egafd.com

Ned if you are downloading something that is copyright of the owner and you are not the owner what reason do you have other that what you say about PaySites to claim the right to do that and then share it with others ??

Asylum type DRM Crack into google what do you see ??

All interesting points that have been looked into by me at some point or other prior to this post.

DVD according to stats has boomed for mainstream releases but not for the adult industry. I feell this is simply because the internet is the best way for customers to get their goodies and the most discrete and efficient way of hiding it as well.

Aside from that, the shops are at their wits end for how much product there is available that no title really ever gets a chance to make money beofre the next wave hits the stands. Tell me a successful title that hasnt had a long shelf life simply because the shops wont order too many of one for how much choice they have on the others. Furthermore, the shops are tkaing longer and longer to pay their dues which puts a strain on everything from the producer to the talent not getting enough work because the producer isnt earning any money

Asylum, I'm not sure how long you have been using DRM but my sites used this when it was new and you know what? It was cracked soon thereafter. DRM is more trouble than it is worth for paysites, especially if the customers have to jump through hoops because of it. Alices situation is but one example of many.

Lose the DRM and see the difference in numbers on your site and tell me it isnt a big difference.

DRM is ok for some sites like BBC IPlayer and C4 OD but for porn? Nah.

M100 I see your point but piracy and the availability of free content is a much bigger problem than dodgy car boot sales. That has always been the problem but for every dvd sold for a fiver, there is another 100 downloads going on off the internet where it is available for free.

one eyed jack wrote:

> That has always been the problem but for every dvd sold for a
> fiver, there is another 100 downloads going on off the internet
> where it is available for free.

You're right, but I'd guess it's more like 100,000 downloads. !sad!

[quote]i would seriously recommend DRM[/quote]

I would seriously recommend against it.

Having a (typically WMV) file which i cant transport easily between my playback systems is a major pain in the ass and i simply wouldnt even consider signing up to your site.

Also very likely that the content will expire ,whether it be tied to the subscription, or when your site goes tits up and the drm servers shut down, locking me out of all the content ive saved. You only have to look to Microsoft/yahoo/google for failed attempts and customers losing there music/videos they paid for.

Theres a very good reason the big xxx sites have no DRM even though there content is shared everywhere. It would be naive to think that this is going to protect your content, if you can view it it can be saved and so all you end up doing is screwing legit customers. Look for drm2wmv and fairuse, both can remove the encryption from DRMWMV files and these will be the files uploaded to the filesharing sites.

If i accidently signed up to your site not knowing it was DRM'd, i would simply undrm the files for myself or save myself the hassle and get them from a filesharing site.

If you set it up properly then you should have no problems, One sites had it for over a year and it works fine. We plan to put the other over soon. It also saves having to worry about bandwidth limits.

A few people will know how to remove it but the average person wont.

Theres so much file sharing of people work i am amazed some people make a living at it.

WARNING LONG POST ALERT!!!

My take on this is; copyright owners approach to file sharing is bit like ?shield & spear? in an arms race. Every defensive development is eventually defeated or neutralised by an offensive one. I.e. in the long run? the spear wins.

If you look at the short history of file sharing the first popular program was Napster, the music industry?s (defensive) response was to sue Shaun Fanning and force him to shut down Napster?s servers. Within a very short period decentralised (peer-to-peer) file sharing programs were written to overcome Napster?s (fatal) flaw e.g. BearShare, eMule, eDonkey, Kazaa, Gnutella, WinMX, Limewire & the current market leader BitTorrent.

Copyright owners current approach to file sharing is short-sighted and doomed to failure. With Napster the music industry had a golden opportunity to co-opt both the technology and its users. But instead chose to shut it down, believing they had solved the problem. And then it was business as usual? for a while.

I think there are two issues that copyright owners have to deal with:

1) Accept that there are always going to be a percentage of people who just will not pay, regardless of how cheap the product is. Once this is accepted, then they can remove these people from their ?lost? sales estimates. Because realistically, these are ?imaginary? potential customers, who were never going to buy the product anyway.

2) Develop marketing strategies to make it easy, simple & cost effective to buy digital media. A good example of this is Apple?s iTunes approach to digital distribution, which demonstrates that people can be encouraged to pay for downloads? if the process is attractive to the customer. Maybe the adult industry needs to develop a porn ?iTunes?? So if someone likes a particular model, they can go to this site and download her scenes from different producers for a reasonable price. What that price should be? I don?t know? But it has to low enough to discourage pirating, encourage repeat business & make a worthwhile profit for the producers. The current crop of DOD/PPV sites are either too expensive, badly designed, have limited content or all three. They just don?t meet the customer?s needs.

The whole righteous anger approach to the issue, while it may make aggrieved producers feel better, is ultimately self-defeating. Take the case if you follow the link? winning ?16 grand and collecting it are 2 different things.

What if you go to the time & expense of winning a ten grand judgement against some guy for uploading your content. And then find out he doesn?t own anything, apart from the clothes on his back, a half empty box of man-sized tissues & a cheap computer from PC World... with its hard drive filled to bursting with your content? What then?

I mean come on? the whole process from identifying an infringement, obtaining a court order to get a name & address from an ISP, contacting the alleged offender, instigating legal action, winning a judgement, have it upheld if there?s an appeal, enforcing the judgement, collecting payment? you?d be lucky if all this could be completed in under 12 months. Multiply this process by a couple of dozen, and you might as well forget about running your original business.

I?m not saying producers shouldn?t protect their content? I know if I spent ?500 or 600 producing a scene. I?d be pissed off if it appeared for free on a BitTorrent site... But if Hollywood & the music industry (who measure their profits in billions), can?t defeat file-sharers with their current strategy. Then maybe the adult industry should be looking for a different approach?

One example of DRM is danni.com. I have been a member of their site for a good while and an affiliate for longer. For a long time they used the DRM system and as Asylum mentioned for them anyway it stopped file sharing dead. However they also found it was a the most common reason for people cancelling after reviewing the cancellation comments. Also after several surveys it was the most popular reason for people not signing up after the free tours. So recently they scrapped it totally and memberships rose by over 35% according to their stats.

Yes stopping copyright theft is important to you guys I totally understand this and support you on it but what surely is equally important is attracting new members and keeping existing ones. If a site as established and successful as Danni.com have scrapped it surely its worth considering whether its a way for our industry to go. I know as a member of Danni.com it was annoying as hell knowing that not only couldn't make a DVD of the video to play on my DVD player but also that when I wanted to watch the video on my computer I had to wait for Media Player to check the licence! Annoying as hell, and I would say off putting to any potential customers

On a more positive note how about how Killergram do it? Whether its a bluff or not and I suspect not. They encrypt the username of the member to the video somehow,meaning that if that video ends up elsewhere they know exactly which of their members originally downloaded it. Wouldn't that work rather than DRM?