Vivid Sues Pornotube

[Boonestoons]

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/071210/20071210006330.html?.v=1

Just heard about it on the radio news.

[Hammer]

It had to happen sooner or later. Considering that these video sharing sites all know that most of the content was posted without permission I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner.

[fpanko]

Yeah, It's simply a matter of time before other studios start filing suits against the tube sites.

[phuckbunny]

Ah, but the interesting part of this case is that Vivid is throwing down the 2257 card as part of its complaint:

"In addition to copyright infringement, Vivid also says that PornoTube and its parent companies have failed to comply with US Code 2257 (also known as the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act), which says that porn producers must keep up-to-date age records on all of its performers. The complaint in relation to 2257 is two-part: PornoTube does not have records on the actors and actresses in republished copyrighted videos—which Vivid says is a violation of 2257 itself."

No duh but why add legitimacy to a crap law that is hurting us all?


http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ringement.html

[razor]

[i]

No duh but why add legitimacy to a crap law that is hurting us all?


http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ringement.html [/b]

I don't think that complying with 2257 is too difficult for a company like Vivid to comply with and by using 2257 they are trying to increase industry entry barriers and eliminate content thieves. A smart strategic move on the one hand , but what about the fact that AEBN hold the rights to a lot of Vivid titles - so doesn't this damage that relationship?

[porn punk]

Originally posted by razor
I don't think that complying with 2257 is too difficult for a company like Vivid to comply with and by using 2257 they are trying to increase industry entry barriers and eliminate content thieves. A smart strategic move on the one hand , but what about the fact that AEBN hold the rights to a lot of Vivid titles - so doesn't this damage that relationship?

I don't think 2257 really should be any business of Vivid's as it pertains to pornotube one way or the other. It would have to be enforced by the federal government. So basically vivid has just now turned itself into rats and federal informants.

I remember there was a time when we hated the communists for turning each other in to their governments. The mob has the best way of dealing with those kinds of people, say whatever else you will about them.

All's fair in love and war and business though

[timelord]

All's fair in love and war and business though

I was going to say that.

[EDS]

bout time!

Hopefully the proper people will crack down on the thieves, and still allow for tube sites to exist for people to create vlogs, and their own funny videos, or for people that OWN rights to content to post it.

I don't understand however why some countries harbour laws that allow people to bypass copyright infrigement...

To be honest I'm not expert on the subject, but guys like piratebay are hiding behind international law, and I don't understand why the international community doesn't do something about it...IMHO copywrites should cross borders.

If I make something and you watch it. regardless of whether you watch it in the states or in sweden...I still made it, and it still belongs to me. no?

right after these cocksucking content thieves get burned at the stake, I think the next step is the industry rallying together and clamping down on promo content...I'm not a huge fan of rules in general, but at lease some industry guidelines that if you cross won't necessarily get you in any real trouble, but will cause your competitors and partners to kind of look at you badly...

because at this point, even aside from stolen content, theres enough free content that programs throw out there...and what its led to is the industry as a whole relying on joe shmoe thirty something year old who has a disposable income, and no brains, time, or desire to go searching through torrent sites.

we should be marketing to all demographics, not just ones that don't know or don't want to spend the time to learn how to just get our shit for free.

/rant off

[Boonestoons]

EDS, good points all and often repeated on other boards by many other webmasters as well.

Basically with copyright the bottom line is, if you didn't create it or buy the rights to it, you don't own it and better not be in possession of it or trade it. It's the same as stealing someone's car or tv set or jewelry. File trading sites have to be held to a greater accountability than they are now though.

Too much free content is a problem considering there's been ten or 15 years of this already. In just the last year there's too much content for one guy to get through in ten years.

I remember several years ago a new approach called TGP2. It was just galleries with no hardcore and only 5 pics per page. Easy to build and submit and we made awesome money from that model. Why it died off I do not know to this day but it backs up what you've said.

I doubt things will change much until a total collapse occurs.

Best thing to do in the meantime is to read the industry analysis from guys like Shemp and Hammer etc. They've bigger stakes in this game than most.

[EDS]

Right on Boonestoons.

I only disagree with you on one thing though...it doesn't take that long to go through all the content in your preferred niche. It may take a few months I think, but in the long run thats really not that long...I think in general guys that are into BDSM for example, aren't interested in seeing teeny bopper blowjobs and stuff hehe - so I mean, they'll run out of content quickly enough if we severely limit the flow. Even if it takes many of them a year or 2, at least in a year or 2 our industry might be able to get back on its feet and wetting peoples appetites to convince them to buy instead of shoving it all down there throats and then hoping that their generous enough to sign up after they've gotten their rocks off.

Otherwise at this rate we'll put the TUBE sites out of business because we'll start giving away more than the tube sites can rip LOL


well at least we'll have some revenge, even if we cut off our own feet :P lol

[mynameisjim]

I've changed my mind on this issue recently. I previously thought that piracy and free media was inevitable but now I think differently. The big media companies will eventually clamp down on the ISPs and start pushing for global copyright enforcement and this will all come to a stop. Power and money always wins and the media companies have more than the pirates. Power always concentrates, it never disseminates, contrary to what the pro-piracy movement is keen on believing. If need be the media companies will just buy all the ISPs (they sort of already have) and just choke off the traffic themselves.

