody pornos, do you make some kind of an arrangement with the authors of the originals?
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imsorry Deactivated User
Fortune presents gifts not according to the book. 43 Posts 8/09
Hi Rosco, As someone mentioned, this can be a round and round issue. For your first point, the fact is that (most) people can't steal a seat for the concert. If they could with little or no risk to themselves, what are the odds they will pay the 87 bucks? As to the other points, I'm not suggesting 'my' money is less important. I buy porn, too, and I, too, get frustrated when I don't feel I received my money's worth. As a consumer, I stay aware of what products I like and don't, what studios I like and don't, what girls I like and don't. I let the money I do spend talk. The money I spend on porn is entertainment money, though; if I go to a restaurant, where the food is 'ok' and the ambiance is 'ok' and the service is 'ok' and the parking is horrid, I probably won't go back. I don't demand a refund for an 'ok' experience, as the money I spent to eat out was disposable income. I'm not suggesting anyone either 'shut up'; criticism goes a LONG way towards improving the quality of the products people enjoy. I was just talking with Billy Watson about how many of the emails he received shaped and guided the many sites he shoots for. Nor do I suggest they 'just take it'; I'm just sayin that when you sit through a whole movie, it's not fair to then demand a refund. Regards, John
Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. George Carlin 1567 Posts 2/07
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 12:44PM
Call me crazy but, I don't really think there is an alternative business model. There is a thing called keeping up with the times, you cannot stop the wheels of technology. Vivid has done a great job at that throughout the years. One thing Steven Hirsch is not is stupid. He has made it his business to be a leader, first blu ray, etc. I think the way to go is the way we are going. Make really good movies and they sell. B Skow has proven this week in and week out. Our sales are going up because we are producing excellent movies that not only get great reviews, but the end user loves. In the last month and a half, so many guys on this site, who don't have any love for Vivid have been turned around because they saw movies like Hannas House, The Pinch and Raylenes Dirty Work. We are becoming extremely consistent with great product. Give the customer what they want, you will do fine. Listen to the customer. That is what we are doing here. You guys speak and we hear you. We act on what you say. We will keep fine tuning it with your help. Big news is coming out of the Vivid Camp in the coming weeks. Stay tuned.
@BigBobxxx: That's a very good post with some excellent points. I didn't think of it like that, you're right it is perhaps a bit more complicated than before. But I'm sure there will be some sort of solution to it in time and who knows maybe with legal backing to. I do sympathise with performers, producers and directors in the industry though.
Wow you couldn't possibly be any more wrong. EVERY SINGLE adult release is available on Rapidshare and torrent sites. It's not just 'throwaway content' on those sites. I've had over 85,000 links removed from those sites on behalf of Jeff's X-Play movies, Digital Playground, Andrew Blake, Girlfriends, Kick Ass, Third World, Viv Thomas, Pink Visual, Shane's World, Hush Hush and Cezar Capone. All studios worth paying for. You can go on porn sharing forums right now and download the entire library of some of the best selling producers and usually within 3 days of each DVD's street date. Your statement is 100% incorrect.
A lot of torrent sites now comply with DMCA notices to cover their asses just in case. There are still many that don't, but their numbers are dwindling. The problem with the torrent sites is that even for the ones that do, there are so few adult studios that actually take the time to send DMCA notices.
You guys know I like to rail on piracy, but as pointed out in this thread it is not the ONLY cause for our decline. Piracy is huge no doubt, but all the other reasons are valid as well. 1. Piracy. Studios need to take control of their content. Sitting on your hands will accomplish nothing. Having "a guy" spend 2 hours a week isn't enough. You need a fulltime worker who's only job is to police your content. I've sent over 2000 DMCAs comprising over 85,000 links in the last 4 months alone. Studios should be sending multiple DMCAs every single day including weekends. Pirates don't take weekends off. I spent my weekend figuring out how to decrypt container formats for pirates trying to mask URLs, and then sending a shitload of DMCAs once this was accomplished. Either you take this job seriously, or like Dalton says in Road House - "there's always barber college" 2. Stop ripping off the consumer. Trust me, this frustrates the legit studios almost as badly as piracy. Our industry has ripped off the consumer for a long time and now the roles are reversed. That being said, there's been honest studios and honest consumers throughout the whole time, it just sucks that they get caught up and lumped in with the bad ones. 3. Shitty foreign distribution. Much of our piracy comes from countries where you can't legitimately get our products. If studios would improve foreign distribution, that would help. 4. ^ But that has to go hand in hand with more reasonable digital copyright laws. Won't do us any good to ship 1000 units to Germany so that 800 of them get ripped and uploaded to rapidshare. We need tougher copyright laws agreed upon by most all industrialized nations. 5. Anonymous tip off to Tony Perkins and Robert Peters that little Johnny can watch hardcore german fisting on whatevertube.com. Let the Christian fundies turn their attention there for a while. Even if it means tougher regulations on what studios can put out in the open on the internet, I'm for it. I don't think that you should be able to see anal sex on the "Are you 18?" page of your site. Better age verification and keep porn away from kid's eyes. You'll hear a lot of bitching from studios about piracy, but I'm here to tell you that maybe 50% of them actually do anything about it. The rest are just waiting for someone else to solve their problems. They complain about their content being on piracy sites and run to AVN or here to complain about it, all the while a simple email with 3-4 statements and a copy/pasted list of URLs would have got that content removed within hours.
