What would happen if there was no free porn?

[aktrik]

Yesterday in my country they shut down the access to pirate bay and to several streaming movies websites. I want to give my opinion. Certainly many will disagree. Even I have doubts about what I think. The thing is as follows. How about if porn piracy completely disappeared? I I think how differently it would be if there was no piracy. If all this product was paid it would be money for those who produced it. Wouldn’t it be perfect if any professional or even amateur work could be paid? I'm talking about videos and not about webcams for which I think that is the worst thing ever happened.

There would be many jobs, many more than they are today. I think myself that I could make movies here in Europe. Movies that you could put money in to get them back later. Furthermore. Piracy has greatly affected quality. No more movies, but only sex scenes.
There are no scenarios, no good photography, not acting. In my opinion what's hot is not just a pretty asshole or tits. It's more. So, if there was no piracy, you could film a good movie, with good production, with a script and with transgender girls who would have learned acting (which requires money) which would cost a lot of money. This porin movie could be sold one or two dollars with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of profits. What would these films be? Those that would be of good quality. Those who would have good ideas, direction and script. What is it that made some erotic movies so famous? For example "Emmanuel", or "The Image", or "The Story of O".

Of course not the sex scenes. What made them different was the unique “taste” that they had and the production. In the case of “Story of O” is her husband that is sending her for subjugation training, as they do in the puppies. And in what environment is this happening? Here comes the production factor. In the scene that opens the movie we see the couple in a car going through a beautiful landscape. There, in this scene we see her ordering her to pull her cuff to touch her pussy on the leather seat of the car. I do not remember if the director even shows her pussy and this is fantastic. The scene is not good because it was a good sex scene but because she had fantasy and good performance.

However, in order for such scenes and films to have such profits. Otherwise we will continue to have low-quality porn, with tens of thousands of modest, repetitive and fantasy sex scenes as we currently have from all production companies.

Off course it remains the question, who will keep the prices low when it is not going to exist piracy anymore. So all that which I’m saying are not going to happened probably and this is so bad because in fact that would be the best solution for the professionals and the consumers.

[Nick Danger]

I'll field this.

I used to be closely aligned with the record business - not directly, but I was a radio DJ for 18 years and I have friends who are presidents and vice-presidents of record companies.

When Napster first came around, as I'm sure a lot of people will recall, there was a huge gripe-fest from the recording industry. I heard it from all sides, and frankly, I was sympathetic to the industry perspective - it costs money to make records. But I also knew that very little of the profits from recorded music sales go to the artists themselves. The artists make most of their money playing live shows. Still, as I said, I have friends who actually WERE the ones losing money by selling fewer records (yes, I know, they aren't "records" anymore and haven't been for a long time, but I call them "records" so deal with it).

Ultimately a new business model was adopted. Now the record companies get paid by Spotify, Pandora, etc., and the artists continue to get paid by touring. A few years of bad business followed by inevitable adaptation on the part of the moneyed interests.

This doesn't work with movies. Movie stars don't put on concerts. They either make their money off the box office and DVD sales of their movies, or they don't. "Going to the movies," however, is still a common activity; so even those who pirate or stream movies illegally still go out to the actual movie theater on occasion, on a date or whatever.

Now it comes to porn. People don't go to theaters to watch porn, and these days they don't buy DVD's either because there is so much free streamed porn. Porn actresses, however, CAN parlay their success into shows at strip clubs, and make substantial money that way. They can also cam. So making porn is still beneficial to them, because getting their name out there is what matters for those purposes. Much like modern music artists, porn actresses can use their not-profitable porn scenes to create profitable live shows.

Piracy isn't going anywhere. As we've all seen, the governments and affected industries of the world have gone after piracy with balls out and dick in the wind, to no avail. No matter what they do, no one can really stop anyone from exchanging media files over the internet.

I'm sure all the porn starlets who matter are already savvy to the new way of doing the porn business. I don't think quality is suffering at all, obviously it's in the starlet's best interest to do her best fucking - otherwise why would anyone come out to her shows?

Tell you who I do feel bad for though - the male performers. No one is gonna pay to see them live.

