03-16-2014, 01:45 PM
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Confirmed User
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Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 6,697
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Quote:
Down the Tubes
How free streaming video threatens the porn industry
The troubles for the porn studios began with a technology called BitTorrent, introduced in 2001, which made it easy for people to share data files over the Internet. This technology provided the world with unlimited free music, much to the dismay of the giant music publishers. But it was still somewhat clunky. If you wanted to watch a video, you had to download it, which took time and ate up space on your hard drive.
By 2005, the BitTorrent technology gave way to something more manageable and user-friendly: streaming video. This technology was used early and heavily by sites with names like PornHub, Xvideos, and YouPorn. Suddenly, anybody who wanted to watch a clip could do so almost instantly. You clicked on a video and it played in the browser: no more waiting, no more downloading.
This simple innovation has demolished the porn industry?s traditional way of doing business. Porn tube sites are now among the most visited websites in the world. According to the online measurement company Alexa, PornHub holds a worldwide traffic rank of 54. Xvideos is at number 53, and haYouPorn is at number 64. The threat comes from the sheer ease of uploading content?anyone?s content?onto a site and then drawing users to view it. Most tubes describe themselves as aggregators of ?user-generated content,? but the material they publish is much broader?many video clips are created, paid for, and owned by porn studios.
?Piracy has hurt us a lot,? says Ali Joone, founder and director of the adult-film company Digital Playground, which last year tracked illegal downloads of its most popular title, Pirates. ?Over the course of a month, it was downloaded about four million times. And that?s just from a handful of sites. Even if those downloads cost us a thousand customers, let?s say, who were going to pay?that hurts.?
The porn studios face the same fundamental question as any content provider in the Internet age: how do you protect your stuff once it?s ?out there?? The answer, so far, is, ?Not well.?
The tube effect has been profound enough to inspire a recent public-service announcement featuring more than a dozen adult performers and directors pleading with fans not to view pirated porn. One actress, Charley Chase (who did not participate in the PSA but says she faces the same troubles), got into the business in late 2007 on the promise of lots of work at high pay. But the pay has dropped and the work has dried up. ?And it?s all because of piracy,? she says.
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http://www.technologyreview.com/revi...own-the-tubes/
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