I said that not to say you'll ever get anything from youtube, pornhub, etc., I know that. Personally I'd love for someone to create an iTunes of porn, like hotmovies or clips4sale but something that doesn't suck like those services do. Either way, I just think that if one looks at the tube site viewers as the enemies instead of potential customers... I don't know...
The one piracy-proof approach I can think of is file size brute-force. Raw Blu-Ray media is too large to be effectively distributed via the internet. The 1080p stuff can be compressed to smaller file sizes, but only at a loss in quality. So it's possible that a high-end company like Vivid could cater to people who are willing to pay for stuff with extremely high production values, that can only be delivered via a physical Blu-Ray disc. Another thing they could do is to shoot with many cameras (including POV) and put all the footage on the Blu-Ray, and you'd need a true Blu-Ray player to run it... the consumer could choose to watch the same scene from whatever style they go for, and they could re-watch their favorite scenes from many angles in 1080p, giving them more bang for their bucks. This sort of thing would be effectively impossible to pirate without losing all those benefits, because of the amount of data involved. There would be more production cost due to all the HD cameras involved and the complexity of the Blu-Ray, but you wouldn't have to pay any more for the performers. So, if you could talk Tera Patrick into doing a 45-minute gangbang, you could shoot it with half a dozen cameras and fill an entire disc with just that scene.
I've sent plenty of DMCAs for Blu Ray rips. Compressed like you said, but the fact that they have to break it up into 200 rar files hasn't stopped them at all. And there's nothing worse than tube quality, yet that hasn't stopped them from being rampantly popular. I'm all for us making higher quality visuals, but I don't see that as solving anything. Keep in mind that a large percentage of piracy rips on the internet come from websites and not physical media. I think studios shouldn't allow downloading from their paysites on accounts that are 3day trials. And suspension of any paysite accounts accessed by more than 2 different IPs within an hour. This would drastically cutdown the pirates that sign up for a 3 day trial and scrape the site as well as password traders.
Good points HW but do a google search for "Raylene's Dirty work" and the entire first page it returns is torrent sites where you can get it for free. I don't care how good your movies are, they get stolen just as fast as the bad ones.
many of the piracy sites are exploiting Google as well. They make it so that no matter what you search for you will get "false positive" results. So when you go to a torrent site, search for your works and see 4 or 5 matches at the top, be aware that many times those top 5 matches are simply ads for Usenet, etc. But Mike's absolutely right, every studio is getting ripped and every new release is getting ripped. Doesn't matter who you are.
Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. George Carlin 1567 Posts 2/07
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 5:20PM
No doubt. There is a certain element out there that just flat out steal stuff. We are working on some solutions now. If you go after 500 guys today and they all take it down, there are 500 more tomorrow. I think the only solution is to sue each of them.
