Hi there, In the past few years I noticed there is a slump in sales when it comes to adult paysites. I have worked in the paysite industry for a while and saw the nice sales from the eary 2000's to the slump of what is now. From 2000 onwards there has been a huge surge of filehosting sites such as rapidshare, that most like led to the slump in sales for the adult paysite industry. I blame this on piraters using filehosting sites such as rapidshare to host the pirated movies. For those who dont know what is RapidShare. Rapidshare.com was launched in 2006, rapidshare.de was launched a few years prior. It is a file hosting service which offer free service, but with limitations such as a 2 hour wait between downloads. It is also a pay service, for those who cant afford the wait between downloads. Rapidshare has about 4.5 petabytes of storage, which I am pretty sure about 90% are unlicensed media such as porn and movies, along with warez. I know the topic about porn piracy has been talked about it before but I would like to add my 2 cents. The government? crackdown on p2p filesharing but they seem to ignore on filehosting sites such as rapidshare. I was surfing around, viewing sites such as alexa.com and found that Rapidshare is currently ranked 11, it is ranked behind big sites such as yahoo, youtube, google, myspace, facebook and wikipedia http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global?=none I also checking out websiteoutlook, I dont know if the data is legitimate, although it's data does correlate with alexa.com. From this site, it tells how much a site makes in US dollars. Rapidshare is worth $219 Million, makes $300000 daily http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.rapidshare.com Megaupload is worth $185.31 Million, makes $253848 a day http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.megaupload.com You can even type in your own paysite in the url and see how much that site make and it pales in comparison to rapidshare: a sample of paysites example below: sex.com - net worth: $74153.4 http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.sex.com thehun.com - net worth: $649035.7 http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.thehun.com
I did some even more researching on wikipedia ( dont know this is considered a reliable source at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RapidShare and they recently got a lawsuit with GEMA and rapidshare won the case, because as a operater they are not liable to get sued when a user upload offensive content at their site. So basically sites like rapidshare are unstoppable and they need an intervention. Edited by - wes on Feb 14 2008
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conquistador Deactivated User
Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 2:22AM
What government do you suggest does this? And how? Who would be happy about their ISP filtering their surfing? People would switch to ISPs that provided with the content they want. Hopefully some folks who pirate it are doing it in what might be a bit more of an ethical way, like buying quality content which they have previously pirated and approved of. You wouldn't buy a car without test driving and doing lots of research first so why is it shocking that consumers would like to see a movie or hear an album so they don't waste their hard earned dollars or crap they regret. Stealing from people sucks and so does buying something that you regret. It's not all that fucked up that people have a desire to test drive things. It is also unrealistic to think it can or will be stopped. I don't know, maybe a worldwide ban on DVD burners? It is not possible to plug the analog hole, if it can be viewed it can be reproduced. My suggestion, you can see where the money is going in your research and it is time to buy some servers and set up your own file hosting site. Piracy is worldwide and can't be stopped in any feasible way asking to even attempt to somehow do something about is kind of like taking a pointed stick to a hydrogen bomb fight.
A) For a porn site to be more profitable pay per scene is really the way to go. Paying 40$ a month for a site that sometimes don't even update once a month(looking at you webmodels) isn't fair for the customer. Or even pay by year. B) Rapidshare is ONE site and its used for alot more than porn. Tv show , personal file sharing, video game roms, music , movies and alot more. There are atleast 100+ active porn sites and thats not even going into the inactive ones. C) Why the slump in sales? Firstly Porn companies are going higher quality for movies. Just look at things like the amazing stuff SexZ is releasing. Not to mention half the paysites just rehash the same content rerelease old scenes saying they are new and sometimes not update for weeks. When paying by the month not getting a update for a month is ridiculous. D) Prices are ridiculous. Not to mention both of your links arent even to porn paysites. Lastly if you took a combined total of the amount of money ALL the paysites are making it would be quite a impressive amount. And the people if they were cut off from rapidshare would not go out and buy porn. They would just masturbate to sample videos and trailers. Most people don't pay for stuff for a reason. Solution. Itunes for porn. Every single scene known to man for 1.99 a scene. Pay per scene encoding in the scene to try and prevent people from filesharing. Higher quality studios can keep releasing dvds because their niche markets will keep buying it. I also think porn sales have dropped due to lack of movies with plots. When a porno has a plot it all ties together and you actually want to watch all the scenes. When they don't you kinda wanna just see the scene with the girl you want to see the most. What do I do for porn. A) Use pay per minute sites buy a bunch of minutes and watch scenes of fave gals. B) Sample movies and trailers and whatnot C) Occasional buy of a higher quality full porn movies . (Pirates and whatnot) Hell I've joined a couple of porn sites for a trial period. I just don't see the current method as being fair.
