Meanwhile those who get sued will fall into these categories:
1) OMG I got this letter, and I'm going to pay to make this go away (whoo-hoo, the industry just made $100, if that after lawyer fees).
2) OMG, I'm being blackmailed. They're extorting me by threatening to have a public record of my porn activity. I know enough about the law to counter-sue.
3) OMG, my 9 year old son has been downloading porn. THIS is why porn needs to be made illegal!!!! The porn industry itself has made the case for us that they can't control who sees this evil material and we Christians are determined to stop them.

post from a surfer
now this is scary if you DMCA someone with a child

Shap, if you ever want to offer a product that can't be stolen and add more value to your sites hit me up.

Fighting content theft IMO is a losing battle. People like Steve can nickle and dime with the lawsuits and make some money but as much as he makes from that he will continue to lose more from his picture and video sites.

There is no beating them and there is no stopping it this point. If you people are smart you will use pictures and videos as promotional and marketing materials to get traffic and then get them to join a membership for the stuff they can't steal. Why fight a losing battle when you can make some changes and capitalize from it ?

How do you innovate or adapt when the product you sell is FREE ???
 

JUst curious if anyone has figured out a way to stop the porn ship from sinking?

Everyone always says innovate or adapt but I havnt seen anything new:2 cents:

I hope all those freeloaders love 10, 20 year old porn form now on. DO they HONESTLY think that ocne ther is ZERO money in porn new porn is going to be made? People in the porn busines aren't doing it for charity. So they may say "Oooh there so much free porn" yeah great if old porn was good as new porn then no new porn would be made there wouldn't be a demand for it. People would just watch porn from the 70's and 80's. Honestly there is enough porn made form 1970-1990 to last one a lifetime. So why do guys want new porn? Beause guys want NEW girls. They don't want some porno movie their grandmas friend made back in 1973. So in 2025 when the newest porn scene is one from 2015, well enjoy it for the 1000th time and don't keep asking when something new is going to be made.

You know 20 years ago I paid $5 for ONE 2 hour porn movie on VHS that I could rent for 24 hours. And of course I had to actually get out of the house and go to a questionable part of town to get it and bring it back. If I had an option of paying $25-$30 a month for HUNDREDS or even 1000's of porno movies and I didn't even have to leave my house, I would have jumped all over that shit in a heartbeat.

You are 100% correct. Even the music industy is facing this future very soon. Lot of people want to put ther heads in the sand and think if they wish hard enough they can put the genie back in the bottle. Ironcially I think if laws like COPA had passed and was enforced vigorously as well as 2257 I think the porn industry would be better off now.

Honestly even with your idea of offering stuff they can't steal and just using content as a means to and end of attracting customers I think the paysite model is doomed. I think pay sites will have to be free and the stuff they can't steal will be behind a paywall and they can pay to access that. That's how most mainstream sites make revenue.

It will be 10 out of 10 soon.

Some of the better picture and video sites like Twistys is still holding on by having a big volume of loyal, older members who either don't surf around looking for free porn or don't know its out there. However, every day there is a new generation of potential buyers turning 18 years old, and these kids are internet savvy and not only know where all the free porn is but they think it should be free. It's 4-5 years now with tube sites out there, pretty much everyone under 25-26 is up to date. As the older, loyal members cancel out for various reasons (get married, credit card maxes out, they die, etc.) they will continue to lose more members than are being replaced.

When you really stop and think about, it's just pictures and videos... you can find most of that, if not all of it for free. Who wants to join a site and pay what is considered a lot of money these days for stuff they can not only find for free but even if they did join, what incentive do they have to rebill? They can see 99% of what you have in day 1. So they pay $30 to see 99% of what you have and then pay $30 the next month for 1% new stuff in updates? doesn't make sense. In another 5-10 years I think people will look back in amazement that people use to pay $30 a month for just pictures and videos.

The answers are right in front of their faces. No big innovation is needed. It's simple, sites need to become more interactive, there has to be stuff that is live, and there has to be interaction between the members and the content. Members should also have more control over the site. I have tons of great ideas on how to accomplish this, but apparently no one wants to listen.

