Ruminations on Porn & Piracy

[Ancient History]

Half open thread, half external storage memory...

I was ruminating (as you do) while driving the car, and my thoughts turn to the little porn stores you see right off the highway in Georgia, which advertise themselves sometimes up to a hundred miles in advance. These places are still in existence, somehow, even though the internet is for porn. Which got me thinking.

1) There is less of a social stigma about sharing porn than there is other copywritable materials.

I think there's a lot that goes into that, but it seems self-obvious to me. Sure, you get lots of bestsellers and hollywood blockbusters available for torrent soon after (or even before) their release, but a lot of obscure titles just never seem to get pirated at all - and in a way it's true also with porn, as it's not like there are vast online archives where you can download every weird skinzine from the 1950s-1990s, the ones that had fucked up names like Beaver or Nugget, or those Netherlands and Swedish erotica titles starring legal-in-our-country performers and acts. Some of 'em, sure, but certainly not all of them. But still, porn is rampant in a way that seems to outstrip other types of media piracy, and while I don't have a bunch of answers why, I have a couple suspicions. The first is, of course, the universal demand for porn - across every culture and society and social class that has access to the internet. But the second bit might surprise you:

2) Porn piracy is rampant because porn is already stigmatized

I mean this in three ways. For one, the stigma associated with porn means that it has historically been less available, and even in this age where the Singularity is rapidly looking like an endless goat.se moment that will go on forever as we become porn, and consequently is considered valuable as a taboo article, precisely because it has been proscribed.

And because it has traditionally been proscribed, and there has been opprobrium and real penalties associated with the purchase and owning of porn, the additional stigma of having stolen porn has less weight (to stretch a point, if you're going to jail for life for shooting the clerk, you might as well rob the store while you're at it).

Finally, I think the limited distribution channels of porn failed to cater to the demand for porn - and the internet as an alternative distribution channel has massively outstripped anything traditional porn creators and distributors were able to handle, although they've been working to catch up. This means that for many, the internet provided - and still provides - the only channel to get some forms of porn, which they would not be able to acquire legally or easily in any other way.

[Koumei]

In some ways, (online non-pirated) pornography has actually taken the lead in "how to survive when piracy is an actual thing". As in, the rest of the media industry could learn from them rather than just lobbying governments to launch cruise missiles at everyone who uses the Internet.

Basically, it doesn't just show you the photosets and videos of the usual updates, you also get bonus videos where they're playing with their webcams (and with their boobs), webcam shows, Q&A, chatroom conversations with them, in some cases the ability to make requests (either "hey, suggest something, people!" or "I will take requests, pay me and we can make this as specific as you want.") and so on. You get a behind-the-scenes look at things, and to some extent it feels like you "know" the person in question.

And this is how the industry is surviving. Well, that and also there are sites that can cater to basically any niche interest you have.

[DSMatticus]

I would say the porn industry is a perfect example of how to drive people to piracy. Acquiring porn legitimately is difficult, expensive, inconvenient, and what you get for all the bullshit is often no better than what'd you get going to a youtube-but-porn website and watching stuff for free.

It's a very similar story to the Western-speaking world's anime industry. Even if Crunchy Roll were free it would ultimately be an inferior product compared to the work of many fansubbers, but on top of being a shittier release for more money it is far less convenient to access.

A cable porn subscription is an expensive pile of ass. And it comes with the added inconvenience of explaining that to the rest of the household, or if you are the average household's most voracious consumer (the teenage boy) simply not being an option at all. An internet porn subscription is pretty much guaranteed to come with a stream of unwanted charges and other harassment and bullshit. Buying (or renting) actual physical copies of things is such a ridiculously stupid option I'm not even going to talk about it. Piracy wins by virtue of being the only option that doesn't suck.

[Starmaker]

I think there was a copyright case in Germany that got thrown out because porn isn't intellectual and the IP law doesn't apply.

edit: there, I made a search for "porn" while at work.
http://torrentfreak.com/porn-films-dont ... es-130701/

Firstly, Malibu claimed to be the creator of the movies but the District Court said that the company’s name was nowhere to be found on the videos in question, only references to the X-Art brand. As a result Malibu were unable to convince the Court that they held the rights.

Next there was the issue of distribution. Although Malibu claimed that the movies had been released worldwide, it failed to demonstrate that they had either been released locally on DVD or via an online platform. On that basis the District Court found that the works had never been released in Germany and were therefore ineligible for protection under the Copyright Act.

Finally, the District Court said that the actual content of the videos raised issues under Germany’s Copyright Act. The Court noted that the videos showed “only sexual processes in a primitive way” and are therefore classified as “pure pornography.” As such, the productions are not a “personal intellectual creation” and are not entitled to protection under Germany’s Copyright Act.

