Do you worry about YouTube clones threatening your revenue? Well, you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet. With the new breed of file-sharing technology, any one of your members could package your entire site and post it where thousands of potential customers can download it—for free. If you feel something funny between your fingers, it’s the subscription cash slipping through them.
What can you do about it? Unfortunately, not much more than damage control. But, before we tell you what steps you can take, let’s look at how the content thieves wreak havoc on your profit.
The P2P Bugaboo
Ask the typical webmaster about content theft, and chances are he or she will grouse about peer-to-peer networks. Turns out, P2P is not the real threat; however, since it remains an area of concern, it makes sense to dispense with it before we get to the really scary stuff.
P2P comes in two varieties: traditional and BitTorrent. In a traditional P2P network, a file on a user’s system can be accessed by another user’s system, typically through some sort of address scheme stored on a third computer. However, while plenty of porn content is shared through traditional P2P, the technology is not well suited for downloading large video files. This is because both peers must remain connected throughout the download, which may take several hours. Too much can go wrong.
BitTorrent overcomes that problem by breaking large video files into chunks and distributing them among dozens, or even hundreds, of participating users. This means, if one user disconnects, the downloader still receives the file. In addition, when you download a "torrent," you typically also are uploading it to another user, thereby automatically contributing to the efficiency of the overall system. This makes it possible—trivial, in fact—to share an entire feature-length DVD. Indeed, a check of the dozens of BitTorrent-listing sites reveals thousands of first-run movies and DVDs available for free download.
Needless to say, Hollywood studios are going nuts about this, correctly viewing both varieties of P2P sharing as threats to their revenue. To overcome this problem, they have been trying a number of tactics, such as sending Cease and Desist letters to people sharing propriety files. It is hard to tell how effective this has been; it certainly does not appear to have put much of a dent in proprietary file sharing on the BitTorrent sites.
However, while P2P has the mainstream guys quaking in their boots, it doesn’t represent all that big a threat to adult webmasters. Here’s why: First, P2P forces each peer to store a copy of each piece of content on a public area on that peer’s very own computer. Although the P2P networks typically block other sharers from knowing exactly who’s sharing, not every porn consumer feels comfortable being a distributor of the same, especially when the wife and the kiddies and the local constabulary could go poking around in the various easily accessible folders the P2P systems use. Second, even though there is plenty of P2P porn floating around, most P2P users appear to be interested in mass-media hits rather than specific genres of pornography. The search mechanisms in P2P systems mostly focus on finding a particular movie or piece of software instead of something as massive as the entire contents of a website. In fact, a certain amount of P2P content, even premium content, probably has some value as advertising for your site. This isn’t to suggest you should tolerate rampant P2P sharing of your best content, only that you need to focus your attention on the real problem, which lies elsewhere.
How Site Rips Work
Site rips take place in an entirely different arena than P2P—one that’s much more difficult to track and suppress and one that poses a much greater threat to your revenue stream. Usually, the would-be sharer buys a $10 monthly subscription to a file-sharing service. The most popular of these is RapidShare.com, but there are dozens of similar competing sites (RapidShare.de, MegaUpload,com, etc.). Most of these sites have a "no pornography" rule, but that turns out to be irrelevant, as you soon will see.
The sharer, who previously joined your site and downloaded your premium content, packs the files into a compressed (and often password-protected) file in a zip or rar format and then uses a program like HjSplit to break the compressed file into 99.9MB chunks. He or she then uploads the chunks to RapidShare.com (which has a limitation of 100MB per file). Note: There is no way whatsoever for you—or RapidShare, for that matter—to know what content is in the 99.9MB files without collating the compressed chunks and decompressing the resulting file. That becomes a difficult process when you’re dealing with thousands upon thousands of uploads. Even then, if the compressed file is password protected, there is no way of telling what it contains.
The sharer then goes to a forum where he’ll find other people who like the same kind of porn—your core audience—and posts the links to the split files along with the password to the zipped files (if present). Some of these sites, such as Fritchy.com or BabeIndex.dk, cater to the more mainstream porn consumers. Others, like the forum on SilentScreams.com, cater to a fetish crowd. Viewers of these boards (and you typically don’t have to join the forum to view the posts) buy a membership to the file-sharing site, which allows them unlimited download privileges.
The content thief (because that essentially is what the user becomes) then sets up to download, say, two dozen 99.9MB files. The download takes place in parallel while the thief works, plays a computer game, or watches previously downloaded content. An hour later, the thief uses HjSplit to recreate the compressed file, decompresses it and…bingo, the thief (and a hundred other similar thieves) have stolen 2.4GB of your best content.
It gets worse. Some of the content thieves will repost the links to the files on other forums, causing a snowball effect. Within hours, there will be literally thousands of copies of your content in the hands of people who otherwise might have subscribed to your site.
