I have a small beef with many porn review sites.

If a website has DRM why not mention it in the review itself? Review sites try to earn the trust of the surfer so they buy multiple memberships over time from that one site. You should be as specific as possible when reviewing a web site.

51 people taking my thread off course.

SEE SIG!

Also, what happens to Apple/Linux users when DRM is implemented?

I think surfers assume that during signup they are buying the content, not renting it.

Big fucking deal. You sounded like you were on a rant with all review sites. So why don't you just state the ones you have a beef with?

Go ahead and mention it....But why make negative comments about it?

Review the site to tell the member what is there and what is not....That's fine....But leave your poor opinions out of it. The surfers can make their own conclusions based on their interests and tastes not the misgivings of another.


These review sites don't even pay attention. One of my sites is 100% exclusive content but I have yet to get a perfect score on ANY review site for the exclusive content rating. How can you not get a 10 out of 10 for exclusivity of content on a site that is nothing but exclusive content?

It's mind numbing.

Look, I know that many many surfers are complete morons....But let's face it.....Why would you assume that you are buying content when the site rebills monthly? How does that mindset make any sense?

Dri, Dri, Dri!!!

I don't think it would be too out of line to infer that you are paying monthly in order to continue getting updates.

Again....Does anybody read the thread titles around here anymore?

"I have a small beef with many porn review sites."

It's enough to spark a good business related thread on GFY instead of more "Would you hit it?" posts and other bullshit....Yet not enough to justify me complaining directly to these sites.

[sarcasm] Gee, I'm sorry that I have an opinion on the practices of many Adult Review Sites and felt that an Adult Webmaster Board would be the right place to discuss it. WTF was I thinking? [/sarcasm]

I swear...People bitch around here no matter what kind of thread you start.

These six month subscriptions I'm getting make my head spin for that reason. Kinda amazing.

I do site reviews pretty frequently, and I try to tell it how it is. I comment on content, navigation, quality, and video format in an honest way. However, I don't mention DRM at all whether I think it's a good thing or not. Why? Because it shouldn't concern any decent paying customer. You pay for a monthly subscription to a porn site - much like any other bill. If you stop paying your cable bill, you can't complain to the company that you missed a few shows during that time or that you didn't record what you wanted for future use. It's not hard to find free porn - there's absolutely no need to educate freeloading surfers on how to rip off even more of it. People should be interested in a site because the content seems promising, not because they can dowload it all, cancel, and have it float around Kazaa forever.

I'd also like to mention that I don't neglect to mention DRM for my own personal gain as I do paid reviews for another company, not myself.

You still haven't mentioned which ones you have a beef with.

I think he doesn't have any in mind specifically. He is complaining about a general practice taken on by many reviewers.

Mine are high priced too (9.99 for 3 days). I just changed out a few of my links to a monthly only tour (34.99), and I am thinking I'm going to try offering trials, but raise the price to $14.99 or $16.99 for the 3 days. I'm playing around now, and seeing what works best for me... Would love to compare notes.

Aaron, you seem to think paying customers dont mind DRM and that only cheap internet surfers dislike DRM. This is incorrect. I would say all surfers dislike DRM. As a webmaster, I love DRM. However, in the long run, I do not believe DRM will hold its ground. To make an analogy, its like a surfer visiting a TGP and TGP2 site. Once surfers learn of the difference, they will choose to visit a TGP everytime. If you dont believe how unpopular DRM is with surfers, put up a pole in your members section explaining what DRM is and then asking what your members would prefer.

As for review sites, most of the good ones give honest reviews. Any honest review will bitch about DRM because videos stop working after the membership expires and that is something to bitch about. Especially, when you consider there are 27 million other paysites which have videos that do not stop working after the person's membership expires.

I would also be concerned about the review sites who teach surfers how to cancel.

Check this out from a unnamed review site


Guide to Cancelling Porn Memberships
Date: Feb. 11th, 2004

The adult industry's success is built around monthly recurring membership fees. Like gym memberships and internet dial-up service, porn sites feed off of the large monthly membership base income. However, since it's the responsibility of each and every customer to cancel such memberships (even if no longer utilitizing the service), you must be on the ball if you wish to do so!

One of the reasons why the adult internet industry has gotten such a bad rap, is because of the large number of chargebacks and potential credit card scams. Luckily for consumers, tighter regulations are causing webmasters to cleanup their act by offerring clear membership terms (on join page) and cancellation links that are reasonable to locate. But this doesn't mean it's always simple. Some consumers might even forget the url where they signed up in the first place!

Part of the service we provide with each site we list in our database, is information about their billing terms and provider. If you look at the image below, you'll see the billing information circled in red.


1. The merchant is the third party service providing the billing for this site. When you see a service listed, it's a good sign! 3rd party merchants act as an independent broker whose job is to make sure all transactions are secure and responsible.

2. The terms we list are VERY IMPORTANT. This tells you exactly how much notice is required to cancel without being charged again. Most pay sites require 7 days notice for a 30 day membership, and 24 hours for a trial. Some sites are different though, and it's important to remember this information when signing up (they are buried deep in the terms & conditions).

3. The phone number is available so you can call and cancel if you wish. Sometimes the number we provide will be the billing companies phone (billing support), some numbers might be the general customer service line provided by the site (customer service).

Pay attention to this information, and visit the billing merchant before signing up to make sure their web-site provides an easy way to cancel your membership with any site you signup with under them. Most will have a simple form like this one (from Paycom) to lookup a particular subcription. Notice the information the form I linked to requires. You can fill in 2 of the following:

1. Member ID (in the e-mail sent to you after joining a site)
2. Credit Card #
3. E-mail Address
4. Username (used to access the site)

If you had to cancel a site from months prior, you might not know which card was used, what username, or even what e-mail address. Other cancellation forms might require other information too.

