So, apparently, thereâs a hashtag movement within the porn industry to get people to stop using free streaming sites. They have a website (http://www.payforyourporn.org) and a tumblr (https://payforyourporn.tumblr.com), which ironically contain zero porn and a lot of shaming.
But I found one article (written by âSiriâ) quite interesting: https://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/10471/siri-piracy-pay-for-your-porn/
I found the article so interesting, in fact, that I thought we should go through it, point by point, and have ourselves a little discussion about lost causes and sinking ships :)
The numbers from DVD sales and video-on-demand revenue also make clear that free adult content is killing the industry. Between 2008 and 2010, for instance, total revenue from cable TV adult pay-per-view services decreased from $1 billion to $899 million, even though adult pay-per-view has historically been one of the cornerstones of the porn industry. DVD sales have also taken a hit, with Vivid studio head Steven Hirsch estimating that sales have decreased 80 percent in the past five years.
$1 billion to $899 million over two years is ~ a 5-6% decrease per year. TV subscriptions within the US are down ~3-4% each year while TV bills are increasing ~5-6% per year, over the past decade. Meanwhile, streaming TV services are still absorbing swaths of the market for a ~19% increase in revenue over the past year. With an self-reporting 56% of cable subscribers stating they only keep their cable subscription because bundling it with internet lowers the total bill for both services, itâs highly likely that an already niche market (pay-per-view porn watchers) is underrepresented in the remaining subscriber base, as the combined pressures of increasing cable bills and decreasing value (due to competition from streaming services for non-porn media) makes the value proposition of cable-delivered porn unattractive.
DVD sales are a similar story. Disc sales declined 14% in 2017, despite entertainment media spending by consumers increasing by 5%. That difference went to streaming services. Again, porn DVD sales are a more sensitive market than the average movie and TV disc producer. Not only can streaming provide the privacy that physical media struggle with, it also caters directly to the viewing patterns of the audience (random, short intervals instead of regular, sustained ones). Moreover, the viewing habits of porn viewers prioritize new content over rewatchable content, so owning porn is less of a value proposition than having access to new porn.
Claiming that the shrinking market for cable- and DVD-delivered porn is the âclearâ result of internet streaming is myopic, at best. It seems that the majority of the constriction is due to the overall shrinking market for that form of media delivery, porn or otherwise, and a long history of price-gouging by traditional media services.
A lot of people want to think of piracy as the âsharingâ of files (you know, for the greater good of humanity!) and claim that since theyâre simply using a copy of the original, itâs not stealing. It sounds harmless on the surface, sure. But look a little closer and this argument makes no sense.
Those who copy and distribute digital content illegally are appropriating anotherâs documented ideas and creative property. That is stealing any way you look at it. When you render someone elseâs creative work by copying that recording, itâs theft.
Naturally, there are plenty of people who want to take advantage of any situation they find. However, traditionally, the argument about sharing through P2P networks is not about âsharingâ in the sense of âitâs harmless because sharing is caringâ. Itâs âsharingâ in the sense that digital media is infinitely reproducible, unlike physical goods or services. The actual cost of copying and distributing a single digital item is entirely negligible and decreases the more itâs copied and distributed. Thus, the argument goes, the only ways for a digital good to earn money is through donations or artificial scarcity.
âName your priceâ services such as Humble Bundle and Bandcamp are examples of the donation method. Despite âgiving awayâ their products for free or a very trivial price, sales campaigns often generate healthy profits as consumers reward pro-consumer business practices and subjectively valuable media. Consumers can choose to reward media producers who make something of personal value to them with the price they feel reflects that subjective value.
Traditional media platforms are an example of the artificial scarcity method. TV networks, studios, and cable providers pour endless torrents of money and political leverage into the government and legal system to secure their right to dictate artificial scarcity of their media for excessive term lengths. They then compel hardware and software manufacturers to implement an endless cycle of invasive DRM schemes to try and prevent their own customers from consuming said media in anything other than a prescribed fashion. All of which frustrates customers, who have fewer, inferior walled-garden choices for media consumption that require spending more money each tech cycle on another piece of âcompliantâ ancillary equipment or software.
One need look no further for evidence of the anti-consumer habits of the artificial scarcity proponents than the cable lobbyâs absolute shit-fit over Tom Wheelerâs proposal under Obamaâs FCC to do away with physical cable box requirements in order to allow for third-party competitors to enter that space. After a hugely expensive FUD campaign about cableâs âinnovationâ and âchoiceâ, ultimately getting the proposal neutered, weâre still waiting on any amount of innovation on our end. And itâs not for lack of ability, as the anti-Net Neutrality lobbies claimed, with Comcastâs net income up over 27% last year, to $3.2 billion, and still climbing.
Consumersâ appetite for pirated content is a problem of the industryâs own making. Through two generations of exploitative business practices and political infiltration, people have no desire left to âplay by the rulesâ. Itâs like complaining that the other baseball team isnât playing fair when they start using riot shields while your team has been beating their knees in with bats for the entire season.