The "they'll just re-upload it" is something that people hear other people say and then repeat it without having any idea if it's actually true or not. It's the Richard Gere/gerbil statement of the porn piracy debate. In my experience there is very little re-uploading. The prolific uploaders are all about volume, so they don't have time to work backwards. They uploaded 100 titles this week...if 25 of them get taken down, they don't go back and re-upload them because they have 100 titles to upload this week. There is very little re-uploading on both the forums and the torrent sites. What you might see is multiple uploads of the same thing because each of those uploaders is hoping to get enough downloads to meet the payout thresholds from filehosts, but very few individuals go back and re-upload something you've had taken down. I've had every mention of Blackzilla removed from the largest porn forum, and none of it has been re-uploaded. Furthermore, the people that re-upload it, only serve to motivate me even more. I'm not about to back down from something because I'm worried the other guy will retort. To roll over for people like that is akin to not fighting someone because you're worried they'll hit back, and it's a pretty weak pussout. I love nothing more than knowing that dude spent hours re-uploading all the stuff, and I'll spend 5 minutes gathering the URLs and having them taken down. Like the dad says in 'Friday'..."that's my pleasha!" Now tube sites might have more re-uploading, that's hard to gauge, but keep in mind that the piracy problem is largely a 3-pronged one (Tube, Torrent, Forum). I leave out things like usenet because their numbers are so small. I also think that the forum and torrent problem should get more attention because on those sites you get more uploaders marketing the titles the same way the studio does, using the actual title, performers, etc. Those are more likely to get scooped up by Google and thus snare more of your potential buyers. Tube sites on the other hand typically use more generic titles like "red head gets fucked", which appeals to your looky-loos and random wankers that probably aren't a potential paying customer. Just my $0.02 Edited by - nateglass on 8/17/2009 5:48:05 PM
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 6:01PM
Nateglass, Although I agree with some of your points, I think you are missing lots of uncontrollable factors of the industry decline both related to piracy and not. 1). Economy - when the US is in the worst recession since WWII, many companies in many industries have, are, will fail. Look at industries that are either dying, barely surviving, or declining recently where copyright issues are irrelevant like automotive, energy, medical, etc. etc. As many business analysts have said, porn is not a recession proof sector esp. when people don’t have money! 2). Mass unemployment – when national unemployment is almost 10% and outsourcing continues at scary rate, at very least that’s 10% of working adults (target demographic for porn consumers) that will have little or no income to purchase porn and this doesn’t include underemployed people. 3). Human adaptation – throughout history humans are very good at adapting and acquiring high priced (relative) commodities for cheap. Whether you are looking at prohibition, VHS movies, music on cassette tapes, or porn, there will always be significant piracy activity regardless of laws or enforcement. Right or wrong, motivation to pirate is correlated with commodity price. Are you surprised when there’s piracy of $30-35 porn movies on Blu-Ray. 4). Using bad business models - lack of changing business models and focusing on improving web services has hurt the industry immensely (I believe many more times magnitude than piracy). RIAA, MPAA, television networks (ad revenue models), automotive manufacturers (GM, Chrysler), news/papers (digital services) etc etc are all failing cause they did not adapt to changing business environments and public demand. Same with porn companies. Apple is an example that did change and look at them now. 5). Bad math - piracy zealots claim financial impact in astronomical by sketchy math. Until I see a reasonable 3rd party study using good methods/logic showing how many potential customers were deterred from buying by piracy (I’m sure pirates who don’t pirate wouldn’t mean they buy the product so revenue would still be down esp. in today’s environment), then I will remain to be hugely skeptical of the proposed large financial impact of piracy. Scape goating piracy as a main reason of an industry’s decline is like a person complaining that s/he is not losing weight after changing from 2% to skim milk (savings 100cal), but still eating a BigMacs (700cal) for dinner. Even if you cut piracy activity by 80%, you would still have an industry in decline because the economy, personal fiancés, and *poor industrial business models*. You know porn industry hasn’t come far when a teenager could direct a majority of straight porn released these days (talk, suck, fuck, money shot)! I do agree with you completely that people need to stop victimizing themselves and do something if they think somethings a problem.
Forgive me as I don't know all the facts but didn't Vivid start a lawsuit against one of the tube sites? It was settled out of court, I read. Did anything good come out of it?
Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. George Carlin 1567 Posts 2/07
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 6:04PM
We are working with Paypal right now not to accept payment from these sites. You are talking about a 10 hour download with shitty quality, they try to upsell to a paid movie. Everyone is trying to make money, even the thieves.