It's just new to them and for whatever reason some of these old timers don't want to change. I don't understand why. Is it because they are scared to, is it an ego thing and they think they can beat it, do they just not care anymore and they are going to cut costs and ride the ship down living off of the rebills for as long as they can, or are they so big that they think they can't change, or they think they shouldn't have to change, or do they have their heads in the sand and they think nothing is wrong. I totally don't understand it.

it's like trying to talk to your best friend who's gf just cheated on him and he is still hung up on her. You have a non biased opinion looking at it from the outside but he is all tied up into it and can't see clearly what is going on. It's like most of these people are in a fog and you can see crystal clear, but they don't want to hear what you have to say.

They don't care if they even know how it worked. There really is sooo much freakin porn on the net right now that has been produced in the last 5-10 years that most people could continuously watch porn videos non stop for the next 50 years and not run out of stuff to see that they like. Maybe in 20 years the porn will be out dated, and if there wasn't anything new made then they would be up shit's creek. But they don't care about that and none of you will be around in 20 years if everyone stops buying.

The 'there will be no porn produced and nothing for them to see" argument really doesn't hold water and isn't going to slow them down or stop the problem at all.

Get with the times man, this industry milked the fuck out of surfers for years, people made millions selling "free trials" that went on to charge $29.99 on peoples cards for months.

Then we have the garbage cookie cutter turn key "pay sites" that aren't worth 3 cents let alone $30 bucks a month, then there's the fact that you all sat on your fat asses raking in the money without any innovation since 1997.

What did you expect? Now the tables are turning and there's still money to be made in porn, just that you have to use your brain a little now and won't be selling memberships to your shitty cookie cutter turn key pay sites, and need to come up with a better way to promote then submitting galleries to TGP's and script generated blogs.

Look at mainstream, it's been evolving while this industry has pretty much sat on it's ass since the 90's.

I remember my first porn paycheck was over $30k and all I did was spam Altavista and had a page with no content other then thumbnails linking to cecash free trials. It's not that easy anymore.

Crazy but I agree with everything you say in this thread lol.

I think its easier said then done. I know everyone hates my new model but It was the best I could come up with to counter the free porn. all the members in our system chat with eachother and are happy to pay and watch porn etc.
we took away the dirty feeling. you will see many women are in the system and ready to get you involved. Its not a CD industry anymore and its not an impulse buy anymore since its free.

If you have great ideas for paysites let us know I'm ready to improve our system and paysites anyway I can:thumbsup

I don't think that going after the end user is a good idea. We already have enough PR problems in this industry without alienating our end users.

We need to monetize the traffic to tube/torrent/file share sites and use them as advertising and recruiting tools.

We need to make piracy less profitable than cooperating with the content producers.

We need to create better sites for ourselves and provide a quality experience for our customers.

We need to kill the .XXX gTLD and maintain net neutrality.

We need to support our trade association: The Free Speech Coalition.

Just my opinion....:2 cents:

its really not that hard for them to do it. It just takes the right plan, a little time and the willingness to make some changes. But first they have to recognize there is a problem.

what all siteowners should do is to lower there prices for the memberships.
Another thing we could try is to make it impossible to download sets/videos from your membersites. Would it not be enough to view the content the month you pay for it ???
Stop give away free porn...find another way to get traffic.
I just shoot content..so I am not so involved how you run your business...but something has to be done if ppl want to stay in this business.

Totally right. They even SPELL OUT how the music and film industry 'fought' piracy. They lowered their far too high prices, made delivery really simple and imcreased quality. Why spend ages getting a shit 128 kbps mp3 when for 9 cents you could get a DRM free lossless version in around 15 seconds?

This isn't even a hard fight to win.

Don't sue your fucking prospective customers, give them quality product at a price they are prepared to pay. Boo hoo, it isn't 30 bucks a month any more. Just like it's not 20 bucks for a CD, or 25 bucks for a DVD. We all WANT to charge 30 bucks a month for a product that is 95% SHIT. When was the last time you saw what you would call 'good' porn?

It's not hard. Make something good. Price it low. Make it easy to get.

The piracy conference would have been more productive if 10 big studios agreed to launch an itunes-like store for porn. The fact the story is about them claiming to be able to stop piracy is laughable.

When the cost of distribution is this close to zero it is just a matter of time before the price gravitates to "free".

If you make something exceedingly good they'll just want to pirate it more and you'll be out on the higher budget it cost you to make it with nothing to show for it

who owns www.pornkings.com now?

IMO We have a winner.

