What issue poses the biggest threat to the adult industry?
 

Which single issue do you think pose the biggest threat to the adult industry.

Which of the following do you think is mostly likely to cause the most damage:

.xxx being passed and the possibility of being forced to switch from .com to .xxx.

Visa stop processing for adult related services.

adware,spyware, and all that shit.

2257 inspections and other govt laws

free content and p2p type sites.

My new pet having sex

http://www.christianfurr.com/beatles_files/goose.jpg

I have to go with spyware/adware. The other issues can be dealt with more effectively. For one, does Visa have plans to deny adult business? What a crippling blow to their own system THAT would be. dotxxx is unlikely to happen, so that's not a major issue, and even if it does, it'll still be a long time before any kind of governmental regulations go into it, and of course, there will be a big fight over it as well which will get dragged out for months, if not years. 2257 inspections? If your models are legal and you got the proof, you have nothing to worry about here. Free content? As in stolen content? That's always going to be a problem as it is in any industry...it hurts sales but a strong company has the resources to stay strong.

Dot xxx will make some lawyers rich but won't really hurt the industry.

Visa pulling out didn't kill online gaming, so I don't see it killing adult.

The only government with a woody for the adult biz is the US govt, so that could hurt US companies but the biz overall will still flourish.

Spyware and adware steals from one person and gives to another, but the money still stays inside the industry.

So I guess free content and p2p is what could hurt us long term. If things like bittorrent become as popular as napster used to be we'd be hurting. We would need some serious advances in DRM to combat that.

I would have to go with Lenny

yeah I agree as well, even if visa pulled out 1 day there are still other billing options but it would be a huge blow. i don't see free content as that big of an issue because you can always promote services that people can't give away for free and can use the free content areas to give out samples to promote your own sites. dot xxx would suck, but we could still function. Spyware is the one that I think can do the most damage. We have little to no control over this and once it is on the net, it is very hard to stop. As more and more people get infected our sales will continue to drop. How many people can afford to buy advertising if they were losing 25%, 50% of their sales to spyware ? I doubt many people could stay in business. I don't think it is too far off before we see numbers like that unless something drastic happens to fight it.

free content and p2p networks, it is killing us

Without a doubt!

Take away all the free stuff and kids wouldn't be an issue insofar as this industry battling everyone..

Take away the free stuff and joins would go wild..

Take away the free stuff and the 'good people' would love us for it...

But.... ain't gonna happen

Spyware for sure.people are paranoid of that shit as it is

.xxx reasoning below:

Visa pulling out has not been an issue for years, since they created their reviewing department and new compliance standards. They invested a lot, it has worked well, so its not a problem for them any longer.

Spyware adware has become a smaller issue with sp2 coming out, and presumably the protection will get stronger. I realize the spyware guys will get trickier but I don?t think you will see some of the mass-auto install issues you did in the past, but who fuckin knows, this is #2 risk, imo

2257, after seeing the fbi agent speak at the xbiz panel, it occurred to me that only the people that don?t strictly have their ducks in a row are going to suffer, if you show that you are trying and/or if your content is obviously 18+, you don?t have much to worry about

Free content, once free content site gets big enough, it gets noticed and dmca notices get sent, content comes down, an equilibrian

However, with .xxx, we have an enemy, sturart lawley, did you hear his speah at xbiz, what a villain, a single tangible enemy that is trying to profit at our expense

course the perspective varies due to what part of the industry you are from ;-)

Great to see all the different replies on different issues.

Very interesting to see where everyone stands.

I think all of them are " issues" of concern. Visa pulling out might not be a threat at the moment, but that is something I will never feel 100% secure about and it would be a huge blow if it ever happened. I guess best way to put it, if it ever happens I wont be shocked.

where do you stand?

There are no threats. The word implies something which could strike a fatal blow and I really don't believe such issues exist now, nor will they in the forseeable future.

There are issues such as you have mentioned, which have the potential to be a pain in the ass for a while and bump up operating costs, but no more than that. They may be the last straw for a few sickly businesses, but by most they will all be accomodated in one way or another.

See post #7

looking at the votes in this poll, it just shows how fucking stupid majority of the people in this industry are. Visa has like a 75% market share. Visa pulls out everyone is fucked.