Sorry about that, I didnt read my original post clearly, but here are 3 popular pornpaysite examples below ( all pales in comparison to Rapidshare ): Videobox.com - ( multiple movies added daily ) [ $10 per month membership, $18 per month for premium ] http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.videobox.com Net Worth : $1.38 Million Daily Ads Revenue : $1884.49 Realitykings - multiple sites, incl: welivetogether, flowertucci, roundandbrown etc... $25 a month membership. http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.realitykings.com Net Worth : $11.15 Million Daily Ads Revenue : $15279.78 Bangbros - multiple sites, incl: assparade etc... $24 a month http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.bangbros.com Net Worth : $6.39 Million Daily Ads Revenue : $8755.05 I assume all the revenue the affliates who also work for the 3 paysites above are also counted. Edited by - wes on 2/14/2008 3:18:51 AM
WELL AGAIN. Rapidshare is more than just porn. More than just 1 site. If you took the combined revunes of EVERY pay porn site. You'd probably lap rapidshare. Or atleast overcome it.
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conquistador Deactivated User
Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 3:44AM
This comparison is very unfair. Rapidshare is used for all kinds of content, I have used it to share a zip of some hamster photos because my email wouldn't allow my file size. Porn pay sites are just for porn. Rapidshare's business has a much much larger potential client base. Remember when you are talking about pay sites you are leaving out the huge amount of people who are under age 18. Edited by - conquistador on 2/14/2008 3:45:24 AM
Piracy, as it relates to sales (or lack thereof) is a very complex problem. There are no easy solutions. Generally speaking, the people who steal content through P2P and other ways are basically good people who mainly do it just because they can and they've been burned too many times buying stuff they haven't had the opportunity to preview and finding that it's junk. I don't think the problem will ever completely go away. It could be slowed down with legal measures but that would cause a lot of ill will on the part of potential customers. Everyone who sells intellectual property is going to have to find a way to beat this eventually. Their very existence depends on it. And I don't think they can just start prosecuting everyone who rips off content. almost everyone has ripped off a song here or an album there or a video clip. Something. The only way it's going to stop is if people start actually caring and really seeing what they're doing as wrong. I'm not sure how that could be accomplished. People are inherrently selfish. Edited by - randomprecision on 2/14/2008 3:45:57 AM
Ok, If you combine with all the revenue from every paysite, it would not probably top of that of all the revenue that ALL the "free" filehosting sites make, if you combine sites like rapidshare + megaupload + depostifiles + mediafire + badongo and the other popular filehosting sites all together. Edited by - wes on 2/14/2008 4:46:20 AM
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conquistador Deactivated User
Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 5:11AM
I don't get the point of this comparison. I have totally no clue what it is trying to accomplish. Okay so file hosting sites make more money then porn sites. So more folks have needs for easy and free file hosting then want to sign up for sights where they can look at gaping asses, how does this surprise you in the least? Porn is a niche, not everyone is a porn fan but every computer user has to use files. Ever post a file to a host so you can access it from someone else's computer but don't want to waste a whole disc and your flash drive is already packed with crap? I find that to be very handy and far more useful then a porn site membership would be for me. [Image not found DB]
I know, it is only an estimate. The websiteoutlooks uses a scientific formulae like traffic rank, google pagerank , backlinks, traffic source, age of website, directory listing and other factors to get the possible monthly income, and total estimated worth of the website.