You might think that if anyone should take the fall for pirating adult videos, it should be those who steal directly from the sites before giving the content away. But those guys can be incredibly elusive, using different usernames and IP addresses, making it hard, if not impossible, to trace them. Thatâs why adult companies who do decide to prosecute are likely to go after someone who participates in illegal downloading and streaming.
In the last year alone, Malibu Media, the company that owns the porn site X-art, has filed more than 1,300 copyright-infringement lawsuits (https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-biggest-filer-of-copyright-lawsuits-this-erotica-web-site) against people who have illegally downloaded or streamed their content. The companyâs attorney says that most defendants have settled by paying Malibu anywhere between $2,000 and $30,000. Thatâs a much higher price to pay than the $19.95 subscription fee for one monthâs worth of X-art content.
Prosecuting downloaders because itâs âtoo difficultâ to prosecute uploaders is like duct-taping holes in the dam because itâd be âtoo difficultâ to pour more concrete. But beyond the weak reasoning behind why law firms want to sue lots of people, these stats are, again, ignoring the broad picture. DMCA notices about porn have been so rife with abuse that most US ISPs stopped delivering them to subscribersâ mailboxes years ago. Even when compelled to deliver the messages, theyâd strip out the paragraphs at the bottom that say âWeâll sue you unless you pay us $2,000.â These law firms were mostly non-practicing shell companies that automated the sending of massive amounts of DMCA notices for porn torrents under the business model that enough people will pay the blackmail fee rather than risk getting outed for watching porn. ISPs stopped forwarding the notices because virtually none of the ignored messages resulted in actual court filings. As well, little to none of this blackmail money actually made it back to the original content owners or creators.
The poster boys for this cycle of abuse were John Steele and Paul Hansmeier of Penda Law (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/prenda-laws-john-steele-pleads-guilty-to-fraud-money-laundering/). The pair operated the non-practicing Prenda Law firm as a copyright troll for years. Theyâd buy cheap licenses for pornographic media and then mass-mail DMCA notices over any torrents they found, with these âoptionalâ fees the accused could pay to make the âlawsuitâ go away. In the end, they got caught creating torrents for the media they owned just to entrap people and admitted to making over $6 million through these harassment campaigns.
Even debatably legitimate copyright mass-mailers, like the ones from Malibu Media, are bordering on abusive, if not already in that arena. According to their own statistics, theyâre averaging three lawsuits every day but make less than 5% of their annual profits through the suits, raising the question of how vigorously theyâre actually pursuing each case or how much damage piracy is actually doing to their profits.
So far, only one of Malibu Mediaâs cases has proceeded to trial. The judge in that case, determining that a defendant had stolen five movies and lied about it in court, decided that a hefty punishment was necessaryâtwo hundred and forty thousand dollars in damages and attorneysâ fees.
$240,000 for five films is obviously a vindictive punishment, meant to try and send a message about ânuclear optionsâ in the very expensive legal system rather than to find justice for the media company. The linked article goes on to detail another case of clearly mistaken identity where Malibuâs lawyer-siccing cost an innocent person $17,000 in lawyer fees and, when asked to be payed back for the enormous cost, Malibu Mediaâs uber-rich owner threatened to obliterate the innocent person in court by taking âeverything he owns.â
The blind eye turned by the author to the rampant malpractice and vindictive exploitation consuming the pornographic copyright industry is telling. Again, this is a problem of the industryâs own making, choosing to seek rapid profits at the expense of consumer confidence and goodwill. In short, treating customers like cattle with no choice but to pay other people money.
A decade ago, the average female adult performer made about $100,000 a year. Today, sheâs lucky to make half that amount⌠. Unlike Hollywood actors, adult film performers are not millionaires.
Adjusted for inflation, that âaverageâ salary would be $121,430 per year, today. According to statista.com, ~29% of US households had a total pre-tax income of $100k or more in 2017. So, ~71% of households (~233 million US citizens) make less than that. And the author neglected to include the quote from the same source that âpopularâ porn stars can make several times that much money per year, being easily catapulted into the top 10-5% of US household. Amusingly enough, the author contradicts this, claiming instead that a high salary for a female porn actor today is roughly equivalent to the salary of an âIT Managerâ (~$85k), someone who is a skilled laborer with years of industry experience but makes a fraction of the old âaverageâ porn salary. The author also seemed to miss the part in her previously linked article about the aggrieved Malibu Media ownersâ purchase of a $16 million mansion, which Iâm guessing they needed to be able to store all the thousands of lawsuits theyâre filing against the 99-percenter street trash each year.
Aside from being pretty out-of-touch with reality, this argument seems like a non-starter for their cause. Itâs like the sentiment that the world would be a better place if teachers were paid like football players. Thereâs something to be said for careers with short lives, but virtually nothing justifies being paid millions of dollars for playing sportsball or hundreds of thousands of dollars for having sex. Those activities simply arenât producing millions of dollars of substantive progress for the country or species, in the long run.