Visa could pull out. Anything is possible. But online porn isn't going back in its box because too many want to buy it and too many want to sell it.

So long as Visa does process payments for porn, don't expect any serious alternatives. But can you really imagine that the chance of a slice of $15 billion a year wouldn't bring someone in to take their place if they quit? The changeover could be one heck of a speedbump, but I don't believe it would be more than that.

That's what I meant by "they will all be accomodated in one way or another". Scumware for example, isn't causing more than a minor ripple at the moment because a few are pulling in extra profits from it and most aren't affected enough (or don't believe they are) to care. But if it ever comes close to biting to the extent some are forecasting, then watch what happens.

If there were more far-sighted people at the top of this business, we could surely have an easier ride over the next decade or so. But I don't believe online porn is out of first gear yet and money has a way of making problems go away.

True, but I think a lot of people feel confident that they wont do this. Also there is other ways to do transactions, but yes it would suck big time.

Take spyware/ adware on the other hand. If you are an affiliate, ask yourself what your profit margin is. Say you buy all your traffic, adwords, gallery spots, etc.. and you profit 25% after ALL expenses (please this is just an example, i know some of you make 90% profit and I am sure some people make a 2% profit). example, you make 25% profit. As scumware increases more and more of yours sales are being losts. If it gets to the point that it causes you to lose money and eats up all your profit, affiliates will begin to fold. If this happens who does it hurt ? Less ads being bought hurts the link lists, traffic brokers, and tgps (people who sell traffic). As more affiliates die out it will cause hosting companies to lose accounts. As less traffic is being generated by affiliates that is less traffic that spyware can steal so even the affiiliate programs will see a decline. Not too mention as affiliates die out the affiliate programs that rely on affiliates will suffer a lot. Say you make 20 signups a day $1,000 but it cost you $1,200 to make that because you lost 10 sales to spyware, you go under. Now your affiliate company lost the 20 sales you were doing as well. It's a ecosystem, food chain just like anything else in nature, you mess with one part you can throw the whole system out of wack. Spyware could easily be the death of affiliate programs and buying advertising online which would ripple through the whole internet.

^ well said will ^

consider visa pulling out isn't even a card on the table, I am not worried about it, thus my answer stands

Option not on there... Government legislation/witch hunting.

If Visa pulled out everyone would be pushing these 3rd part processors like epass, moneybookers, etc... to take payments. There will always be buyers and there will always be some way to take payment.

I personally think mastercard would just move into their place, in fact if visa stopped processing porn tomorrow I think mastercard would have millions of new people grabbing their cards by tomorrow night

spyware FOR SURE

visa can flex nuts all they want but the amount of $ made from adult is hardly chump change.

.xxx will only effect us citizens. so pretty much won't stop shit.

2257 is just a speed bump imo. it will soon be "dealt" with

there's nothing anyone can do to stop the spread of free content. Even if everyone started DRM'ing their shit as soon as that happened there would be some jerk off that started NOT DRM'ing his content in hopes of stealing traffic from other sites and instead of making $ with memberships just sell ads/traffic instead.

I think I would make an option that has "Government". .XXX can cause trouble, so can 2257. But I still think there are other areas out there that the government can target that hasn't been thought of.

For instance, some congressmen want a law that requires all social networking sites to verify age. It's not inconceivable that they would put adult in that realm someday. It also isn't inconceivable that they would start making obscenity convictions and scaring the fuck out of webmasters. While 2257 and .XXX is a problem, the government as a whole is the biggest threat to the industry, and American webmasters.

As for the others:

Visa - While this would be a huge blow, I think the industry would adjust. Whether people have to go through third party systems like what most people did with gambling, people will find a way to get their porn. It would signifigantly hurt sales and weed out some of the smaller people, but the industry would survive and adjust. Companies like PureVanilla would make a mint.

Spyware/Adware - I think this is bad, but I also think we are closing in on a breaking point with this stuff. I think we'll see tougher legislation on this (much like we saw with spam) and more accountability from sponsors. Spyware hurts conversion rates, and affiliates who have bad conversion rates will move to companies that don't support spyware and have higher conversion rates. While it's bad and fucks over a lot of people, I think it will even itself out eventually. However, it could get much worse before it does.