i'm pretty sure that sites like rapidshare don't allow you to host copyrighted or pornographic material. or may one and not the other. anyway, when they find out about it they delete it. you can't hold these sharing sites responsible. that's like blaming dvd burners for porn piracy. i also wouldn't blame the sales slumps on piracy. how many MORE sites do you think there are since 2000? do you think the growth in porn viewership is proportionate to that? i highly doubt it. you have more product, but not more people buying it. PLUS piracy. PLUS more expensive product. hence, less sales. there are probably more factors, but i doubt that piracy is mostly responsible.
A dvd burner is not needed to rip movies, encode, or upload to the web, so even doing something as ridiculous as banning dvd burners would have no effect on filesharing.
Just as with music there will always be alot of free porn on the internet. But with great quality, alot of updates and creative ideas to add value for the custumer there are alot of people who are prepared to use paysites. The entertainment industry should not focus on the people who will do some hustle to find free stuff. They should focus on adding value to their product.
Actually, rapidshare only deletes material if the original copyright owner complains, I tried to get them to remove some files of classic porn (because we distribute them for VCX and Video-x-Pix in Europe) and they refused to do it. Jacco
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conquistador Deactivated User
Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 3:15PM
Sorry this is slightly off topic but here seems like the place to ask. How does piracy work with something like television shows. For instance I could tape every episode of 30 Rock or I could download the whole season. So if I am already paying for cable to see the show am I pirating it download it to avoid the annoyance of having to fast forward through the commercials? I already have a VCR so I posses the option to watch the show without commercials legally from the beginning. This is a question that has been bugging me
Exactly. It could be safe & convenient. All the while having complete compatibility with your Computer, Portable Device, and Television(AppleTV). They also sell gift cards for Itunes at major retailers, so you don't actually need a credit card to sign up and buy, which is a major concern for many people hesitant on becoming members online. Think of the possibilities. As opposed to being restricted to one network of sites, you can pick and choose which scenes you want from a VAST collection Pornographers, Starlets, & Scene Types. Putting the viewers in complete control of what content they want and where they want to watch it...............Whether thats a good thing or not is yet to be determined lol Too bad Itunes will in all likelihood need the apocalypse to start selling Porno on their website.
Well, its the illegal form of distribution that makes it "pirating" The studio, production company and distributor have the rights to do what THEY want to do. Which is typically go on Cable, DVD, then syndication. If somebody rips the entire season of 30 Rock and uploads it. The ones downloading are presumably not going to tune into NBC, buy the DVDs and watch the syndicated re-runs. Cutting into the profits and maximum impact of advertisers, dvd distributors, retailers I believe if you watched the episodes and made a back up for yourself, it is not illegal or considered piracy
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conquistador Deactivated User
Hellhamster. 2947 Posts 10/03
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 3:50PM
I think you are right about this. There are people who tape Soap Operas every day for years and nobody comes after them. It may just be that it is not feasible to know who is taping what show though and not because networks do not frown upon it officially.
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Kensington Chapp Senior Citizen
Mine is the biggest. 610 Posts 7/07
Posted - Feb 14 2008 : 4:10PM
(*Puts hands in pockets, head bowed, turns on heel, walks away whistling tunelessly*)
At best, that will only stop it in countries that enact the ban. Who's going to police this? ISPs? They are the ones that will loose tons of money why household after household is disconnected. Only China style control would be able to have any effect. China is one of the worst piracy offenders but they are extremely effective at curbing political dissention.
Honestly the best thing porn can do is hope the mainstream studios figure out a solution and copy it. They spend many magnitudes more than the porn producers and their stuff is stolen almost as fast as its released. If you know where to look, you can see a dvd quality movie while its still in its theatrical run. Sometimes even before it hits the big screen. They are the ones in real trouble.