[collector171]

Competition sets the prices, I choose to pay so I get content I like and I trust the vendors.
I owned a software company once upon a time and I respect the costs incurred to create content.
I stay away from free porn as I don't want to deal with scanning every download and trusting every picture or vid to not have something malicious embedded.

[filghy2]

Piracy has greatly affected quality. No more movies, but only sex scenes. There are no scenarios, no good photography, not acting.

The vast majority of porn has always been weak on acting and plot and always will be, for the simple reason that most porn consumers are not interested in those aspects. How many people even watch the whole scene, rather than fast-forwarding to the sex? Films like 'Story of O' and Émanuelle were the exceptions, and in any case they were only soft porn designed to appeal to people who wouldn't normally watch porn.

I think the main effect of piracy is on the quantity of porn produced. I can't say that I've done a scientific study, but I definitely have the impression there is less new product coming out than there was a few years ago.

[Cereal Escapist]

So far, the other side of the argument has been ignored. I don't suppose any of you fancy yourselves a real economist but there exists the very real possibility that piracy actually drives the quality of porn we see and that devoid of it, quality and quantity would actually decrease!

I am not advocating piracy at all BUT what could arise is one or a couple of companies holding dominion over transporn and therefore creating a monopoly/duopoly. Anyone that understands the concept a captive audience would see that a porn monopoly would hurt the product therefore competition is healthy, not only among producers, but even the threat of piracy drives porn companies to make more porn and try to one-up each other to compete for a shrinking pie. It is part of game theory (hot dog stands on the beach).

If you would like to explore this concept further, I highly suggest the book below.

https://www.amazon.com/Captive-Audie.../dp/1491528745

[GroobySteven]

So far, the other side of the argument has been ignored. I don't suppose any of you fancy yourselves a real economist but there exists the very real possibility that piracy actually drives the quality of porn we see and that devoid of it, quality and quantity would actually decrease!

I am not advocating piracy at all BUT what could arise is one or a couple of companies holding dominion over transporn and therefore creating a monopoly/duopoly. Anyone that understands the concept a captive audience would see that a porn monopoly would hurt the product therefore competition is healthy, not only among producers, but even the threat of piracy drives porn companies to make more porn and try to one-up each other to compete for a shrinking pie. It is part of game theory (hot dog stands on the beach).

If you would like to explore this concept further, I highly suggest the book below.

https://www.amazon.com/Captive-Audie.../dp/1491528745

Nice try - but completely fails when talking about a marginalized product like porn which has a limited amount of outlets already and a lot of people feel that they can 'morally steal something that is "immoral"'. This is further compounded by having an even smaller niche and ceiling of potential members in trans porn, and that some individuals would rather steal then get caught purchasing trans porn (which has a different stigma to non-trans porn).

Piracy decimated the industry. You only have to look at how little trans porn there is and how few companies are competitive, with many decent companies or websites going into nosedives over the past years. If companies like SMC (shemaleclub), Ladyboy69 (or the other sites from our of Asia) were able to be profitable, then they'd still be here. You can trace their demises to loss of earnings through piracy. Newer companies have came and gone, or devolved into buying in cheaper (non-American) content in order to lower their overheads, this rarely works and they'll die too.

You'd probably be amazed at how little we make on each set/scene and how low profit some of our sites are. If there were more purchasers, we'd be able to invest more into production and trying new scenes. We are developing new ideas like Domino's House of Whores series but it's very costly, and only because we can take profits from the sites that are working well - and that many of the expenses we can do in-house, is it doable. Or Grooby Girls vs Bad Dragon : http://ggvsbd.groobyevents.com/pre/ - again expensive to produce and will need to see a return before we can risk more.

I do think a lot of people are getting turned off the tube sites and pirate sites, certainly those with limited time on their hands and purchasing a site pass provides a better use of their time IF they know they're getting value for money, and exactly the product that they want. Which is what we try to provide. A $30-$40 membership on one of our sites breaks down to about $1-$1.40 per scene, so you can do the maths when one considers we have model fees, producer fees, full time editors, webmasters, office staff, server fees and on top of that, the biller can take up to 15% - and if an affiliate makes the sale, they get paid 50%, you can start to get a feel for the economics. Even if piracy costs us 10% of our profit (I believe it could be over 50%) then that would be profit to be reinvested.