Briefly, behind every thriving torrent site is a thriving forum. Pirates essentially establish 'communities' and view themselves as doing a service to that 'community' (with nearly zero mention of the financial payoff associated with that 'service') and while there are financial motivations, many pirates take pleasure in feeling they're 'sticking it to the man.' Especially if that man is, as one poster touched on, a porn producer apparently exploiting women for profit. The hackers and crackers who often support these forums are often more interested the prestige associated with the posting of stolen data, than they are in any payout. In the three days it can take to find and report a torrent from one site, a dozen other sites will scrape that torrent and host it. It's my (admittedly personal) view that DMCA notices do little more than yell in a hurricane. Until we reach a point where we can effectively seal and control our electronic borders, and prosecute criminals within those borders, the current piracy debate will continue to focus on approaches and models on par with 'stop, drop, and roll.'; better than nothing, but hardly going to keep the shop from burning down. I do think that in time, the shift will move from DVD distribution to set-top distribution, a sort of porn-cable subscription that will stream content to both a PC and a television, for a flat monthly fee, and the option for micro payments (i.e. the iTunes model.) The only thing the industry can do better than the pirates is enable convenience; downloading torrents can take days, be hard to find, and requires a measure of technical skill that a set-top box doesn't (shouldn't.) This will have the additional benefit of providing a delivery method that is on a proprietary system and format (i.e. cannot be easily copied or redistributed), making titles released on these boxes far less susceptible to piracy. Your local cable company is already hard at work to build one of those systems as we speak... John Edited by - JohnHenry on 8/17/2009 6:23:30 PM
We didn't bring a compass 'cause we ain't got nowhere to go 173 Posts 4/09
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 6:29PM
Now that's actually something that sounds constructive. Since only the content gets removed, not the forum posts, you'd even be left with forum posts advertising your product (if I'm not mistaken about the process). I also agree with your take on the tube sites. The big websites have obviously arrived at this conclusion a long time ago and use them as a promotion tool. And to my surprise, you seem able to understand that not every tube (or even torrent) download is actually a lost customer. Something entertainment industry execs will probably never grasp. Or maybe in about ten years, when the piracy-downloading college students of today have become the execs of tomorrow. Now can you please talk to Quasar about this before he commits suicide out of frustration? He seems to nice a guy to get so worked up over this issue all the time.
Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. George Carlin 1567 Posts 2/07
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 7:04PM
I find it amusing that they want to stick it to the man for exploiting women as they jerk off on their computers. What a joke. I guess anyone can justify their wrong doings. It still doesn't make it right.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 7:12PM
I think BitTorrent's impact is significant, but will stay legal per the ‘torrent = protocol’ argument. Also, I think BitTorrent's financial impact is grossly over-estimated because if I remember right the broadband ISPs found torrent traffic is usually asymmetric, in that x BT traffic does not equal 1 person. I would say BT isn't as nearly as ubiquitous in general public as prior P2P methods (i.e., Napster) largely due to unfriendliness, even though it comprises a large amount of network traffic. Therefore, I'm guessing there aren't as many BT users compared to past P2P methods (only talking about US). One could argue the financial impact is lower if there are less BT users diverted from sales (if you buy 1 BT user = 1 diverted customer). Related to your earlier comment on international CP Right laws, although international torrent traffic is significant, I don't see many countries who host pirates (China) make any headway. Hopefully any future CP Right laws will be reasonable, include Fair Use clauses, and not restrict customers like so many prior attempts. Bottom line, the industry needed to change its strategy & tactics years ago and they are paying for it now unfortunately at the expense of hard working industrial people and consumers. It would have been much easier & cheaper to lessen/prevent industry decline by using improving products/services, technology & business ingenuity than to try and keep up with pirates.
pornography wasn't sex but fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world 12377 Posts 9/07
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 7:23PM
I suspect that the pirates are either not actually based in China, or are bribing local officials to be left alone. China has certainly proved itself capable and efficient in restricting their population's access to the internet, despite all the claims that 'you can't control the web.'
I stated that piracy isn't the ONLY reason, but piracy is a huge problem. But piracy is really just a child of 'free porn' and the industry itself started the 'free porn' bandwagon by putting tons of free content on their websites. The point that I try to make with piracy is that if studios would take more action, piracy wouldn't amount to anything. I've even suggested previously that each studio find their one "super fan" and give them free porn in return for policing their content for them. The legit fans are great at finding stolen content and reporting it to us.
That is exactly correct. In fact if the uploader wants to re-upload their files, they have to edit the forum post which bumps it to the top, making it easier to locate if you scan all the posts to that site everyday. I usually leave the screenshots up so that they function as a teaser, providing of course that one would be unable to find that same title elsewhere on the site.
