Sony to blame tube sites too?

[gonzo]

"Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment, said,'I'm a guy who doesn't see anything good having come from the Internet, period.' Why? Because people 'feel entitled' to have what they want when they want it, and if they can't get it for free, 'they'll steal it.' It's become customary to expect a somewhat limited perspective on things from old-world entertainment companies, but his inability to acknowledge that the Internet has changed everything makes me think he's a very confused man. Is this when we all give up hope that companies like Sony Pictures can adapt? Will we look back on this as one of the defining moments when the industrialized entertainment industry lost touch for good?"

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?...25244&from=rss

[tony404]

if you think it doesnt effect things and think its not training a whole generation that paying for recorded entertainment is dumb.You are really kidding yourself.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by tony404

if you think it doesnt effect things and think its not training a whole generation that paying for recorded entertainment is dumb.You are really kidding yourself.

The problem is old schoolers like status quo. Newspapers HATED the invention of radio.

Somehow, somewhere, someone will eventually solve the equation, and they're going to be insanely wealthy. The equation is the balance of speed, convenience, price and accessibility that allows the users to get what they want and have the producers still make a reasonable profit.

I do agree that things like tube sites impede progress on this. If a user can get something that is what they want or close to it, very easily for free, then why look anywhere else? But why do tubes exist? Because someone is making money off of them.

So let's peel that onion back a bit further.

For a tube site to be profitable, it means someone is willing to pay enough for those eyeballs to cover the bandwidth and then some. Well, for someone to be willing to pay for it, that means they have a way of convincing those users who are seeing a ton of free content that they have something that is desirable enough to make them pause their free viewing and reach in their wallet and pull out their card.

Think about that one for a bit...

[gonzo]

Tony...Napster did that all by themselves with the music business. Wasnt any tube at the time.

And food for thought is that pornotube is now a couple of years old.

This business is built on someone forgetting to cancel a membership.
Maybe the key here is actually convincing the user that you have a product that is so good they will buy and return to buy again later?

Who says the equation already hasnt been solved?

[tony404]

when you figure probably 50 percent maybe more of tube site viewers arent old enough to own a credit card it makes your point pretty moot. When ibill went under we canceled 330 members in one day. We were back to the number in two months So if it was full of forgotten people we wouldnt of came close to that number. The recurring model was not created by adult and its not going anywhere. Porn had a huge explosion when all you had to decide was the box cover. I give the music industry credit they aren't short sighted vultures, you dont see them advertising on bit torrents or p2p sites.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by tony404

when you figure probably 50 percent maybe more of tube site viewers arent old enough to own a credit card it makes your point pretty moot. When ibill went under we canceled 330 members in one day. We were back to the number in two months So if it was full of forgotten people we wouldnt of came close to that number. The recurring model was not created by adult and its not going anywhere. Porn had a huge explosion when all you had to decide was the box cover. I give the music industry credit they aren't short sighted vultures, you dont see them advertising on bit torrents or p2p sites.

Unfortunately guys like you, Danny and rhetorical are the exception not the rule. I would say that pretty much the entire "amateur" niche is an exception because the people who surf those sites for the most part know what they're looking for and can smell a real girl involved in the running of a site versus a faux site from a mile away. Same is true of niche's like rhetorical works, you cant fake that, you've gotta love it a little yourself and know your audience and provide the content they want.

That community treats their user base as a customer, if not a community, and gives them something they cant easily find for a fair price.

Novel concept huh?

So long as the rest of the industry doesn't fuck it up to the point that no one can get credit card processing, there will always be a comfortable living out there in these markets for the people willing to play it honest and do a little work.

But again, exception, not the rule. The majority of what's out there are cookie cutter sites that exist to do nothing but milk the ever loving crap out of any credit card that someone is naive enough to give them. Bury it with cross sales and recur it on every site until they finally discover it, and then hope they are too embarassed or lazy to charge it back.

THAT behavior drives people to tube sites.

It would be a great business model for someone to do industry research with surveys and stuff to sell to those who care and the press. I would bet anything if we had the data there's a fair amount of people who have paid for the porn in the past and would be willing to pay for it again, but now get their spank on via tube sites because they fear the hassle of having to cancel a credit card and dispute $200+ worth of charges again.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by tony404

when you figure probably 50 percent maybe more of tube site viewers arent old enough to own a credit card it makes your point pretty moot. When ibill went under we canceled 330 members in one day. We were back to the number in two months So if it was full of forgotten people we wouldnt of came close to that number. The recurring model was not created by adult and its not going anywhere. Porn had a huge explosion when all you had to decide was the box cover. I give the music industry credit they aren't short sighted vultures, you dont see them advertising on bit torrents or p2p sites.

