Biz thread- come give your two cents
 

What if the top 100 programs/sponsors agreed not to allow downloads anymore. ONLY Streaming - what happens?

Do you mean from an affiliate point of view? If so, the only way for an affiliate to push traffic would be to pick up their video stream.

meant overall industry point of view -

How netflix does it - streaming only -

Camtasia is an easy capture from anything steaming. Rippers will use a cracked version to record your streams.

agreed - but will make things tougher - and videos will be more scarce -

Amar, ask your members :)

Put up a page, ask your members to vote.. link to the samples but do not give them a name. Like don't say this is the streaming version, download link, etc.. just...

Sample #1, 2, etc, then link to standalone pages, each with the unique option on it, again not named, but with instructions, like (right click/save as) only, or press play to start. Very basic stuff only.

Split test with different instructions and changing the order of the sample links, this should ensure the vote is more even.

If people still vote heavy on that download link, then you know it's not safe to remove, but if it's only 20% or less, than... I bet you could get away with it.

The top 100 programs only have a fraction of the traffic/members compared to the top tubes, which all streaming today. That influence has to bleed over.

What about porn.com giving shit away, will you give away full old movies?

Or does the very presentation of their content for free devalue it?

been suggested many times. some of the more independent programs already do so

heard lots of sad excuses. basically they'd rather succumb to a few whiny customer emails than protect their shit

I think streaming is fine. Surfers are now accustomed to tubes anyway.

I feel this way, yes - but I'm a quality driven consumer, not a value driven one and for every one of me who would pay full price for FTV or X-Art there are a thousand college students busting nuts to porn.com as we speak.

Yeah, quality matters to me & other people. That will never go away.

Content quality is king, delivery methods maximize that quality.

might give this a shot just to learn a bit more about our members - Doc, you ALWAYS bring something to the table that is worth discussing! Thank you!

Same thing that currently happens. 90% of surfers think playing a video = download. Seriously, we posted a survey in our members areas and the result was something like that. The other 10% are a mix of people who know what download means and has a legitimate reason for it like wanting to download & watch something on their laptop in their bedroom with the wife (although these people by now should have wifi). And the other mix are the people who will figure out a way to use a downloader to scrape your videos anyhow. Maybe some of the not so dedicated scrapers might fall off I suppose.

Do you guys currently allowed DLs or just streaming?

Limited downloads for 1 month customers & more expansive for 2 month customers & everything for 3 month customers...

We try and detect downloading software & block that, but some of the more recent downloading software has workarounds. The people with downloading software though are downloading everything whether it's available to them or not.

Never hurts to ask your members but what people say when polled and how they behave are very different things. If they like your content, they'll still pay for it even if it's streaming only. Split testing of 2 member's areas (1 streaming only, 1 with downloads) as well as testing a member's area vs a VOD format is definitely worth doing.

We've seen Elevated X CMS users try various methods to move away from downloads, all with positive results.

There are a couple of things you can try if you're worried about shocking your members: You can leave your current member's areas as-is and put up a mirror version that's streaming only. Direct all your new joins to the new area. You can also test the waters slowly and gently introduce streaming by putting up new, preferably higher quality videos in your new site updates and make them streaming only.

Keep us posted on the results!

AJ

1) Everyone streams only
2) 99.99999% of users don't know how to copy streamed videos
3) ONE guy copies the streams and puts them up in a downloadable format
4) The people from #2 above find the work of the guy from #3 above
5) You are back where we started

Didn't we try this already once - DRM?

Stream-only SHOULD be the industry standard.

And go after the guys who download it anyway, and crucify them.


Go Niners!

Thanks for posting something business related.

The 3% of people who post 95% of the stolen videos just click the "save stream" button from the Firefox addon they use.
The 2% with Flash disabled cancel. The other 95% hardly notice.

It took me less than two minutes to Google for the right app, install it, and save the first "streaming" video. After that, it's two clicks to save others. You might get in the way of the guy who wants to save his favorite video, but the guy who posts tons of your videos all over tube sites is way ahead of you on this one.

Yeah but it came at the wrong time and people weren't ready for it. It was way ahead of its time.

Back when DRM was being pushed heavily (around 2002-2003), more site owners were interested in the ability to turn off content access or require email collection or force viewing of ads (or other user behavior) than they were with actually protecting content. So it didn't really catch on.

Ironic that nearly 10 years later the industry that rejected DRM is crying out for a similar solution.

I think making the move to streaming is definitely a step in the right direction and one we urge our customers to take.

stupid idea nothing will change..

drm is useless.. people use NO-DRM script to remove it..

there is nothing you can do.. YOU ARE GUILTY for this.. WEBMASTER ARE GUILTY for this situation...