You want some irony, on one of the forums the other day I read a post by an uploader complaining that someone else had downloaded HIS upload of a Third World Media DVD and re-uploaded it as their own. When another poster commented that the internet is all about stealing, the original poster said: "Yeah but that was my hard work uploading it, just because it's the internet doesn't make it right for him to steal it." Talk about dripping with irony...
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 7:43PM
I think piracy will always be a problem no matter how much proactivity. I think it's bad when piracy overshadows bad business models and especially when it gets attributed as main or grossly over-estimated cause of downfalls in industries (which I think happens too much). But I'll agree to disagree. Your superfan idea is good/creative one.
I won't rehash everything I've mentioned already here, but I'll point out that when a company is taking the risk to publish movies on Blu-Ray, they're already looking at steep production costs in the first place. For a run of 500 Blu-Ray discs, you're looking at a base duplication costs of $6 a disc. Just the disc, and the royalties to use Blu Ray technology. One can surmise how the economy is in decline, but it doesn't take a genius to see how similar forms of entertainment (I'll use less piracy prone video games as an example) are faring: "For the first half of the year (of 2009), the industry's overall sales in the U.S. were down 12% to $7.3 billion." LA Times This is compared to the adult industry being down roughly %22 in the last year. SF Gate Fundamentally, I think the only major difference is that it's much more difficult to pirate console games than it is to pirate video. Even so, it would be foolish to ignore that some of the video game industry numbers are down because computer games are pirated as well. It's not so much that potential consumers are deterred from buying porn because of torrent sites, but rather that torrent sites enable people who would otherwise be consumers a free alternative. It's the internet version of setting up a stand next to the supermarket with signs saying "Free Beer!" and wondering why beer sales at the supermarket are down. John
That's a very good point. Another problem is payment methods for digital distribution/website subscriptions. Nearly all American websites still depend on credit card billing as payment and offer no convenient alternatives for international consumers. Oh, and by "international", I don't just mean UK. Out of curiosity, I've looked up some statistics for several 'tube' sites. On average, only 20% users are American, the rest is spread all over the globe. The predominant age is between 18-24. 18-24 is IMO the group that is very unlikely to have credit cards, so these people basically have no easy means of paying for 'goods' even if they wanted to. This needs to be improved. If you're selling something over the Internet, you have the potential to sell it to the entire world, especially when it comes to digital content.
Death is caused by swallowing small amounts of saliva over a long period of time. George Carlin 1567 Posts 2/07
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 7:54PM
Yes, how dare you steal what i stole from somebody else. No honor amongst thieves. I went into Best Buy and stole some dvds, then my friend ripped me off of my dvds when he came over. I call that karma to the umpteenth degree.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” - Kierkegaard 2684 Posts 8/09
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 8:26PM
I'm a little confused about your first point. I understand the BluRay production costs are high, but the BluRay associated costs is a byproduct of the technology correct? I have no experience with media production, but if BluRay is so expense, why do companies use BluRay technology? Back during format wars, I thought I read that HD-DVD was cheaper to produce in bulk. Also, I don't understand why companies haven't developed more customer targeted digital solutions (direct streaming, faster transfer). Where is porn's Hulu? In regards to your 2nd point, there are many free non-BT free alternatives like Tube sites & HTML transfer. BTW, there's a good article I came across http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/markets/china/article6732410.ece related to ridiculous costs of BluRay if you have not read it. I am getting off topic, so I'll go back to the shadows.
We didn't bring a compass 'cause we ain't got nowhere to go 173 Posts 4/09
Posted - Aug 17 2009 : 8:45PM
Disagree on the credit card part. Here in Germany, CCs are still not very common, but it's easy to get one. You have to have disposable income, though. That's where I disagree with most of the posters here. You could get rid of all tubes and torrents now and still don't have a significant rise in sales. The money is simply not available. The whole system is fucked up through years of overflow and it will take years to nurture the present free porn 'consumers' back to paying consumers. Agree on the need to improve distribution of content. If you sell more, you can live with a certain amount of loss due to piracy. Shutting down the electronic borders will be no solution, the industry needs to open up more. And to stop viewing their potential customers as enemies, but rather develop strategies to get them back to paying for the content.