I doubt you could keep a 17 year old boy away from porn online even if it were locked in the electronic equivalent of fort knox.

Any source of free porn is going to have those guys. And they have the time on their hands and the desire IN their hands to invest whatever time and effort is needed to get to porn. Teenage boys are always going to have some way of trading porn no matter what the media is. You cant stop it.

More importantly, those guys cannot buy porn anyway, so you basically do your due diligence and then leave them alone. There's no profit in fighting them. Just make sure you dont make it easy for them and land in court some day. And with liberals back in charge in washington, safe bet there's not going to be legislative help anytime soon. That's good for us in the long run.

Now you hit a key thing though by saying the music industry doesn't advertise on p2p, etc. Adult industry by and large is greedy to the point of being moronic.

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by tony404

I give the music industry credit they aren't short sighted vultures, you dont see them advertising on bit torrents or p2p sites.

Uh....

They aren't advertising on BT or P2P, they're suing and prosecuting] them.

The music industry is even more shortsighted than the porn industry, because they don't even have enough sense to realize that they created this whole "us versus them" mentality, where "them" is organized content providers and "us" is anyone who doesn't want to pay for high quality content....

Litigation just increases the hate. Give someone a reason (other than the barrel of a gun) to pay, and they'll pay.

[tony404]

Originally Posted by Hell Puppy

The problem is old schoolers like status quo. Newspapers HATED the invention of radio.

Somehow, somewhere, someone will eventually solve the equation, and they're going to be insanely wealthy. The equation is the balance of speed, convenience, price and accessibility that allows the users to get what they want and have the producers still make a reasonable profit.

I do agree that things like tube sites impede progress on this. If a user can get something that is what they want or close to it, very easily for free, then why look anywhere else? But why do tubes exist? Because someone is making money off of them.

So let's peel that onion back a bit further.

For a tube site to be profitable, it means someone is willing to pay enough for those eyeballs to cover the bandwidth and then some. Well, for someone to be willing to pay for it, that means they have a way of convincing those users who are seeing a ton of free content that they have something that is desirable enough to make them pause their free viewing and reach in their wallet and pull out their card.

Think about that one for a bit...

They make money because they arent paying for content for the most part. what a big surprise.thats not a hot business model.
You ever think say governments start to ban porn off the net because everyone in desperation decides giving it all away is the way to go. porn was never meant to be free, people dont like vice stuck in their faces. business principles dont change. Wasnt that learned in 2000 ads were going to pay for everything online?

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by tony404

They make money because they arent paying for content for the most part. what a big surprise.thats not a hot business model.
You ever think say governments start to ban porn off the net because everyone in desperation decides giving it all away is the way to go. porn was never meant to be free, people dont like vice stuck in their faces. business principles dont change. Wasnt that learned in 2000 ads were going to pay for everything online?

So riddle me this... what event do you think it would or will take to fix what is basically a broken business model and economy that exists in adult?

[EmporerEJ]

Originally Posted by Hell Puppy

So riddle me this... what event do you think it would or will take to fix what is basically a broken business model and economy that exists in adult?

A proprietary product.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

[RawAlex]

The whole "FREE!" movement is one of the most dangerous and ill-thought out concepts on the internet. The people from Sony are basically seeing their content, their products, and their profits being traded for free online, without any chance for them to earn income from it. From where they sit, the internet is a cesspool, a black hole to shovel product into and lose it forever, ending what would be the "long tail" for their products.

For a content producer, the internet is hell.

Short term, for "consumers", the internet is heaven. Get all the music, movies, TV shows, porn, whatever it is, get it all for free, never have to pay, enjoy it all you want, life is good, Everything is "FREE!".

Long term? There are only a few ways this plays out, and none of them are good for consumers. Companies like Sony could stop being in the software business altogether (software being anything that can be digitized, from movies to music to software to games to whatever is digital or can be digitized). When their return on investment is too small to justify the risks, they will stop doing the work. That is the "nuclear option", where the vast majority of movie and music companies simply stop producing product.

