2006 may well go down in the books as the year in which the adult entertainment industry "suddenly" became interested in content piracy.
It's not that brigands suddenly figured out how to steal what they didn't want to pay for, or even that producers suddenly noticed part of the reason their profit margins were shrinking was that people were stealing content instead of purchasing it. In fact, quite the opposite is true: Pirates have been sharing content on the peer-to-peer networks since the Web was a pup, Hollywood and the music industry have been beating their chests and suing teen-age thieves for quite a while now, and some adult-content producers (notably Titan Media and Falcon Foto) have been trying to warn their compatriots about "the piracy problem" for several years.
In late 2006, however, it suddenly seemed almost everyone in adult began ranting about piracy. Perhaps the outcry was occasioned by the equally sudden perceived reduction in the political threat level when in November the Democrats retook Congress. Any community functions more cohesively when it faces an outside threat, and when one threat wanes, the community will seize upon another in an attempt to increase bonding by focusing combined energy and wrath toward a malevolent "other." (Remember how much the U.S. and the USSR used to glare at each other, and how at loose ends everyone seemed to be when the Cold War thawed? Of course, all became right with the world again when those evil "terrorists" showed up.)
Content pirates, as it turns out, make an excellent target for community-building contempt. In the eyes of people who make their living creating and distributing entertainment, they're loathsome. They're also faceless, mostly anonymous, and sneaky, the cheap bastards. They cost entertainment industries of all kinds millions of dollars every year because they'd rather stab some hardworking stiff in the back than carry their fair load of the economic burden—and, dammit, that's just not right. Why, we oughta keel-haul 'em! Make 'em walk the plank! Feed 'em to the sharks!
Before we blow the men down, however, perhaps we ought to consider what we can learn from pirates (other than how to wear eye patches and silly hats with panache, pronounce "arrrgh" correctly, and balance parrots on our shoulders). Some adult-content producers continue to view a modest amount of piracy as viral marketing. They do their best to tag everything so it will lead back to their revenue-producing outlets, and then they hope for the best when it's ripped off. Others spend copious amounts of time and money in legal machinations designed to curb the flow. But, as Jack Morrison points out in this month's cover story, although piracy is condemnable, it's also a predictable response to markets that cling stubbornly to business models that refuse to shift with the tides. While no one would begin to call the current state of adult content distribution irrelevant—yet—consumers are beginning to look for something new. Something less expensive and requiring less commitment. Something more personalized. Something that puts consumers, not producers and distributors, in the captain's chair when it comes to acquisition. When the right model is found, pirates will be able to get their booty affordably without the hassle of burying the treasure, and content owners will be able to make a tidy sum—albeit probably in smaller increments.
Although it is foolhardy even to suggest turning a blind eye to wholesale theft, there is significant worth in the argument that instead of battling it out on the high seas, content producers and distributors may be better off devoting their resources to knocking pirates' wooden legs out from under them by making piracy a waste of time. The pirates of yore didn't disappear because they were hounded to death by lawyers and courts; they disappeared because they were outgunned, out-sailed, and outsmarted. They disappeared because it became financially disadvantageous to be pirates.
How does one outsmart modern-day pirates? I don't have the definitive answer to that question. That's why I'm a poor-but-earnest writer, not a wealthy shipping magnate.
Still, the answer is out there, and the sorry son of a moldy biscuit-eatin' seadog who deciphers the map to it will have found a fine treasure, indeed.
