Porn Industry to Take on BitTorrent Sites
Written by Ernesto on September 10, 2007Porn industry representatives gathered at an anti-piracy conference last week to discuss solutions to the ever growing amount of pirated porn that’s traded on BitTorrent sites and other P2P-networks.
Piracy is becoming a serious problem for the adult industry. It is estimated that 5% of all files being shared on public BitTorrent trackers are adult content, and most of these files are copyrighted. On top of that, sites such as Empornium, PureTnA and Cheggit solely focus on sharing porn and are among the most popular private BitTorrent trackers on the Internet.
In an attempt to stop these sites from spreading their content the porn industry organized an anti-piracy conference. AVN quotes Andrew Blake, one of the 65 adult industry representatives at the conference and director of Studio A Entertainment: “What I’m getting out of this [conference] is that this is so pervasive, and we all kind of laughed when they came for the record industry – ‘Eh, couldn’t touch us’ – but here it is, a lot of people on the verge of extinction almost, from a business point of view.”
The adult industry representatives that took part in the three hour anti-piracy session estimated that they lose approximately $2 billion a year thanks to piracy, about 4% of their total income worldwide. The main consensus was that P2P networks, and BitTorrent in particular, posed the greatest threat to the porn industry.
Several countermeasures were discussed during the meeting. One of the suggestions was to create an MPAA/RIAA equivalent for the adult industry that helps to track down pirates and pursue legal action.
Greg Piccionelli, a Los Angeles based attorney with a professional interest in porn, explained the benefits of such an overarching organization: “If a neutral party does it [suing pirates], then they’re the face. And it shields the various parties that are being damaged. We believe that there is a substantial amount of interest, especially now that what is finally beginning to happen is that virtually every producer of content now is feeling the pinch of this rampant piracy, and it’s only got to get immeasurably worse as the technology improves.”
There are also more amateuristic ideas to fight porn piracy. For example, Megan Stokes from Shane’s World announced that they are launching a forum where content owners can post screenshots of pirated content. Somehow Stokes thinks that these screenshots could be of great help in upcoming court cases: “It’s for any kind of stolen content, because with the time-stamp and the screenshot, it’s something that we can start using as evidence in court cases.”
Stokes further stresses that the adult industry has to take action before it’s too late. “I really think studio owners need to stop turning a blind eye,” Stokes said “This isn’t going to go away, and just to sit and complain and do nothing doesn’t solve anything, and at this point, in five years, because of this, there’s a lot of people who are going to be disappearing from the business, if they don’t take a proactive stance.” Stokes is probably right, but taking screenshots of BitTorrent sites is the most clueless solution to the problem I’ve ever heard.
Update: How the Porn Industry Plans to Wipe Out BitTorrent
Previously: BitTorrent Anime Downloaders Offered Amnesty
Next: Most Popular DVDrips on BitTorrent (wk36)
95 Responses
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They want to take free porn away? Laughable.
People will never stop torrenting porn.
Maybe less people would download their videos if a single brand new dvd didn’t cost $50 or more. Nobody likes those cheap $10 dvd anyways.
I would love to see how they come up with these numbers. Cause we all know that the RIIA and MPAA favorite “lost sales” principle has no basis in reality, and is statistically shaky.
Also, I don’t know about you but 4% of total worldwide sales seems like something that could happen due to normal market fluctuations caused by for example competition from low budget, low quality amateur internet pornography sites.
I wish them good luck, because if RIAA MPAA fails, the porn industry will fail miserably. I would really like to see who will maybe be in ads where they talk about porn is loosing quality because of piracy.
rite, there gonna bust some porn…
lets see,
Porn sites taken down: 0
porn sites to be taken down: unlimited
attemps failed : a lot :)
All my porn pirating is going to put some poor fluffer out of work. XD
No way, this is a bad joke…
FBI MPAA cant do anything to stop global piracy, and a group of middle aged limp dicks gather to fight against it? im lmao.
The Internet is for (free) porn.
;)
i have like 250 gb music, 450 gb series, and probably 800 gb porn. the thing is, that if i had to buy all the entertainment legally, i would have like 20 crappy mainstream cd’s (instead of the non-mainstream i listen to now), prison break and lost on dvd, and NO PORN. what i mean, is that i download the porn because it is free. if it weren’t free i wouldn’t have it. so there’s actually no lost income.
The second to last thing that the Adult Film Industry wants is to find out that the person who is sharing “Ass Princess 9″ on BitTorrent is a 12 year old boy in Peoria, Illinois.
The last thing that the Adult Film Industry wants is to see that fact reported in the press!
[quote]It is estimated that 5% of all files being shared on public BitTorrent trackers are adult content (…)[/quote]
Only 5%?
I use bittorrent for a lot of things downloading porn is not one of them. There are so many free video sites with porn that I really think using bittorrent to download porn is rather pointless.
Like many people have stated before, they only bother downloading porn since it is free. I would never waste my money to buy porn.
this article mentions Empornium, PureTnA and Cheggit
but what about pornorip and fileporn?
are those sites legit or bad?
ever since the MPAA and RIAA have been implemented, pirating has been increase for those contents, and 4% is not a big deal, just do ur jobs and stop investigating!
[quote comment="162492"][quote]It is estimated that 5% of all files being shared on public BitTorrent trackers are adult content (…)[/quote]
Only 5%?[/quote]
second that, only 5%? maybe its only 5% is not porn
good luck.
LAWLS, 5% is an estimate based on Sumotorrent stats, which is a bit misleading since the site only seems to get its porn from mainstream trackers who have started to hide / ban porn themselves in order to attract better advertising deals.
There are different stats out there though. Market researchers from the NPD group estimate that 60 percent of all video downloads from P2P networks are porn:
http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-217.html
Personally, I don’t really care if they win or not. I don’t watch a lot of pornography as compared to last year and the years before.
I realize that most of the porno are very cheesy, predictable moves (positions), almost annoying panting, and sometimes very hard-to-stomach stuff (for me anyway).
It’s really all the same.
Anyway, I don’t they will make any significant impact on P2P.
Besides, I like women who actually has IQ points at or above 100.
I have never EVER paid for any porn. You know why? I have not seen more then 5 minutes. Porn sucks, get a girlfriend instead. (But thats ju my opinion)
Johan…
You can actually do both, and so can your girlfriend..
Just a hint for you neutered ones in your first relationships.
regulating porn from the internet is an impossible task hehehe
Listen it’s really hard to get decent stuff here, and it cannot be copyright infringement if the material isn’t commercially available here.
if you could get it for a decent price legally then i would agree, but the distribution network for this type of stuff is terrible and it only ever seems the cheap crap makes it to our shores….
They should start a xxxTunes with steve jobbs, then we would have some good stuff for the new 160gb ipod :D
Doesn’t anyone of you realize what a unique position the porn-industry is in?!
“Dear sir, we have noticed that you have been engaging in illegal activities with regard to the copyrighted material XYZ. We would like to present these two options to you:
1. Send us $9999.
2. Prepare for a PUBLIC law-suit.”
My guess is there aren’t to many people out there who are eager to get such a lawsuit, when considering the wonderfull consequenses it would have on one’s reputation.
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