The best advice I can give when signing up for a pay site:

1. Make sure you enter your proper e-mail address when signing up, so that you get all receipt information related to your purchase. This makes it much easier to cancel, when needed.

2. Always make notes of which sites you signed up for, the date you signed up, and the merchant used. Even though we list the merchant on our site, some sites might change their primary merchant, and that might make it difficult to track down later.

3. If you signup for anything and aren't satisfied, cancel immediately!! Most people don't know this, but you'll still get complete access (applies to 99% of porn sites) to the site for the remaining period left (even if a trial). Some sites might even offer you a better price to stay longer when you go to cancel (at usually 30-50% of the normal monthly rate).

If you have to keep this information private from minors or spouses, hide it well and don't forget where you left it. Most programs today have passwords to keep such information from harms way.

Porn sites today are "normally" very responsible and don't intend to rip consumers off. It's easier than ever to cancel memberships online, but always remember it's your responsibility to do so. Even if you don't take the safeguards I mentioned above, nearly all sites/merchants post phone numbers on your credit card bills and will help you locate the information (use this as a last resort). Adult entertainment online is seriously reaching new heights, thanks to the internet. So enjoy everything it has to offer without going broke!

1. It may be that the only reason until recently there were no restrictions on movies was because there wasn't the technology to impose them. But the fact remains that we have spent years educating our customers to expect no restrictions.

2. By and large the online porn industry sells an over-priced, under-specified product. To an audience which is already sceptical about us, DRM must seem like another one of our trix, because it takes away while giving nothing back.

So why should surfers like DRM? And if surfers don't, why shouldn't review sites reflect that dislike?

With as many posts as you have, you still have to state the obvious. I love it. Start a thread giving away $100 to anyone who replies, and people will go in there and post "fuck you, you don't know what you are talking about". Sucks, but it is what it is.

I do agree with you Aaron. How did that exit work out for you? Matt get you everything? (sorry, taking your thread off topic a bit)

Again, done for a reason. You have any idea how many emails THEY (the review sites) get asking to have their memberships cancelled. Surfers do not get it.

I'm kind of two sided on the DRM issue. While it's good for business it's not good for customers.

Customers feel jaded by it. If I sign up for a site and download movies I better be allowed to watch them after I have stopped being a member. To me it's like saying that it's not ok to keep driving my car once the payments are finished. I paid for a pass to download the content to view it, why should I have to keep paying to view files I legaly have on my system?

I understand that it helps stop trial members from sucking the content area then cancelling however you could also implement a quota for trial memberships. Allow them to only download so much with their trial membership. Many sites do this already and are doing fine.

I think DRM belongs in mainstream blockbuster movie download type sites or only in adult if in a pay per view movie downloads scheme. Forcing people to keep paying for access to a site they no longer wish to be a part of just so they can watch movies they downloaded legally with their pass is just going too far IMHO.

At least with drm it will keep your movies off kaza. If you are going to do drm your movies offer some hiqh quality bitrate movies so the surfers at least sees a benefit from it.

DRM 4 lyfe. The internet is stuffed with so many people trying to get free email, music, movies, ringtones, hosting, domains, ipods, magazines, games, screen savers, programs(warez), and of course free porn. Without DRM you'd see [PaysiteName- site rip] (meaning they downloaded all the content and are giving it away) on all the free porn password forums. In case you havn't taken a good luck at one i'd suggest that you do so you can get an idea of just how cheap some people are and to make sure your sites aren't being cracked into and shared with other people. If you went to a gas station and instead of "pumping" the gas in you grabbed a bucket and dumped it into your tank wouldn't you just pay for 1 gallon then take 20?

i'll come out upfront and say that if you use DRM that only lets active members play the movies, we WILL present it in a negative light. in all fairness, i'm all against trading/sharing content. but i also believe the surfer has a right to keep the videos after paying. you don't like trial leechers? limit each member's downloads (bandwidth).

following your logic, if you could, you'd even prevent people from keeping your pictures as well. sorry, but when i pay for a magazine or a movie, i'd like to buy it, not rent it. same for pornsites.

if the issue really was about leechers, why not use DRM, but let the member play the movies forever (like the post from Uk-adultcash.com stated above)?

Have some dignity.

Then stop trials....I charge a MINIMUM of 24.95...Cutting trials got rid of all of that shit...I don't have to worry about them downloading all of the content because I have my download limit set to a certain number and to date, nobody has hit it but a few have come close.

I don't give a flying fuck if the surfer downloads all of my content because I'm always going to make NEW content and he's gonna have to come back to see that.

like someone mentioned before in a couple years are you going to be offering 1080IHD material without any type of protection

Well, as one of those guys that hate DRM, let me give you my reasons from the surfer's point of view tohugh some of it has been mentioned:

If I download a video, I want to be able to play it on any pc whenever I want to. I don't want a webmaster to control when or how I should watch the video.

It only works with a new version of Windows Media Player. This is an issue for those who use older pc's or a different OS than Windows. MAybe not the biggest issue, but nevertheless.

It may increase retention, but I would prefer if a site increased its retention by frequently posting new and high quality updates instead of forcing surfers to keep paying to access videos they already paid for long ago.

As I see it, DRM provides very limited benefits for webmasters and is a pain in the ass for many members. They may not tell you about it, and just choose to let their membership expire. But I know that a number of people have contacted us complaining about DRM.

Of course any webmaster is free to use DRM as they please, but it is our obligation to at least make readers aware of it and let them know which issues that might be related to it.