The REAL piracy isn't taking place on Rapidshare. It has, and always will, take place on Usenet newsgroups. Just to prove my point. Go to the front page of AdultDVDTalk. Now take a look at the top 10 Price searches. Using my Newsgroup providers search tool, 8 of those movies are available on Usenet for download right now. And I'm not talking DIVX conversions....these are complete DVD-4 or DVD-9 rips, so once you download and reassemble the parts, you have a complete ISO image of the ORIGINAL DVD, without any kind of compression or loss in quality at all. THAT is piracy. And it's been like this for as long as I can remember. Every once in awhile, I see some push to shut down some of the websites that index these illegal uploads to Usenet. But for all the ones that are shut down, 5 more pop up in their place. It's ridiculous. Regardless of the impact on porn sales, I also think one other thing is biting into the market. There is, quite simply, not a whole lot of "new stuff" left to show. We've got a decade of anal, gangbang, scat, piss, mock (or real) abuse, BDSM, cum gargling, bukkake,lesbian, TS, etc etc etc. What the hell else is there to show? Snuff films? I occasionally buy a porn title these days. But frankly...nothing new under the sun for me. So my money goes elsewhere.
Rapidshare doesnt allow pornographic materials on their website. I think they didnt deleted it because either they forgot, or not enough information, try emailing them again and maybe they will delete it. When you email rapidshare, just give them them the offending rapidshare URL link and screencaps URL link ( if the user upload a preview picture along with his pirated rapidshare link ), if there is no screencaps links, just give out the URL address of where you found that offending rapidshare link.
wes, GEMA is trying to get in that ass right now. long, protracted battle ahead. good post. piracy encompasses a lot more than rapidshare, but it's a good place to start.
LNL, real piracy occurs on both. if i'm a content thief, i don't need to settle for 8 out of 10. i can get 100 out of 100 titles, within 24 hours of street date, off of rapidshare, megaupload, and a few other file hosts. other people prefer usenet, and still others prefer torrents. as i'm sure you already know, it just depends on where the content thief is willing to look.
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tritone Deactivated User
1009 Posts 4/03
Posted - Feb 15 2008 : 8:05PM
Lube, While everything you said about the USENET is true, I still believe that rapidshare is the bigger "threat". The click-and-go accessibility of rapidshare makes it a much more likely outfit for casual downloaders. Understanding how to pull files from the USENET requires a small, though not insignificant, level of computer savvy. Also, since WWW communities have largely absorbed the USENET's original purpose (text discussions), its very existence is not common knowledge. These barriers have allowed it to remain under the radar for all these years.
Unless yer paying RS which most leechers don't. To download a DVD from RS would be huge. What like 8-10 different files? Usually on the lone couple of occasions I've downloaded TV shows. (I'm canadian we didn't get veronica mars season 2) Rapidshare was ass for downloading huge files.
True. Even back in '98, the Usenet piracy was a factor. But the difference is that the Usenet porn results do not turn up in Yahoo, Google, Dogpile, etc search results like Rapidshare and Torrents. Those two have eaten a gaping hole in the paysite business. Besides, with Usenet, it takes a little more know how to get stuff. Rapidshare and Torrents only require one click. Much simpler and easier to get even more free porn.
The bottom line will probably be some revenue sharing plan. File sharing sites will have to know who really owns what they are hosting and pay royalities. I read on Techcrunch.com a few weeks ago that rapidshare was in danger of being shut down by the German courts about the music they host. Wiki makes mention of this but Techcrunch made it sound more imminent. It seems all these sites are located in Germany. Rapidshare only allows 100mb files, other sites allow bigger files. Usenet is unlimited. For full movies usenet is better. But usenet has limited retention. But with file sharing you have to know the direct links. Bullention boards provide this. Google is another way I guess. Torrents and P2P are over my head.
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tritone Deactivated User
1009 Posts 4/03
Posted - Feb 17 2008 : 3:13AM
Yes, but large files/collections are simply broken up into <100MB chunks for upload and then rejoined after download with software such as WinRAR.
In fighting against Free content? That will never happen, they would rather just try and ban consumers from getting content on their own outside prescribed distribution channels, which has worked so well for the MPAA and RIAA.