WE HAVE NOBODY TO BLAME BUT OURSELVES.. WE DESTROYED THIS BUSINESS..

so don't blame someone else...

Great thread. We are actually in the process of moving to streaming only for standard memberships, downloads will be an upgrade/add-on.

Another thread pointed out companies that offer 8000Kbps videos and that the only real true reasons for that are future compatibility and current user downloads. Files like that are pretty tough to stream, even from my 25mb FIOS connection.

100 programs agreeing on something, this is truly a hypothetical isn't it! :)

Good points Ray but with the current state of our industry and the economy, content producers are happy to do whatever they can to minimize loss. It's not about this or that not being a perfect solution. You know as well as anyone that there is no perfect solution when it comes to security and the moment one exists, someone will find a way to crack it.

I look at streaming like locking a door. A willing thief can still break into my car or my home. It doesn't mean I don't lock my doors...

We have not had downloads on Vivid.com for over 3 years. It affects NOTHING.

We are streaming only. It affects NOTHING.

No one even asks anymore.

no one will agree

If people intend to steal from you they will find a way. If it can be seen on a screen, it can be stolen and pirated. Maintain an active anti piracy program and make it as difficult as possible for people to find your full movies. It's about all you can do.

Thank our fucked up government for their awesome antiquated DMCA.

Downloads were necessary when houses had incredibly slow internet connections. With even mobile phones now having a decent enough internet speed to allow streaming without buffering pauses and the promotion of cloud services where you don't keep stuff on one single pc and can just logon and access it from anywhere I can't see 'streaming only' being a huge problem.

Don't really understand. What do you think that would achieve? Apart from pissing off our few remaining paying customers.

The industry is crying out for ANY solution, and is so desperate, stupid and short sighted that they really think DRM is worth trying again, although it clearly isn't.

I think a lot of the more established sites are going to continue to offer downloads because their existing membership base expect it.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

if you point about content protection, dont worry, rippers will do the job and user uploads will continue...

Many adult companies use DRM and have spanning two decades now.. and almost all mainstream sites doing streaming are DRM protected, hulu, netflix, abc, and so on. You don't notice it, because it's seamless now.

The stats don't support that theory.

The stats support that members think streaming is downloading... besides tubes, it's because when you click a wmv, it streams in your browser, and we've called those downloads for 15 years... but visually, it's streaming.

People... Most of your piracy, NEVER, comes from actual members enjoying your content.

Rippers buy memberships to your sites, and auto-rip the content, as you update, and publishes them on a piracy forum. And yes, they rip the downloads and zip sets, and almost never the streams, as waiting for a stream to play through across 100's of sites and ripping them "live" from a remote source, is VERY hard and saving them, is not always 1, 2, 3.... Using basic key-gen per-video kills mass download on streams. IE: You can not watch two movies at once, your brain can't. So only allow 1 stream at a time.

This is how your content is pirated so fast.... and NOT because of members.

Streamed videos store on your temp folder for a while. So you can save it to your hard drive from there.

Also realplayer lets you download for free any video you watch online.

It's not about prohibiting, it's about understanding that work on fighting piracy will be always a task for sponsors.

Same way bloggers. It's not about not allowing comments because of spam. It's about knowing that you will have to spend some time deleting spam comments.

Maybe some sponsors should hire me for good ideas....

Streamed content only would be a nice idea, however, every offline content would be made by ripping. Someone's got to control that too.

if the top 100 agreed to switch tomorrow there would be another 100 that would add downloads to their tubes overnight to take over that market. An unfortunate truth.

No it will not. Streamed videos can be downloaded easily, very easoly.

Because Hulu and Netflix are ripped all over the place... oh yeah, you can rip them, but like netflix, it still takes away viewing hours from your account, even across platforms. So yeah, rip away... upload it, and good luck watching anything on your account.

Hmmm, i don't think i get it...

Would that stop rippers?

Yes, your account information is encoded into the video within a finger print.

Well then. Sponsors have a weapon to fight piracy.
Good ideas start to pop up. They should implement it asap!

Aye, it's been around for like 15 years now, been several adult companies that have done it, I think ccbill offers a service for this as well.

But most piracy doesn't happen through our real members. So do you go through all that, spend the money, etc... or learn to combat it through cheaper methods that stop the core rips of your sites?

Anything viewed can be copied. It's a fact of life. People won't care if they have to rip in realtime, a background process can do the job.

I guess it depends on the site. My main client has many sites which are more like fan sites. The guys love the girls and want to collect everything she's done.

I don't think it would have any impact whatsoever on content being stolen though. Do you?

Well, i guess they should weight their choices and what's better for their business and their affiliates...