The porn industry is under attack - what are we going to do about it?
 

Youporn, redtube, pornotube are growing at an unprecedented rate. It is drawing all traffic away from TGPs into these monster sites that steal content, eat bandwidth and drag the adult industry into the same situation the music and movie industries are in right now by making full length adult movies available for free with no revenue model for the paysites.

I would like to hear sponsor's positions on this and what people think we can do to stop our livelihoods being under attack.

Best,
Jon

those who adapt to change the fastest are the big winners

cutt of their funding, its usally dating sponsors that keep them running

I don't question the fact that they are the winners in this situation, I question how the rest of us can survive without copying and further killing us all

I hate to say it but its rather impossible at this point.

The only way you can kill their gig....is to kill the .com's immediately.

If you could kill the .com/.org daily, you could put them on the run & unable to keep up the #'s their doing as of now.

Of course they could start hosting on ip's then & hand out programs that update daily. However it will at least take the "average" user out of the loop.

Take the torrent trackers down, take their ip's down...thats the only way to win this battle. And even then it will be long from over.

It will be a good 5-10 years before a dent will even be made.

incorrect

many of the larger ones will not even consider becoming reliant on sponsors

they are solely funded by their users

so you have to cut out their paypal accounts, their e-gold, & even then, checks can be mailed in

the most obvious plan of attack is hosting & domain registrars

i say that the best way is to spam those sites with shitty videos (maybe gay, maybe grandmas) or stream their videos all day long on 10 computers constantly, make their server sweating, click on their sponsors a lot (invalid clicks violations) so we can ban them from sponsors and many other ways to disable them

but on the other hand..

do you guys think that any of those users there will actually click on sponsors ad if site is full of free content ? :) I guess not, they have same users which have seen sponsor ads everytime they came up on the site and they probably even ignore that already..

But the main problem is in dumb sponsors, they are giving out too much and everything without protection, so market is now very saturated already..

even the big guys, like milfhunter or bangbros are loosing money, because their videos are on emule, torrents or "tube" site the very same moment as they post their video.. they need to make restrictions.. And some of sponsors do that already with not approving streaming, but the next step should be to take out those tube sites on court and disable servers and domains

but hey that's just me :)

Compete with them. Make sites that appeal to the surfers more than they do.

Content costs are so low as to be a very small factor in starting a site, so please stop whining about it. It's a red herring and you know it. In fact if I gave you all my content and you used the same method we all do to drive traffic, you would still need to charge $30. The selling price is governed by the affiliate system and not the cost of the product.

The one thing that allows them to give out content for free is they are not paying 60% to 75% of their turn over on "traffic". Do the sums and work it out. Then take out 10% for processing.

Sell the surfer what he needs at a price he will pay and if you answer he will not pay, pack your bags and leave by the back door quietly.

Content theft is a big problem and plain wrong. It's an unfortunate byproduct of these sites that I believe initially grew out of a youtube-like model: showing real amateur videos made and uploaded by their users.

That model definitely threatens the industry as it is, but that's okay. Times change.

Content theft however...

First of all, I´d like to know if there are sales for sponsors or affiliates from those sites. If not, well then something should be done against those sites.

But what could be done? In the European Union there is a legal problem if a site provides webspace only. In this case they are not responsible for the content the user puts on that webspace until you as the owner complain and they get to know about illegally hosted content. So the only way is to complain and in most cases content is deleted at once after a complaint is filed. So if you want to change the situation, you have to change the law first.

Another problem is filesharing like torrent sites provide. The offered content is illegally offered, but it´s not illegally to offer the torrent file itself.

I don´t know about the legal situation in the US, but would be interested in it.

so we all have to change to fit their illegal biz model ?

this "if you can't beat 'em - join 'em" attitude kinda sucks

we're expected to accept theft online . . yet we simply won't tolerate it offline

it's gonna become like the 90's wild west all over again . . damn shame imho

I was fighting people stealing my content 15 years ago, content theft is nothing new. The new adaptation is these guys are making money without the huge traffic costs we have.

We need lawyers to look at it and see if they can steal content and make money from it, if they can then we have to change the laws or adapt. We can look at putting pressure on hosting companies, billing companies and advertsers. But frankly unless we can force them to not do business with these people we're stuck.

If these guys are stealing a lot of traffic from us then they have hosting costs, if their bottom line is small then we attack them by offering a very low price product that leaves us a profit and allows us to serve out decent movies at a decent speed.

However if they are making decent money and we do find a way to prosecute or stop them because they're stealing content. They will simply license it. Or maybe they will start selling a scene at 10 cents to cover the cost of buying it.

That was the point i was trying to make wasn't it? The only way to "compete" is to offer everything for free, and thats self-destructive. I didn't say i can't compete, i said that we should not have to compete with something that destroys our business model.

I am not whining. Lots of this content is stolen, and the business model is destructive. As I said i can compete but it seems counter-intuitive to the whole industry. Its like Zango only worse...