Many performers who participate in the campaign continue to tweet their concern that if porn piracy continues in this vein, in a few years there will be little to no new pre-recorded content. Weâll all be watching the same stolen clips on tube sites, over and over and over again. Performing in adult films will no longer be rewarding enough, financially or otherwise, for the industry to retain existing stars or attract new ones.
And this is the crux of the argument. If you donât stop fapping to free porn, there wonât be any porn left in the world! Itâll all dry up, like the oceans after global warming! Which, of course, is absurdist scaremongering of the worst kind. I went to the much-maligned pornhub.com and did a rough calculation. I clicked âRandomâ and looked at the 20 videos on the recommended sidebar. Based on that, there is ~147 years of pornographic video on pornhub.com. Iâm no doctor, but I think most people would not be able to consume 147 years of porn in their lifetime. In fact, considering the huge number of porn sites out there offering free content, I imagine no one would ever run out of porn, since each new generation can experience all the existing stuff like itâs brand new!
But, aside from the laughable claim that the world will run out of porn, the author unknowingly strikes upon the foundational argument for universal incomes and the problem with artificial scarcity. If I invent a widget that everyone loves, I can make a lot of money. I could even start a widget factory that makes lots of money for lots of employees. But other people will want to make lots of money too. So theyâll make a similar widget and sell it for a penny less or add some trivial feature to claim that their design is superior. And theyâll probably make a lot of money without really impacting me too much. But when there are 100 competing widget designs, the market will be saturated and weâll all have to drop our prices to a razor-thin margin or go out of business. Weâll have to start designing widgets that break more often or need some ârefillâ to work, so customers keep coming back. Weâll have to start suing each other for patent infringement and suing customers who try repairing their own widgets instead of paying us to do it. In essence, the industry will cannibalize itself, becoming ever-more vicious and anti-consumer as more competitors enter the market.
This is exactly whatâs going on with porn. The market became saturated in recent decades and grew into a massive bubble of excessive earnings and spending. Then the space became too crowded and the market contracted, leaving the weaker producers to eat each other and get eaten by bigger players. Itâs one thing to say âIf you donât pay me, I wonât make any more widgetsâ. But that threat holds no weight when there are so many other widget-makers that your individual market contribution wouldnât be missed by consumers. Why would I pay you $29.99 a month to suck a dick when Cindy Lou over there will suck a dick for free and I get 90% of the same subjective enjoyment out of it? Why would I pay you $29.99 a month for access to your 300 syndicated porn sites when thereâs literally no way for me to consume all the free samples those 300 sites give out, let alone the all of the full videos? Artificial scarcity cannot function when the supply is endless.
Eventually, the market will reach equilibrium. If porn production decreases, demand will be concentrated across fewer suppliers, allowing for prices to rise. People wonât stop making porn because someone will always be willing to step in and fill the demand, even if itâs for less profit than you were willing to work for. And this is why movie studios and music labels are starting to work so hard for products outside of the core media itself. âValue-addedâ products such as merchandise, concerts, fan events, and âbonus contentâ all serve to give some value to supporting the official distributors over piracy. Porn studios simply havenât adapted to the changing times.
Cam sites are an obvious example of a profitable porn model. Its value-added is the real-time interaction between actor and audience. Anyone can look up recorded cam sessions for free, but the people willing to spend money on it donât care. Itâs only subjectively valuable to them when they get to participate in that real-time collaboration.
But the author also contradicts herself. She claims that she and other porn actors work in porn because it is personally fulfilling to them and they enjoy making content that other people enjoy. Yet she claims that no one will do the job unless theyâre getting paid for it. This is demonstrably false when looking at other content creators, such as musicians and artists and programmers who routinely give away work for free simply because they enjoy doing the work. But she also misses the other option: allow people to do what they like, free of economic requirements. If people are willing to do objectively or subjectively valuable work for the sake of their own enjoyment of it, money becomes a distraction, rather than a motivation. That is the foundational argument of the universal income movement, which seems like a potential solution to these porn starsâ problems. Not that itâs a solution with a reasonable timeframe, but itâs worth noting when people fight to perpetuate traditional solutions, even while complaining about how untenable they are. It goes hand-in-hand with the porn industryâs reluctance to adapt to changing technology and audiences, just like the rapidly dying cable industry.
In any case, porn doesnât /have/ to be your job. Even if the entire porn industry tanks, individuals who enjoy making porn for its own sake will continue to do so in their free time. Porn doesnât /have/ to be a big production. Porn doesnât /have/ to be in 8k with 360 VR cameras. Porn doesnât /have/ to cost money. And people wonât pay for a product that they wouldnât miss if it disappeared.
Stop shaming people into paying you money and start making products people want to pay for.
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