There seems to be a lot of confusion in the adult industry lately. At the forefront is the issue of tube sites, stolen content, and what to do about it. Many have taken on the direction of trying to get content already out in the wild removed, while others prefer to keep the content from ever escaping their members areas. I fall into the latter group.
It's a lot easier to keep the car locked up in the garage than it is to try and go locate the car and retake possession of it after it's "stolen."
So what can you as a paysite owner do? Admittedly, there are many sides to weigh before making a decision.
1. Is your exclusive content worth the time and effort to keep it from being spread around and decreasing in value?
2. Are you ready to take the leap and move forward with technology?
Let's talk now about your customers. Many are of the school of thought that the customers want to download and keep the content, or it's not worth signing up.
While that may be true with many customers, most do not re-watch the same videos over and over. There are collectors out there, but let's think about this. Are you selling your content to each member, or renting it? I think the smart man's money would be on renting it. Blockbuster has yet to not get their nuts in a twist if I kept videos I rented and didn't return them, so why should we be any different? Adult bookstores that sell DVDs get from $19.99 to upwards of $80.00 per DVD! I think there would be many happy wankers out there if they could walk into a store like that, pay $30.00, and walk out with every DVD in the store.
Yet this is somehow where our online industry has ended up. Doesn't make much sense as a business model, does it? Does the value of a DVD come from what you can view on it, or the actual DVD and packaging? Think about that, because we are selling the exact same thing as adult DVD stores, just in a much simpler delivery method. It's the content that has worth. Remember that.
So why is it such an uphill battle to change our ways? Simply everyone out there is now in the business of one-upmanship. It started in the early freesite days; in order to attract more traffic, you had to have more stuff. It expanded as TGPs became more popular, and now we are on to tube sites and full-length scenes for free at a "decent quality" to anyone with a mouse and a monitor.
This applies to paysites in the same manner. The surfer will take everything you give them at the cheapest price, so if Site A is allowing the member to download the whole site for one month's membership, then it would be a hard sell to get the same member to sign up on a site where they only get to "view" the content.
So what solutions do we have to this issue? It's only going to get worse. Internet connections are increasing in both download and upload speeds; before we know it, fiber optic connections will be the norm - they won't need to even visit a host to download. We'll be able to do P2P Blu-ray disc quality transfers within minutes.
So who do you send a DMCA to, then? If you think it's hard now to get stolen content removed, just wait. The time is now to push the industry for change. Yes you can cut the losses we are seeing, but we can't wait and see how things work out. The industry needs to make a solid movement toward streaming encrypted content.
Many say that surfers and members will protest. Well some might, some might not. Surfers are becoming more and more accustomed to living in a streaming world. Youtube, Hulu, Vimeo, Netflix, and a ton of other huge sites got popular due to instant streaming video. There are obvious examples all around us that show the public at large wants instant gratification. Fast food, ATMs, food delivery - people do not want to wait. Do you really want to sit there, "penis in hand," while a 700MB file downloads? I know I don't.
This industry needs change, and needs change now, or we will be the Studebaker of the adult world.
Sticky Fingerz is founder of StickyBoxBucks.com.
This article originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of AVN Online. To subscribe, visit AVNMediaNetwork.com/subscribe.