More likely are non-nuclear options, which will still hurt the consumer greatly. Imagine video game systems where you neve buy a physical copy of the game, but rather it downloads over the net (for a fee), but only the pieces you need at that moment to play the given level or given area. Everything is done online, you never end up with a complete version of the game (and likely the pieces you get would be keyed off of a unique console / PC identifier that would mean even the parts wouldn't run anywhere else). Imagine all movies not as downloads, but as a semi-streaming "chunk" viewer that only allows you to get chunks at a time to watch, and that they chunks are deleted as they go along. No more video stores, no more Blu-ray - just hard protected PPV. How about music, on a Rhapsody style player, except that the content is downloaded on the fly, encoded to your particular player device. 4G networking, no storage, no retention, just a list of "rights" to songs you could listen to if you choose (the only thing your player would retain would be a playlist, no actual music).

Basically, rent to use. Think of it like online computer apps taken to the top level.

The third choice is throwing up their arms and giving in, distributing everything for free with the chance to upsell to something else, trying to sell the home theatre systems, big screen TVs and music systems on the basis of giving away the content. As it isn't a tied sale, it is likely a non-starter for most companies.

So HP, how does porn fix itself? It moves to the same sort of process: PPV style streaming of content, even from inside paysites. No WMV, no MPEG - 100% steamed with zero retention. Literally, no content to download and keep (maybe images, they are a dying art anyway), all video in formats that are keyed to the user's computer only, so even capturing it would be pointless. Flash movies are actually a tiny step in that right direction, except that flash files can be captured and displayed.

Porn also needs to take a harder stand against non-competitive selling using their product. Most tube sites are dependant on dating, cam, and other non-porn products to make their livings, using porn as the lure and the sales pitch. Those companies who are producing content to support their websites or sell on DVD need to be more agressive about making sure their content isn't used as a free lure to sell someone else's product. Remove the cam and dating ads from most tube sites, and they would fold like a cheap tent in a windstorm - as would most of the torrent and file trader sites.

The porn people can fix it, but they have to be motivated. Apparently 5% profit is enough to keep some of these people in coke and hookers, so they aren't going to fix it any time soon.

[Hell Puppy]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

The porn people can fix it, but they have to be motivated. Apparently 5% profit is enough to keep some of these people in coke and hookers, so they aren't going to fix it any time soon.

Good post, you're thinking the right way. Everyone has to get out of the box and see the internet as a delivery platform, not a business model unto itself.

But here's the problem, "porn people". Adult industry will not clean itself up. It will not organize.

it is NOT made up of business men and women for the most part. Despite the ongoing thinning of the herd, it is still filled with people whose business backgrounds are limited to fast food and working the parts counter at an auto store.

And even the businessmen who are here are largely happy to strip mine. Adult is not considered a valid ongoing business, it is considered something you get in and get as much as you can before someone shuts you down.

What has to happen to make that change?

Processing is an obvious one, but the problem is if anyone can process it'll likely be the big boys who are often the worst. If NO ONE can process, then there's no one left standing.

Something has to happen to make scams and surviving on razor thin margins impossible. I have some solid theories on how it happens, but we're at least 2 years away.

[softball]

I think the Sony E Book model is the future of content delivery. I love it. I pay for it. I don't feel ripped off. I can share it with my wife. It makes novels and books cheap, accessible, and is a very seductive device. The publishers will do well. The latest tactic seems to be a novel that is free for thirty days. You know that has got to sell lots of hardware which in turn will sell more software, in this case, books.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

I think the Sony E Book model is the future of content delivery. I love it. I pay for it. I don't feel ripped off. I can share it with my wife. It makes novels and books cheap, accessible, and is a very seductive device. The publishers will do well. The latest tactic seems to be a novel that is free for thirty days. You know that has got to sell lots of hardware which in turn will sell more software, in this case, books.

I think your on to something.

We've mentioned the music industry in this thread and overlooked a recent success in pay for downloads when people said that no one would when things were for free....

iTunes.

It was said that people would never pay to download music if they could get it for free from P2P networks. However, the attraction of P2P wasn’t just the price, it was the user experience, which was something Apple understood.

Something this business could learn from.

[softball]

Originally Posted by gonzo

I think your on to something.

We've mentioned the music industry in this thread and overlooked a recent success in pay for downloads when people said that no one would when things were for free....

iTunes.