Hiya Kenobi, I read the article; interesting stuff, but there's still a market slope at work here. Compact Discs weren't sold for the same price as cassettes. Now, the actual materials to make a CD were actually cheaper than the materials to manufacture a tape, but the two never balanced. Why? The consumer gets a higher quality product from a CD than he does from a cassette. Same with DVD and VHS; buying a movie on VHS has always been cheaper than DVD, because the perceived quality of DVD commands a higher market price. Blu-Ray isn't being seen as a cheaper way for media to be sold, it's being seen as a way to 'build value' (i.e. ratchet up the retail cost) of a movie. The comparative prices of BluRay media likely won't fall for another two or three years, and even then it'll be 2015 or 2016 before BluRay replaces DVD the way DVD replaced VHS. Incidentally, I was quoting BluRay replication costs, when I quoted $6 a disc; if I wanted to burn them at home, I'm looking at nearly $20 per 50 gig disc (25 gig discs run about $3 each, but aren't going to be large enough to hold a full feature, unless you heavily compress the video.) This is precisely why companies offer BluRay; it's a way of selling a $15 movie for $30. Someone with a $2000 HD 1080p 120 hertz 60" TV and a $400 BluRay player wants more than standard DVD definition, otherwise he wouldn't have already made the $2500 investment in his television. Sadly, porn's 'hulu' today are the tube sites. The traffic the tube sites get makes Hulu look like genealogy website, in terms of traffic; the problem is that consumers surfing for free porn on tube sites attract advertising dollars on par with Curling. If Proctor&Gamble, General Mills, Honda, and Budweiser thought it'd be profitable in the long run for their brand to advertise on tube sites, that'd be another story. Finally, high speed digital transfers are probably five years away. I see ads all the time for fiber optic lines; when they become ubiquitous, combined with (as I mentioned before) set boxes designed specifically to receive quality content for a flat rate, you'll see a resurgence in the porn industry. Right now, the hardware just isn't there yet. John
Securing borders isn't the same as shutting them down. I'm simply contending that so long as milk is being given away, many people aren't likely to pay for it. John
1 download does not translate into 1 lost sale. that's just common sense. people need to step back from their ego-centric experience and possible rationalizations to understand in the real world, one download translates to HUNDREDS of lost sales. for one specific example, southern california residents can go to santa ana and do a walking tour through the bristol/mcfadden area apartment complexes. those units are densely populated and house hundreds of PAYING customers. enterprising infringers performing a single download, rip content to their hard drives, burn them to DVD-R, and distribute the old fashioned way: door-to-door sales at a cut rate. it works and they clean up. the same process is performed by a less mobile infringer as he sets up "shop" in a cardboard box across the street (NW corner) from mater dei high school. location is everything, because he gets the bus stop traffic, the kids walking home from school, and the people who come to eat at the chicken joint he's located directly in front of. what's worse is that you will find some of the licensed CD music shops in the area openly displaying cases of pirated DVDs. all downloaded from the internet. these examples explode the trite mummery of "downloaders weren't going to purchase anyway" and "one download does not equal one lost sale."
I would also add that Bit Torrent is a great technology, I have no problems with that...just the way it's exploited by thieves. And to whomever said it's "difficult"...that's completely wrong. Torrent Sites aren't hard to find and The Pirate Bay's Alexa rank verifies that. To download a torrent all you need do is search in a little text box, just like Google. Click the link of the search result you get...just like google. Click download...just like iTunes. Have a piece of software needed to download the file...just like iTunes. Wait for the download to complete...just like iTunes. When the download completes you only need to double click the file that you downloaded and watch the movie play with Windows Media Player. Not that hard...and it's certainly no harder than syncing your iPhone, setting up a blog, or customizing your Myspace...all things that the current youth have no problems doing. The technology might be difficult for older folks, but not the younger or more tech savvy generation.
How easy they are to get will vary per country, but the idea is that you shouldn't be required to burden yourself with 'credit' if you just want to watch (buy) a videoclip online.
Sorry but this is BS. Most major banks, at least in the US, offer debit cards with Visa or MasterCard logos on them that can be used on the internet as a credit card but take the money from a checking or savings account. They can pay for goods if they wanted to.
Flash, I will gladly join you in blaming American consumer for stealing shit off the Internet... and generally causing global economy crisis. However, I wasn't talking about the US. In other parts of the world, Visa/MC don't offer the same kind of services. There is Visa Debit in UK but only UK, as far as I know.
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the unknown pervert Deactivated User
I'd like to stay but I've got a plane to catch. 3243 Posts 5/06
Posted - Aug 18 2009 : 12:01PM
In the U.S. banks are more likely to give out too many credit cards to 18-24 year olds than not enough.
