^^^^ this

http://i.imgur.com/Cdv0t.jpg

Re: Megaupload closure

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...act_id=2176246

You can quote from abstracts lifted from papers written by people with well established views on file sharing all you like, that doesn't change the fact that the owner of a copyright work has the sole right to determine the terms upon which their work is distributed.

You pro-piracy proponents keep trotting out the same poorly thought out arguments to justify the theft of property.

It's disingenuous to write off an academic paper that makes perfectly valid assertions with evidence. The authors' argument is perfectly well thought out and there's nothing to indicate they have a vested interest one way or another.

Yes from a purely moral perspective, piracy is wrong - I won't disagree. But:

* whether it's right or wrong, you can do it, because technically there is nothing stopping you, legally you can frequently hide behind the DMCA, and generally copyright holders are powerless to stop you because frequently (e.g. in porn) the big pirates have more money than the copyright holders.

* I really doubt that most people (who aren't adult webmasters) really care about the moral issues around theft of pornographic content. We're not talking about the next great American novel here - we're talking about smutty videos with little or no creative or artistic merit. It's just filth that smut peddlers crank out to try to make a buck. Society is not enriched by any of that content and you could make a strong argument that it is in fact deleterious to society.

Take those two things together, and I say who gives a fuck. I've never made a dime from pirated porn but if other people want to make a quick million from it then I say more power to them. It's a clever blackhat strategy.

I'd also point out that the early adult web (and there are a lot of us, including you, who happily made good money in that early period) was built on rampant content theft and every member's area was full of stolen content. Even today affiliates are making bank with stolen content all over the place, e.g. ex girlfriend sites. Just another of those curious double standards in the flexible morality of internet porn.

Uhm, what? They base lowering sales after MU shutdown on MU although sales have been lower and lower every day since 2007 anyway. There is no worse trend they show in their report, it only shows there is a downward trend, as there was prior to the shutdown.

How is that proof?! The paper is completely ridiculous.

That's the point... They're showing that the closure of a site that used 4% of internet bandwidth at its peak had a statistically insignificant effect on sales.

My main criticism would be that it would be more useful if they had used movie tickets sold rather than revenue, because of the differences in movie ticket pricing that exist.

Shutting down MU simply shifted that 4% somewhere else. That's like saying we should not fight drug lords since it does not change the consumption of drugs much.

Wait and see what happens if 90% of all file lockers die. I can guarantee there will be an increase in sales.

That's not really a good example... No you shouldn't really even bother to fight drug lords, because there's always going to be one to pop up and take his place, hence the useless and counterproductive war on drugs (much like piracy). The way to end the negative effects of the drug trade is to legalize and regulate drugs so that criminal gangs no longer have a stake in a lucrative and violent multibillion dollar trade - you win the drug trade through the judiciary, not policing (much like piracy!).

And there may or may not be an increase in sales - there's no way to know that the people who use and possibly pay for file lockers are really the same market who pays for porn.

However, I'm sure you have read the MU docs and seen that most of their revenue came from premium memberships - so I would have thought that it was more the Manwin way to adapt to a membership and content delivery model that a lot of people obviously like, and offer a product in that arena with (mostly) legal content.

Filelockers sell memberships to download unlicensed user uploaded content, which breaks DMCA rules. They are trying to hide behind selling a service, but in the end they sell the content.

And actually, I know for a fact that there is an increase in sales, I've seen it first hand.

I just hate it when I have to agree with you. :upsidedow

As I've posted already, a lot of the niche pirates who have been hitting us for a long time are now out of business, sites closed. Minus the usual odd sales swings, our sales are also increasing.

Everyone who says fighting piracy won't make a difference can kick rocks.

Yes his cookie stuff fake jpg's in sig's are also for my tubecamgirl site in fact I wondered why he brings so many guys from gfy, then I found he hijacked all posts cookies.

Filelockers (and especially torrent sites) sell advertising space too. That's a not so small source of income, I can tell as I know the price to advertise there :)