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Originally Posted by Webmaster Advertising
Piracy is a cause of SOME of the decline but that is only because surfers are demanding content without paying for it. Because *we* have given them the sense of entitlement to said content.
Affiliates DID demand from program owners more and more content to give away for free, in the form of images, movies, hosted promo tools, etc...
We can only speculate about how the tremendous amounts of free exclusive content has contributed to the decline of the affiliate business model but, at the same time, we also have verifiable facts to back up our speculative synopsis that, prior to the proliferation of free exclusive content by affiliates and program owners, things were ticking along nicely. It was only once exclusive content started being offered up at the drop of a hat that sales starting going to shit.
If there was next to no, or little piracy before program owners started utilizing exclusive content and giving that content away for free (around 2006) yet now piracy is rife in the industry, there is really only one conclusion any reasonable person can draw and that is, program owners and affiliates created these problems themselves, because affiliates wanted more and more for free and program owners have it to them, that is, unfortunately, where the buck stops as far as dishing out 'blame'.
Yes, piracy is a problem today, but we created that problem, we enabled it to grow to the levels it is at right now, we realize its a problem but the horse has already left the barn, there's not too much we can do to curb it, especially while program owners are still throwing around their content at every wall they can find for free hoping that some of it sticks and ultimately drives a new sale to their website.
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It's obvious piracy is a huge problem. One answer would be to destroy the piracy model but that's tough to do. And unfortunately the opposite is happening with many sponsors "throwing out free content at every wall" as you say. Except they aren't giving it to their affiliates. Instead they are posting it to these tubes and their content programs. This is only helping the piracy model because the same sites they are partnering with are also open to stealing their content now, in the past, and probably in the future too.
The real fun begins when the legitimate affiliate says fuck it and becomes a pirate too. This occurs when instead of dealing with 1:5000 ratios they say what the hell and start stealing your full scenes and uploading them to file lockers who pay on either a pay per download or revshare basis for premium membership upgrades. Then you'll be able to blame the affiliate. And it's already happening. But part of the reason it's happening is because the former legitimate affiliates are being told to "piss off" by the sponsors who are partnering with the pirates. And personally I can see the appeal of this. For starters as I understand it they pay better. It will only get worse as you treat your legitimate affiliates as if they were the enemy.