TUCSON, AZ.—Pink Visual has issued the following announcement regarding the Content Protection Retreat that took place this week in Tucson:
If the old saying “there is strength in numbers” is true then the adult entertainment industry’s effort to curb content piracy just became significantly stronger in one fell swoop.
At an event dubbed the “Content Protection Retreat” (CPR), some of the adult industry’s brightest and most innovative minds came together from October 17-19 in the desert of southern Arizona to launch what can be accurately described as an anti-piracy movement—a unity of effort that is truly unprecedented for a business sector that has a reputation as an ‘every-business-for-itself’ environment.
The adult industry has taken an even bigger hit from piracy than has its mainstream counterpart in Hollywood, due in large part to a widespread failure to act against piracy over the course of the last several years. The impact of piracy on the adult entertainment sector has been severe, contributing mightily to the demise of dozens of companies that were at one time highly profitable. The companies and studios that remain standing find themselves battling a consumer mindset that adult content is something one should not have to pay for, and scrambling to prevent further infringement on their intellectual property rights.
The companies in attendance at the CPR represented all segments of the industry, from enormous studios to sole proprietors, and producers of a wide variety of content types. Also participating in the event were creators of highly sophisticated digital fingerprinting software, intellectual property law experts, and firms that specialize in locating pirated content online.
Although the organizers of the event could not provide specific details about what transpired at the CPR, they did confirm that several participating companies are joining forces to target adult tube sites and torrent tracker sites for legal damages and to force those sites to adopt content filtering technology like the digital fingerprinting system employed by the Free Speech Coalition’s Anti-Piracy Action Program. Another set of companies has agreed to litigate for the express purpose of establishing clear legal precedent that will strengthen the adult industry’s position (and that of other rights-holders, as well) in future litigation. The CPR attendees also agreed upon a set of “best practices” for content distribution, business-to-business licensing and methods of displaying content to their customers.
A more controversial subject among companies in attendance at the CPR was end-user litigation, an area of jurisprudence in which there has been a lot of action in recent weeks. Although many adult companies intend to enforce their copyrights by filing lawsuits against users who have distributed content via torrents and other peer-to-peer methods, other companies represented at the CPR said they would decline employing that approach as part of their own anti-piracy tactics.
All the companies in attendance committed to following through on an action plan designed to drastically reduce the piracy of adult content by 2012. Adult companies and studios represented at the CPR included AEBN, Corbin Fisher, DogFart, Gamma Entertainment, Gourmet Unlimited, Grooby Productions, Hush Hush Entertainment, Hustler, JustUsBoys, Lightspeed Media, LordsOfPorn, NaughtyAllie.com, Pink Visual, Private Media Group, Raging Stallion, Randy Blue, Sean Cody, Sex Entertain, Silver Sinema, Shane’s World, The SCORE Group, Third World Media, Titan Media and VanillaDeville.com
For more information on the CPR, visit www.ContentProtectionRetreat.com.