If you gave me all your content and I posted on youporn or my own site, even if i paid for it, you would tell me to take the content down because 99% of content providers have a rule that you can't make all the content freely available it must be in a paid members area - you know this too, and i know this when i looked into this possibility.

No, they are paying everything of their profit and more on bandwidth bills, just like youtube who needed VC funds to survive their bandwidth nightmare.

He won't pay the more content becomes available illegally or illegally for free, why can't you see this?

Paul - what are you talking about??? This adapting is costing a fuck load of money - youporn has 250 servers!!!! This is the ULTIMATE in cost with the MINIMAL return of funds. The value they are going for is in the user, just like youtube. Sorry but you need to get your facts straight.

Pussy - Jon :) you're totaly right..

who hosts those 250 servers?

I remember how popular rotten.com was/is - i bet all their content is purchased and legal :1orglaugh

http://server1.files.youporn.com/
http://server100.files.youporn.com/
http://server245.files.youporn.com/

Not sure who the provider is, you can look it up with a reverse ip

do you guys get pissed about other stolen content? or just afraif of torrents because its YOUR CONTENT being stolen?

Stolen audio is being used in gfy banners at this very moent, why no one crying about it?

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showthread.php?t=763806

If you're right then we have all sit down and pray the the record industry and film industry put enough pressure on the governments to make it illegal to run these sites.

If they have a loop hole in the law there is little we can do on that front.
If the surfer will not pay for anything no matter what we give him then there is nothing on that front.
If they can afford the BW bills then there is nothing on that front.
If all the surfers looking at free porn will not buy then there is nothing on that front.

So according to you what ever we do will come to nothing, so are you packing your bags? You should be. :winkwink:

My solution is simple. And I put this forward only if the Tube sites are the danger you say they are.

We move to selling a product that is honest and good value. We get rid of the biggest cost we have, and I'm sorry if it's you, the affiliate has to go. If you have any other solutions offer them up now.

A 300 MGB file costs 3-4 cents to deliver at a god quality and pretty fast. The other costs are mostly one offs and minimal. 10 movies = $1.00 so we sell sites of 10 movies for $2.00 delivered fast, WMV, in one niche, style and give the customer a lot easier ride than Tube sites. Will the surfer spend $2 for 10 movies that he wants? I believe many will, enough to make a living off.

We cut out 70% of all the free porn on the net, Tube sites are growing but there is already a lot of free porn that will go if we're not supporting it. So already there are more surfers looking for porn. How does the surfer find us? The way he did before the massive explosion in the "affiliate traffic" system. A few sites will stay with free content, the amount will be severely cut. Many will just be link lists and search engines.

Will this put lots of people out of business? Yes but unless you have a better solution I don't see an alternative. I do applaud some who have started to look seriously at the problem and will join them if and when they come up with a plan. I suspect what will happen is 1% will step up and pay for the fight while 99% sit back and pay nothing. They will post on GFY though.

Do you have a solution or are you only in the "That doesn't work." camp?

However are Tube sites causing the real damage? My sign ups are not as good as they were 3 years ago but still good enough to make a living. My conversion ratios are pretty solid depending on the affiliates. Are there other business models taking our sign ups? PPV and VOD I hear are doing very well.

Fletch these guys don't care about stolen content. I will bet most of them are listening to music, watching movies, playing games, etc they did not pay for. They care about their soft cushy life going up in smoke.

Why not flood these sites with virus laden content then? Think about it.... TGPs were a surfers paradise over the past few years. You could get pretty much anything for free and never have to subscribe to a paysite.

Fast forward and its almost impossible now to surf a list of TGPs without getting your computer infected somehow, not to mention skimmed off to another TGP with every click. A lot of surfers changed their view on TGPs. Its not worth it anymore to surf for free porn because they have to spend so much time cleaning up their computers.

Same concept, just applied differently....

most of the tube sites are making 10-20k a month off dating ads

I cant speak for the other tube sites, but please don't associate pornotube with anything shady or stolen content. It works like a big TGP.. with a modern interface that the "tube generation" is familiar with. In fact, it really works exactly the same as an MGP. All the content is nothing more than short preview clips, in many cases with links to the sponsor.

Most of the content on pornotube is actually provided by the sponsors we work with. Its a great traffic resource for any program. Sponsors need to get on the ball and develop a sales tool that webmasters can use for PTube style sites, much like free hosted galleries for TGP's/MGP's.

Yes, it is a HUGE problem.


People need to wake up to this. TGPs and MGPs are being fucked hard. Galleries do not make nearly as much money, either. I suspect site owners will have to lower prices as well to reflect the slow rise in conversion ratios over the last year or so, and the steady dropping of many of their site's traffic.

Although, then again, with a smaller pie and greater demand, the margins of profit may just shrink without affecting ad spot costs. If you look up many of the sites on GTS through Alexa, several of them have had a fair drop in traffic over the last year. Look at the strong growth of tube sites.

Why would a surfer buy anything EXCEPT for very niched out sites? Then again, you can find anything on Torrents.