Free Content - I don't see this as a threat. It's just like music, TV shows, etc. They are giving them out for free and still thriving. The key will be innovation and I think the sites that offer something fresh and exciting will be the ones that survive. Whether it's live shows, exclusive content, etc, the free content craze will weed out the small programs that have complete shit content.

Actually it is addressed in the orginal post " 2257 inspections and other govt laws " but when i did the poll options i tried to keep them short. I see 2257 and govt laws as pretty much the same issue.


If anyone can think of anything I left off let me know. I tried to cover everything I could think of, short of stuff like " the economy " which I don't think would get many votes lol :winkwink:

should have just put "The Man"

I am sure the industry would survive and adapt. BUT, I think the gambling analogy people are making reference to is not accurate. I can't gamble for free. I HAVE to go create an account with some company i never heard of before so I can buy some calling card that will then be transfered into dollars on xyz's gambling site. With there being so much porn out there for free, I don't think you would get the same amount of people to transfer over to payment options they are unfamilar with like they did for gambling. I would bet that less than 25% of the people would do this. I think most would just settle for free porn and not be hassled with creating new accounts or trusting some company with their personal info. :2 cents:

Lets hope it is something that never happens ;)

lol or top hahahahahahaha :1orglaugh

The thing you left off is the most obvious and the biggest danger: cheating adult webmasters. While your spyware option is partly the correct answer it is by no means all of it. Just look back at online porn history, if everyone always operated fairly every adult webmaster would now be making several times his current income. Sadly it looks like the prior statement will hold true 10 years from now as well.

The issue here is that legislation will only come about because people's pcs are crashing, worried about privacy laws, etc...

That is because these spyware " adware " companies sell traffic, so they need to pop up 5 zillion windows so they can make money and this kills the person pc.
The ones I am worried about are the ones that are created just to steal affiliate signups, not to sell traffic. If this is there intention they can basically run stealth and the user would never know it is on their pc. Likely it wont be added to anti virus software since no one is complaining about it, and if it only affects us than the govt wont care. The other problem is what recourse do we have the people doing this out of Ukrain or China ? How would our legislation protect us and get those people to stop.

I personally don't see shaving on the level of any of the other issues mentioned. It is also something that is virtually impossible to prove unless you can get someone from the inside of that company to gather compelling proof and make it public. I think for the most part people just hope the company they are advertising doesn't do it and they stick with the ones that make them the most money. If one company shaves and people make less with them, quit and promote someone else, I think this company will weed itself out on it's own. I think this type of internal issue has a way of working itself out.

Good points. I think legislation will knock out a lot of the big offenders. As for the others that steal affiliate codes, I think we're also going to see computers become more secure. I know Vista isn't perfect, but it's actually a step in the right direction. I think the emphasis in the next 5 years by Microsoft will continue to be security (along with multimedia).

And I do think you'll always have a percent of the traffic out there that has been hit by something. The question is whether companies will allow it or be hard on it. Also whether they face some legislation. I will guarantee you that AFF will be sued very soon for something (I can't go into details but have heard the rumblings from someone) related to spyware and their ads popping up on other peoples websites. It'll be interesting to see if people continue to blindly support them or turn their traffic to more ethical companies.

zango..,,,

.xxx is the only real threat I see on that list

I hope they are sued soon. It will be a wake up call to the other affiliate companies who support spyware and I bet most of them will rethink their envolvement with spyware if AFF loses a multimillion dollar lawsuit.

With less money being made in general there will be less free porn. think about it.

I doubt they'd lose a lawsuit, most likely settle like the folks at Gator did years back.

It's not just for spyware though. There will be a big round of lawsuits coming against companies that have ads on torrent sites that have pirated music and movies available. It's one thing to get sued by another porn company, it's another to be sued by the RIAA or big entertainment companies.

I think you're going to see a drastic change in the landscape of internet advertising (both adult and mainstream) by this time next year. Advertisers are going to be held responsible by the courts for where their ads are seen.

Not really, all it takes is 1 guy to join your site, download all the movies and spread it on p2p networks, once it is on there you are not getting it off. As long as there are pornsite, there will be free porn.