It was said that people would never pay to download music if they could get it for free from P2P networks. However, the attraction of P2P wasn’t just the price, it was the user experience, which was something Apple understood.

Something this business could learn from.

The success of a good subscription sign up depends on a couple of things. The obvious being you must have exactly....and I do mean exactly the content the customer wants. You have to make it a safe environment for him. In other words, provide a comfortable environment that he knows is virus and upsell free and he must trust that his personal cc details are safe and secure. But the overwhelming reason a customer stays with a subscription site is that it is simple and easy. I tunes is simple and easy. My cell phone does very little. It sends and receives calls and it takes messages. It ain't pretty, but it is simple and effective. I like it.
Surfing for free porn, on the other hand, is messy, "dangerous", complicated and a lot of work.
For thirty bucks a months you can avoid all of the above issues. Personally, I figure if 30 dollars a month is expensive, then I don't really care if buddy is off down the road searching endlessly, picking up the web equivalent of STD's. I provide him an internet condom to keep him safe.

[RawAlex]

Interesting twist of the day, apparently ASACP has won it's lawsuit against google / youtube, which will now be paying them 1.x million back money and $70,000 per month going forward. Not sure the details yet, but it looks like Youtubes fucked business model (losing millions a month) just got fucked harder, showing that they do in fact have liablity to various rights holders. 70k a month isn't but a dorp in the bucket, but it is the open door that the RIAA, MPAA, and others will drive a truck through given half a chance.

[DannyCox]

Toby, I fully understand that. It just bugs me when I see people try to justify theft by pointing fingers at the producers and distributors and saying it's their fault by either charging too much or making it too easy to take it. That just adds to the problem.

There is no easy or pat solution to this problem, I also understand that. DRM didn't and still doesn't work, and for the life of me, I can't think of a solution. All I do now is watermark the hell out of everything so that at least the credit is there when our videos get passed around.

[Toby]

There is no viable solution. The side effects of anything that would completely lock it down would be worse than the theft itself.

A few are having decent success by only providing video in a streaming format. That doesn't really prevent theft, it just makes it more difficult to acquire a file that can then be uploaded, so the "file sharers" move to easier targets. It only works so long as there are enough easier targets.

[DannyCox]

The problem with the streaming video solution (other than is you can see it, you can grab it) is that the customers just hate it. To get decent quality out of streaming, you really need for the end user to have the bandwidth to handle the file. I've seen sites that do streaming video only, and I've yet to see anything with quality.

We retain our customers by offering our videos in a number of different formats, from low end mobile to full 720p High Definition WMV, MP4 and DivX files. The problem is that the videos are then easy to share. But I know I would lose half my customer base if I offered only a streaming solution, so I just have to put up with it.

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by DannyCox

I've seen sites that do streaming video only, and I've yet to see anything with quality.

Obviously it's not porn, but:

http://www.vimeo.com/hd

Exceptional quality, streaming only. Full screen one or two of them - it's perfect. And they even offer instructions on the front page...

if you have an older computer, wait for the video to buffer before playing

[softball]

Bottom line here is don't blame the victim of the theft. I am so sick and tired of people justifying obvious crime.

You were just asking for it, wearing that short skirt and high heels.

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

Bottom line here is don't blame the victim of the theft. I am so sick and tired of people justifying obvious crime.

And again, I have never once blamed the theft on the content providers.

I blame the music industry for creating the "us versus them" mentality.

Not the theft.

Are we quite clear on this now?

There is no excuse for stealing shit, whether it's robbing a liquor store or mass-distributing copyrighted material without the provider's permission.

You keep going back to "justifying theft" - I've never done that. I've just said, over, and over, and over again, that the music industry created the "us versus them" mentality with their excessive use of tort, lobbying for special legislative favors, and general resistance of new technology, and they've been doing it since long before Napster existed. Ever heard of the Sonny Bono Law? The record industry basically destroyed public domain with that piece of work, by extending copyright on all published music for 100 years after the artist's death. Patents on new technology are only good for 25 years, but copyright on music is good for a minimum of a century? How ludicrous is that?

Bottom line: The "us versus them" mentality continues to fuel this constant drive for new pirating technology.

The smart content provider will find other ways to make money off their content. The stupid one will jump up and down and throw tantrums because the evil haxxorz are taking all their money away, and they'll end up folding like an accordion.