Yeah we have a friend who stopped surfing tgp's altogether because of his computer getting fucked up. The guy just never knew where to click, even fucked up a Mac surfing tgp's. He had to stop and this was a couple years ago now. :haha

One more thing Jon,


I have received much traffic from pussy.org through my galleries over several years. One thing I have noticed is that if you compared 2007 to 2005, my traffic from galleries has remained about the same, while having to pay more and more of a percent for partner accounts. This is to be expected.

However, the trouble is, conversion ratios have doubled. Where I used to convert a steady 1:600, now overall I am almost always 1:1100 or 1:1200.

Tube is killing the MGP star :(

Look at some of the sponsor's consoles now, youngstacy.com fucking OWNED my laptop yesterday to the point where I had to slam alt-f4 and eventually had to ctrl-alt-del to get that shit to stop.

Exactly! Put some personal fear into them for downloading from these sites. They already have maybe a slight fear of being caught by the government. Maybe they will be caught but the chance is very small in a big ocean of downloaders. But taking a chance on having a severly infected PC is much more personal and greater.

Leave a BAD taste in their mouth in regards to these sites

Instead of porn, you could check out my sig. Maybe you'll find a better alternative.

Granted. I apologise. It seems the site has changed quite a lot and indeed this is good. Alexa reach 3000 and with clips shows that there is a market for clip video sites but, you porn is 8000 and growing. Its still a very real problem.

When TGP's and MGP's got big everyone was using this same argument of content theft being through the roof. Now the internet world has changed again and people are bitching the same thing, just a different idea now.

For those of you talking about loading sites up with virus programs. You are dumbasses, let's do something illegal and go to jail because we don't know how to adapt to change. Yeah, you're real bright.



Paul, awesome replies, you are apparently one of the few that have actual intelligence...

Not sure if that's a good idea Paul, cutting off costs by removing the affiliate part would surely bring death to most content producers, in my opinion. If the affiliate is cut off, he has no other option but to create his own content (ie start his own paysites). Many of the big TGPs have enough money to produce thousands of hours of content, all it takes is money, and a crew of 3 people.

So..you will end up with TGP owners with Heaps of Traffic + Their own paysites vs. You - no traffic, and some content. Who wins in this situation?

Just my 3 cents - removing affiliates from the game is NOT a good move.

Iagree sponsers are giving to much away. Currently if you take a quick peek, there is a 52 GIG file of EVERYTHING from bangbros on piratebay... basically a rip of the entire site.. and it's not just them, many sites are ripped.

There is a collection of my stuff, but very little. I think this is in part to the fact that I have strongbox running and it makes ripping the site a lot harder due to the dynamic urls it creates on the fly. I try to make it HARD to actually download content. I'm in the process right now of changing ALL my video, Making it even harder to directly download (and therefore easy to share) YEs, surfers get pissed when they can
t download, but when they want to see it that just means they have to come and join. This only workes for exclusive content though.

I have an axe beside my desk in case someone breaks in upstairs while thinking nobody is home here. If I caught someone in my house I would probably give them a chop or two.

The Pirate's Bay is stealing so much money from so many people, I'm surprised nobody has hired a hitman or hitmen to simply go and murder one of them or their family members. I would think sending a message like that would be the best solution. Yes it's a highly illegal solution to a highly illegal problem.

I don't advocate murder or violence, btw, I am just thinking with some of the shady characters in this business the fact that those guys are still alive surprises me.

Im not deep into adult anymore...

if we can't beat them then let's join them. lol.

Ok, loading up illegal torrent sites with bogus files that contain viruses is illegal? Who's going to complain? The torrent site owner or the surfer who is trying to download ripped off programs and content? Fight fire with fire!

And (I may be wrong), isnt it only illegal if your profiting off the viruses? I can see someone sending an innocent person a virus (through email, etc) and infecting their PC as illegal.

TGP's killed a lot of traffic when they started putting installs and stuff on their sites. People became unwilling to surf them for fear of trojans and circle jerks. Why not help the torrent sites along by fast forwarding their progress along this same path. Make the surfers of torrent sites become untrusting of getting free stuff from them without some type of consequence.

Didn't Madonna do something like this a while back. Just before one of her latest albums was about to arrive in record stores it was leaked onto the net. She then leaked her torrents full of silence to discourage would be downloaders.

So disregard the viruses then for now. What if, like someone said, we flood these sites with bogus content, grannie sex, etc in place of whatever they are looking for? I dont know if that would be enough to discourage the surfer tho...

Maybe instead of calling people "dumbasses" you could come up with a solution??

the porn industry isnt under attack.....old marketing is.
pass out the content.
using them as A FREE advertising avenue WILL help BRAND your site,increase organic traffic, and boost sales. its a win win situation.

look at it this way. instead of paying by cash to advertise, pay in video clips and pics

See, the problem is, the Internet isn't just a giant dump truck... it's a series of tubes, and these tubes are getting clogged up...

I think this is a keeper

That's the real threat the the industry.

it's funny that spiked humor also own torrentspy , one of the biggest torrent site around.