What we are seeing is that big business are slow lumbering beasts and pirates are quick and nimble. All the pirates swooped in and exploited a loophole but eventually the big media companies will pull their strings in government and this whole torrent/P2P thing will slowly be reeled in. Hundreds of millions spent in lobbying efforts can pretty much make the world whatever you want it to be, at least for business.

[anotherF]

P2P in what ever form is hear to stay!

Porn sites should follow the model provide content via bit torrent, to be able to download you would be required to allow uploads. The membership fee could be significantly reduced as members provide bandwidth.

[EDS]

That could be cool - however I fail to see why/how they would pay?

would they pay the torrent site? Are you suggesting torrent sites charge membership? and then paysites get a share of that?

could be the making of a sparkling new affiliate business model!

I don't know about other paysite owners, but bandwith isn't what makes up the majority of my monthly bills. Producing fresh content takes the #1 spot by far

I guess as you grow that might change however...

[phuckbunny]

I've ranted and raved about this (torrents, piratebay, etc) before on more than a few occassions.

As far as subscriptions/fees, they already have that on rapidshare. I checked out how it works a few months ago after my rants wherein I called them on their socialist Swedish anarchist pirate crap as being bollocks.

When I saw one of my sponsors' BRAND NEW content come up as #2 in the SEs for a search for just the sponsor's name as "download torrent for XXXXXXX", I had to check it out if it was real or just a spam site.

Sure enough, it was indeed a link to rapidshare. I tried downloading it to see if it was in fact that very same content that I am trying to get people to buy a membership for. (Can you even fucking imagine this business nightmare?!) So this was my first experience with rapidshare and torrents:

What happens is that they break the whole video up into into several smaller rar files which you can download for free, BUT... you can't view those smaller files until you download the entire thing, which may include as many as 4-8 more rar files. Once you download one part of the file for free, there is a wait of anywhere between 30 mins to several hours to dl the next part if you're doing it for free. And if you want to bypass this wait you can buy a premium membership which will allow you to download it with no wait.

And guess how you pay for it? Paypal! Who don't do porn but apparently have no problem with piracy.

What a load of crap.

PLUS, according to a reponse to one of my othe threads about PirateBay, those Swedish guys make a buttload from advertising and are certainly not the anarchists they claim to be. It doesn't take a PhD in Economics to figure that out considering their overhead.

FHG2 was something interesting but was wildly unpopular.

Look, I'm totally in agreement with EDS and everyone else who believes there is too much free content.

I get 3 emails a week as a sponsor with new pics and vids for about 5 sponsors. It's like I joined the site for free.

OK, enough talking bollocks. Going to check my stats now and see if anyone actually bought anything.

[porn punk]

This threads starting to confuse me a little.

I think Vivid is 100% within their rights to protect their content with copyright laws. I am 200% against them using 2257 in any way shape or form to do so if that happens to be the case. The later would be a very bad "ends justifies the means" precendent for the big porn companies to start setting.

I don't think either thing has anything to do with how much free content is floating around the internet or sales being up or down. In my opinion that has to do with how much content sponsors are willing to give out to their affiliates. This to me is a catch 22. If you give out a lot of content, you're going to have lots of newer webmasters promoting you. If you don't, you're going to get sign ups from seasoned webmasters who know what they are doing but you might as well do away with your webmaster referral program.

As far as the torrents go. I think (once again my own personal opinion) this will end up being won or lost (ulitmately won) by the major main stream Hollywood studios who have a lot more to loose than porn companies. And it's really hard for me to get behind rich people who want to cook the books and not pay labor what they deserve, though I'm not about to start crying for over paid labor either.

Again my hats off to Vivid as long as they keep the 2257 out of it. This is comparable to when the Mitchell brothers took on the mafia controlled adult theaters who didn't want to pay out ticket sales or abide by copyright either.

The Mitchell's won by the way.

[EDS]

I think piracy will lose out for the most part in the end. How long it will take is anyone's guess...like someone said these massive companies are slow moving lumbering beasts, small organisations of pirates, often young people with little other responsibility or worries are quick and nimble...

this issue is but a few years old...the internet as a whole in fact is in it's baby stages, and I think the internet 10 years from now will be vastly different place than it is today.

[mynameisjim]

The free porn via MGPs and TGPs is not really a big issue IMHO. People that can fight through the skim and get off watching 15 second clips will probably never pay for porn unless there was zero free porn and the cats already out of the bag on that one. I think the ten minute plus clips are definitely a problem though.

Really, all the big media companies have to do is make it too difficult for the AVERAGE user to use a file sharing sites. They don't need to make it impossible since you will always have the hardcore pirates. But if it's just a bit too involved or risky for your average Joe then that's all that is really needed.