This will never happen. Somebody out there will always make porn even if it doesn't make a profit and certainly amateur porn will always be new. This theory may work if most people in porn actually followed through with something lol, we can't even keep free porn off the net and you expect some plan where suddenly all producers throw up their hands and go "nope, no more". :1orglaugh

Regular porn sites are not what people want to join. Do it right and I would promote it, most would get it wrong.

I like the angle and I might have some traffic for you. Get me on ICQ sometime so I have your number and when I can sit down and think I will shoot the shit with you. I have some ideas to monetize in this climate but nothing I could or care to do on my own.

This man speaks the truth..

you are wrong on the suing the downloader being a bad thing. i know many many people who quit downloading shit when people started getting sued, including me. the smart people who care that their lives will get fucked up will get back into line. those are the people with the money to buy memberships. they traditionally understand a company needs to make money to survive and produce more products. the losers with no money will never pay for anything anyhow. let them download some other idiots shit that doesn't care enough to protect their products.

Nah, in every community of normal people that I participate in it is blatantly obvious that they don't give a shit about you. They don't think that you having a shitty business model is their problem so they download away. You can get money out of them but not by making it harder and more expensive for them to get the content they want. The only people suing are has beens that are so far out of touch with reality that lawsuits are the only chance they have at future income.

I agree with this and have a question for you...

I had a chance to be shown the admin for a group of sites with the highest levels of interaction. These are truly social sites. My conversions and rebills have been better with these than any site I have promoted going back to 2003. It has honesty been impressive which is why I was interested in what they were doing. Now the owner of these sites tells me that despite this, his greatest challenge is getting people to actually promote it .. or anything in the current market. Why would people continue to promote the "old" when there are "new media" sites in our space to promote? Or are people just not promoting anything anymore?

And apologies to the thread starter if this is off topic :Oh crap

you are incorrect on all accounts.

Take away the advertising on torrent/file sharing sites and lets see how they run their sites.

Those players that support them are in our industry. Blacklist them are we might have a chance.

I'm sorry, I guess my sample size of 2 million is too small.

I have no idea why these companies / owners will not make changes. It is dumbfounding to see how many of them continue on with their picture and video sites like it is business as usual instead of making changes to add more interaction for their members.

I guess a lot of affiliate don't realize the value either? Who ever it is you are talking about does he promote his program well to affiliates? If I were him I would harp on how he is different from everyone else and show how well his conversion and retention rates are.

OK, it seems to me that as a practical matter, we are all stuck with free porn being out there and it's not going to go away any time soon. Like sand fleas in the desert, you can keep them off but you can't get rid of them.

Ordinary people who would never think of shoplifting, robbing a bank or driving off unpaid from the gas station are perfectly willing to download free porn, stolen or not. A screwy glitch in mentality, morality and ethics but there it is and that's a fact, Jack!

So................................................ ...............

There are millions of sites, hundreds of thousands of webmasters, thousands of torrents and even if you had a thousand guys and gals working 24/7/365, you'd never get them all taken down.............................................. .................

So................................................ ................

How to live, survive and profit in this theft-ridden market is the only question.

Why do we not turn our thoughts, marketing skills and efforts to finding the answer to that question instead of whining, bitching and complaining about something that we absolutely cannot control?

Thanks to piracy and "digital freedom", potential customers now regard us producers as nearly enemies for wanting money for shit they believe should be free.

That's sick.

It's sick, it sucks, they are assholes, fuck them, fucking pussies, pieces of shit, dickweeds, they live in their moms basement and have no friends etc.

Doesn't change the fact that we need to work around it. Complaining definitely doesn't help, ask Steve!

You are right on!

2 years ago I stepped away from day to day paysite operations and planned out a total change in our business with my expectations that subscription based sites are ending soon.

I past this article and the comments to Shap and we have discussed this a lot. I feel that studios and people involved in this little conference missed out on a lot of people and suggestions.

The iTunes of porn won't happen yet Damian sorry, why? People are still to greedy. I have had 4 emails recently from programs changing their revshare percent. I am waiting for PPS programs to start being cancelled.

it wouldnt make a difference. Did itunes stop music piracy? did redbox stop it? nope 99 cents didnt. People use the its too expensive as an excuse. You made it 50 cents they would say its fucking porn why buy ?they are all rich already.