Just as an experiment, I downloaded 10GB of premium adult videos—the entire contents of a premium site that charges $29.95 a month. It took about 10 minutes to set up the download, which ran for about 12 hours. I checked on the forum and discovered I was one of 2,467 other freeloaders who did the same thing. If every one of those freeloaders signed up for a membership, that webmaster would have made $75,000. Multiply that by a dozen different forums, and it adds up to major money. (I sent the affected webmaster a courtesy "heads-up" email along with my payment for a month’s membership, but he never responded, so I’m not plugging his site.)
Why Site Rips Happen
At this point, you probably are wondering why one of your members would go to all that trouble to share your content with people he doesn’t even know. On the file-sharing forums (which, remember, only have the links—not the files themselves), people who share high-quality content receive two important benefits. Initially, they get recognition from the other sharers/thieves. There is a real sense of community inside these groups, with a lot of positive feedback, help for newbie posters, and advice about how to hide files better to make sure the "forces of evil"—meaning content owners—don’t ruin their fun.
On most forums, the posts are rated, and high ratings give the poster extra privileges, such as access to a special "VIP" section. At the same time, users who download but don’t upload are called "leechers" and are universally despised—and sometimes banned from the board. Call it honor among thieves.
The recognition and special membership privileges help create an environment that, frankly, does a much better job at servicing the porn consumer than almost any pay site. It is important to understand this fact before trying to take action, because the ultimate solution lies in co-opting, rather than squelching, these additional benefits:
Low cost
For $10 you can join the largest file-sharing site and have unlimited download privileges of thousands of gigabytes of high-quality porn.
Superb quality
Because thieves decide what to upload, and then rate the uploaded material, they only rip content from the best sites, as well as the best stuff from lesser sites.
Variety
Sharers search everywhere to find the best content in their niche of interest. Since sharers become heroes for uploading great content, they can request new content that they would like others to purchase and upload.
Anonymity
There is no way for one’s significant other to be certain a credit card charge to the file-sharing service has anything whatsoever to do with porn. And, unlike with P2P, the consumer has more control of where he can squirrel away his private porn collection.
Security
No monthly subscription means there are no surprise charges. And, because the charge is only to one entity (the file-sharing site) there’s less danger of fraud. RapidShare even accepts PayPal (which bars adult sites).
Are you depressed yet? If not, you’re not paying attention, because this stuff represents a serious threat to your revenue. You can stick your head in the sand (I had one webmaster insist—risibly—that he never had been ripped) or you can staunch your wounds and position for a long-term solution.
Patching the Problem
I asked some top webmasters what they are doing in the short term to address the problem. Here are the tactics they shared:
Keith Webb, TitanMedia: Throttle your content. Make sure it is not too easy to for a would-be thief to download your entire site. If you have enough content to justify it, put daily limits on downloads. Also, implement digital rights management for your top content. If your content is good enough, consumers will pay an ongoing fee to continue to view it. While clever consumers can override DRM, your content is that much less likely to be stolen. And, never rule out threatening legal action—via spam. If your main problem is with P2P, then think like the mainstream firms. Hire a company that does mass legal mailings and slap all the file sharers with a nasty little note. Change your business model. The subscription model drives customers away. If you can make it easier and cheaper to get your content, you will be plagued with much less file sharing—and maybe get more income in the end.
Max Hardcore, MaxHardcore.com: Play "whack a mole." Regularly search the Web for sites that have proprietary content. If it is an excessive problem, contact the webmaster and ask him or her to delete the content—or, in this case, the links. In most cases, the webmaster will comply.
Reena Patel, Kink.com: Reward subscribers who tattle on thieves. When subscribers report people and sites that illegally have uploaded your content, be sure to give them something—such as some free months on a subscription. But be careful, lest you inspire someone to post and then report just to get the reward.
Mark Bauman, Naughty America: Threaten legal action—one on one. There is nothing like a letter from a lawyer to make a webmaster sit up and take notice. Naughty America, for example, got Fritchy.com to post a large warning that anyone posting NA’s content would be banned.
Colin Rowntree, Phoenix Group: Build a strong user community. Consumers are less likely to rip you off if they feel they are a part of something special. Use forums, ratings, feedback, and superlative customer service to build a feeling of community among your audience.
While these tactics can help keep your content under your control for a little while, the long-term solution is much more challenging. Somehow, the online erotica community must find a way to offer a better service than that offered by the file-sharing culture. What is needed probably is something akin to iTunes, which makes it more convenient to pay a small amount for a piece of music than to hassle with a free download. Ideally, porn consumers want a secure and anonymous way to enjoy a wide variety of top content at a low price. Right now, the only way to do that is to become a content thief, and until our industry comes up with a better way to do business, site rips likely will become more common every passing day.