[RawAlex]

One of the sites I visit often enough is a blog packed full of people who hate copyright, hate patents, hate anything that restricts the flow of information. They don't looking at the sharing of music or movies as theft, but as "infringement" of the copyright holder only. They have a very narrow sort of self justification going on that allows them to say to themselves they aren't stealing anything, they are just in violation of some sort of technical license thingie, sort of like driving slightly too fast on the highway or double dipping your chip into the salsa.

It's really amusing to watch them go, until you realize that these shits have many of the bully pulpit positions. One of the leaders of the pack is Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired... his new book on "FREE!" marketing will be polluting bookstores soon. Interestingly, his book will be on sale, rather than being just pushed off onto P2P sites for free distribution.

Danny, you are right, if you can see it, you can copy it - but if you can stream it, you can label it and create liability for a file sharer.

[softball]

I've never done that. I've just said, over, and over, and over again, that the music industry created the "us versus them" mentality with their excessive use of tort, lobbying for special legislative favors, and general resistance of new technology, and they've been doing it since long before Napster existed.

Well that explains it then. Us versus the thieves. What a buncha bastards those music industry guys are. They deserve everything they get for resisting technology. Silly old cunts.

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by rhetorical

Well that explains it then. Us versus the thieves. What a buncha bastards those music industry guys are. They deserve everything they get for resisting technology. Silly old cunts.

You are impossibly obtuse, you know that?

[griffin8r]

Originally Posted by griffin8r

You are impossibly obtuse, you know that?

Okay, after taking a few minutes here, I realize this was a bit over the top.

Sorry.

Let me frame my point in a slightly different manner.

From the original quote:

Why? Because people 'feel entitled' to have what they want when they want it, and if they can't get it for free, 'they'll steal it.

This is really close to the truth, but not quite.

Most people who use the internet 'feel entitled' to have what they want when they want it. But most people only go through the hassle of installing annoying software, suffering through hours of searching, picking up viruses and spyware along the way, to get what they want because they can't readily get it at any price anywhere else.


Napster and the whole peer-to-peer file sharing networks came about because sites offering free mp3 downloads got shut down.

The problem was, removing these sites created a vacuum. People still wanted to download their favorite music a la carte instead of buying CD's, and the industry was fighting tooth and nail against offering this option, instead of recognizing the profit potential.

This is the mentality that has to change. Yes, there was a niche of people who just flat refused to pay for anything (they also distribute software on these channels, along with anything else they can load up) - but the idea that everyone in the world wanted to get shit illegally for free instead of paying for it? That's just plain bunk.

All the Napster suits (and the subsequent Napster user suits) did was bring publicity to a segment of the internet that was very much in a dark corner where most people didn't see it and couldn't access it.

Same thing with the Pirate Bay court case. I was probably the only person I know here locally that knew anything about torrent files and the torrent filesharing network - because I was actually using it to pass large (anywhere from 5-60G audio and video projects back and forth between collaborators in my little circle, because it's faster and easier versus paying for hosting.

But now that there has been prosecution, all of a sudden everyone knows about torrents, and you can't buy a half terabyte hard drive in the stores anymore, because they're always out of stock.

So, what's my point? (Hopefully you won't just quote some random piece from the above diatribe and call it my point)

My point is there's got to be a better way to get it done.

Litigation shines the light of publicity on something, for better or worse. Kinda like TMM's lawsuit against Shelly - they're shining a great big public spotlight on the issue they're addressing.

In both cases, it's really not something they want to do. Big bad corporations trying to "beat up on the little guy" (which is how the public sees it anymore) does not make that "little guy" look bad, it makes the corporation look bad.

So what to do?

Improve delivery. Streamline production costs, so you can deliver a less expensive product to the market and still make profit. Do a better job vetting on the front end to make sure virtually every piece of content you produce is one that will not disappoint the consumer. Make sure you have comprehensive a la carte services available, so the consumer doesn't have to buy something they don't want in order to get something they do want.

Do this, and the pirates will wind up back in the dark corner they were in back in the days of dial-in BBS services, when no one but them knew what they were doing, and no one cared.

That's my point. They're doing it wrong, and the original quote from the Sony CEO enshrines that fact. And the music industry will go the way of the dodo if they don't figure it out.

And so will everyone else that clings to this ideal of fighting new technology instead of embracing it and making it work for them.

[softball]

Originally Posted by griffin8r

You are impossibly obtuse, you know that?

I will take that as a complement.
You might want to take a bow and move on. TTFN