And to all of you interactivity prophets who think interactivity will save us, have you ever tried to read support e-mails at a real porn pay site? Because if you did you'd know that 99% of members care about PORN, not some interactivity they do not need and do not care about. PORN, meaning pre-made photos and videos, not live shows etc. They want more of this girl or more of that girl, to do this or to do that - that's what real members are asking for.

Sure having some interactivity would never hurt, but it's not going to change much either. If your entire member area is ripped and available for free to download from pornbb or empornium, having a fancy-wancy interactive website is not going to bring your lost sales back.

PORN is the main attraction for surfers, not live cams not interaction whatever. Sure some of them love live cams, but not the whole lot. If you think that is not so try making an free site with lots of intercation and zero free porn, and a site with lots of free porn and zero interaction, and then see what happens, which one of the two surfers will start flocking to. No need to waste your time though because we all know the answer.

Fighting piracy is the only way to bring our lost sales back, everything else is a waste of time and resources.

what a fucking joke - porn consumers as well as music consumers NEVER EVER and NOT NOW either had a problem with the price of music and porn sites. No more than any of us complain about the price of anything. I bought vinyl, cassettes and CD's I liked from 8.99 to 16.99 and didn't sit there feeling like the music industry screwed me over. Sometimes I'd buy a CD and yeah, two songs were good and the rest shitty - I blamed the band not the record company

The pricing issue is a NON ISSUE - it's an EXCUSE, A JUSTIFICATION, A LIE that thieves and brokeass losers use to take what isn't theirs.

Lower pricing isn't the solution to anything- ask the programs who tried selling porn memberships for 9.95 - Lensman and PlatinumBucks- how that worked out for them.

There is ONE problem that is destroying the paysite industry and that's PIRACY. And the law which was supposed to protect copyright owners is so fucked up that it does the complete opposite - it makes stealing content profitable and bulletproof liability wise.

Piracy needs to be fought. I'm surprised people actually think it is produced by thousands for free!
A person might make a utube video for free. To entertain themselves or try to impress their friends. Most have little thought or resources going into their production and their poor quality reflects that.
How many utube videos are done where they make hundreds of them and have tens of thousands of dollars into their production with no chance of revenue?
Costs nothing to try to sing on your cell phone camera and post it.
I need models to travel and work for free, so I can produce for free like some people think it is done. Any designers want to work for free? I need one.
Free promotion please, I could use that also. Free hosting and bandwith porfavor.
I'm still surprised the pirate sites and tubes can simply ignore 2257 along with the copyright stuff. I think that might be the angle to get some of the big server and tube sites offline. That would eliminate 90% of the problem, which would be probably enough to restore some balance.

and what Nautilus said- BANG FUCKING ON. This INTERACTIVITY bullshit is so overrated it's hysterical how out of touch some of you are. 90% of porn surfers couldn't give a shit about interacting with anybody - not a naked amateur, not a pornstar or a fellow porn surfer. they want to view/download porn and spank it.

I know solo girl sites - I had a VERY successful solo girl site WITHOUT ANY INTERACTIVITY WHATSOEVER - that site REBILLS better than 99% of solo girl sites with interactivity. Any teen solo girl site owner who wants to post their rebills up against mine and is willing to put 1K up let's do it.

NaughtyAmerica sunk a fortune into LIVE INTERACTIVE programming - guess fucking what - IT'S GONE. Because it's meaningless to the bottom line. I have a new solo girl site and the model is doing her Halloween webcam show as I type this. I regret making her go on webcam - IT'S USELESS ..... yes, USELESS ...... she has 600 active members, there *might* be 50 members watching. I saw the same thing on Ashley Brookes.

Met-Art which probably is the most successful paysite on the planet in terms of membership count felt they needed this INTERACTIVITY and had their own LIVE CAM shows - guess fucking what - GONE! They now just upsell their members to a Streamate white label.

Interactivity on a paysite means next to nothing.

If the whole meat of your site is interactivity- virtual world community,dating, a cam site - different story,different business.

You keep using this argument and it's getting stupid. iTunes didn't stop piracy, nothing will. What it did is allow people that are not paying $15 a fucking CD to download shit for $0.99 and made it fairly easy. This has resulted in billions of dollars in sales, a large chunk of which they never would have gotten by not having cheap access points.

You can get mad and reminisce but the paysites people are slinging are not worth the fucking price being charged. Not to me and not to 99.9% of surfers.

Adapt or die, we can't even get off the POS fucking ICQ.