[Stahlseele]

Then there was the redtube fiasco:
https://torrentfreak.com/viewing-pirate ... ys-140109/

[Username17]

I don't think I agree with the core premise that porn is shared more than non-porn. As far as I can tell, porn is actually really hard to find online. Yes, I am aware that finding some porn is so trivially simple that you routinely do it by accident. The internet is for porn and all that. But what if we look at it the other way? What is the ratio of porn that exists to porn that is shared?

As a first pass, I checked a torrent site for iterations of an apparently popular series. I chose Hustler's 'Barely Legal' series, which I was able to find links to a torrent of the one hundred and forty eighth entry in the series. Also numerous spin-offs, some of which are themselves numbered. Barely Legal POV has a 16th iteration at the very least.

But while I could find hundreds of torrents, between duplicates and spinoffs and false hits, I didn't find a whole lot of different entries in the basic Barely Legal numbered series. I have honestly no idea how many spinoffs such as Barely Legal Orgies and Barely Legal All Stars there are. Heck, I don't know how many of the spinoffs I saw are actually made by Hustler and not produced by fly-by-night rivals. But I would bet real money that the fact that there's a Barely Legal 148 means that there is also at least 147 more titles in that direct series. And given that, it seems on a cursory viewing that nearly eighty percent of those titles aren't available for download. And I'm not checking torrents for health or anything, when dead links and unseeded files are taken into account, the Hustler coverage may be worse than that.

So if nearly four in five productions in a flagship line from a major imprint have fallen down the memory hole, how much of the porn from minor studios falls into the void? I doubt that a tenth of the pornographic films can be found on sharing sites.

Now to an extent this doesn't matter. I imagine that I'm probably not missing a lot of plot and character development by jumping directly from Barely Legal 122 to Barely Legal 128. But that kind of spotty coverage on file sharing sites is totally unheard of for any other genre of film. If you want to download a specific Mexican horror film from the nineties, you can do that.

-Username17

[Ancient History]

You might be right that the largest part of pornography isn't available online; you could say as well that the majority of magazines made in the last fifty years aren't online either - with the possible exception of comic books, which have a very dedicated uploading and sharing fanbase. Even then though, you still have a point - certainly not every pornographic comic book that hit commercial release is available online. I think this is actually important, in that vintage porn, because of its physical scarcity and relatively low demand, maintains its perceived or even elevated monetary value (as I well know from my research phase) even in the period when the internet is for porn.

Part of it, I think, has to do with sheer quality compared to modern stuff - most vintage porn was rather poor-quality in terms of picture and presentation, whereas today you can find amateur housewives in HD - but I think also that the difficulty of acquiring physical porn in the past still effects how hard it is to acquire digital porn now. Which is sort of sad, when you think about it.

[fectin]

Porn lives much more in the DC++ universe than in torrents.
Also, major brands (and minor brands) are extremely aggressive about takedowns. Much more so than most other content companies.
(Which is probably why porn lives in DC++)

[JigokuBosatsu]

You know what's really hard? Try finding the interstitial narrative sequences between porn scenes. I could have found the damn grail easier.

[Koumei]

Back in the (shite) old days, porn was hard to get hold of, and if you were a teenager trying to get it, life was hard. It didn't build character, but it did develop stealth skills, and incredible alertness. That's how ninjas and superspies were actually trained - the very best teenagers who consumed pornography (I could probably have shortened that to "teenagers").

But now? Now it's so easy to access on the quiet, yet a student still managed to get caught viewing it on his phone in school. Seriously, they should be able to avoid that kind of detection.

In the future, people won't be stealthy. They won't have had the proper training.

[TiaC]

Therefore, crime rates will drop and society will be safer.

[hyzmarca]

Therefore, crime rates will drop and society will be safer.

Well no, because most crime is fought by Ninjas. That's what the 80s taught me. Fewer ninjas mean more crime, which would then have to be fought by guys on high-tech motorcycles.

[ckafrica]

I don't understand why anyone every buys porn when so much is available for free. I haven't paid for porn in 20 years thanks to the internet and I can't imagine what would make me do so.

[Stahlseele]

I don't understand why anyone every buys porn when so much is available for free. I haven't paid for porn in 20 years thanks to the internet and I can't imagine what would make me do so.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29783253
something like this

[ckafrica]

I don't understand why anyone every buys porn when so much is available for free. I haven't paid for porn in 20 years thanks to the internet and I can't imagine what would make me do so.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-29783253
something like this

Well as I already pay for my ISP then yes technically I already pay for porn access but not specifically for access to it (the not paying I was referring to). If the country I live in (Vietnam) were to start adopting more Hungarian style policies, I'm not sure that the tax I'd pay for porn streams would be my highest concern (let alone my chief peeve over an internet tax placed upon me).

[Roog]

I found this interesting:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technolog ... tries.html