[MrFanti]

Agreed 100%
SMC and LB69 used to be powerhouses - now....nothing.

That being said, I do think piracy has caused things like ONLYFANS and MANYVIDS to sprout up...

Nice try - but completely fails when talking about a marginalized product like porn which has a limited amount of outlets already and a lot of people feel that they can 'morally steal something that is "immoral"'. This is further compounded by having an even smaller niche and ceiling of potential members in trans porn, and that some individuals would rather steal then get caught purchasing trans porn (which has a different stigma to non-trans porn).

Piracy decimated the industry. You only have to look at how little trans porn there is and how few companies are competitive, with many decent companies or websites going into nosedives over the past years. If companies like SMC (shemaleclub), Ladyboy69 (or the other sites from our of Asia) were able to be profitable, then they'd still be here. You can trace their demises to loss of earnings through piracy. Newer companies have came and gone, or devolved into buying in cheaper (non-American) content in order to lower their overheads, this rarely works and they'll die too.

You'd probably be amazed at how little we make on each set/scene and how low profit some of our sites are. If there were more purchasers, we'd be able to invest more into production and trying new scenes. We are developing new ideas like Domino's House of Whores series but it's very costly, and only because we can take profits from the sites that are working well - and that many of the expenses we can do in-house, is it doable. Or Grooby Girls vs Bad Dragon : http://ggvsbd.groobyevents.com/pre/ - again expensive to produce and will need to see a return before we can risk more.

I do think a lot of people are getting turned off the tube sites and pirate sites, certainly those with limited time on their hands and purchasing a site pass provides a better use of their time IF they know they're getting value for money, and exactly the product that they want. Which is what we try to provide. A $30-$40 membership on one of our sites breaks down to about $1-$1.40 per scene, so you can do the maths when one considers we have model fees, producer fees, full time editors, webmasters, office staff, server fees and on top of that, the biller can take up to 15% - and if an affiliate makes the sale, they get paid 50%, you can start to get a feel for the economics. Even if piracy costs us 10% of our profit (I believe it could be over 50%) then that would be profit to be reinvested.

[SydneyFarron]

Piracy has greatly affected quality. No more movies, but only sex scenes.
There are no scenarios, no good photography, not acting. In my opinion what's hot is not just a pretty asshole or tits. It's more.

However, in order for such scenes and films to have such profits. Otherwise we will continue to have low-quality porn, with tens of thousands of modest, repetitive and fantasy sex scenes as we currently have from all production companies.

Off course it remains the question, who will keep the prices low when it is not going to exist piracy anymore. So all that which I’m saying are not going to happened probably and this is so bad because in fact that would be the best solution for the professionals and the consumers.

I've noticed about five years ago you could find almost anything on the tube sites, but today it's just a bunch of crappy low-quality clips (imo). That's because all of the companies that were producing the great content that people used to steal and post have gone out of business or they're DMCA-ing hard (that's where all the jobs went apparently).

It sucks for the models who should be much better compensated. It's easy to say that the girls should now parlay their efforts into other things like camming and clip sales, but that's still like your boss giving you a pay cut and two extra jobs. There are so many beautiful girls out there who ONLY do the extracurriculars and will not shoot because they feel the pay isn't worth their time and the loss of privacy that it comes with it. They'd rather cam or *ahem* on the down-low because they know that the possibility of their activities affecting future job prospects, social life, and dating in the future is somewhat minimized. Honestly I tell girls who are considering porn, don't touch it. It's not worth it.

All this is especially bad for the consumers because it forces companies to produce content on much smaller budgets/less shoot time while also raising the price for the end consumer.

[filghy2]

So far, the other side of the argument has been ignored. I don't suppose any of you fancy yourselves a real economist but there exists the very real possibility that piracy actually drives the quality of porn we see and that devoid of it, quality and quantity would actually decrease!

I am not advocating piracy at all BUT what could arise is one or a couple of companies holding dominion over transporn and therefore creating a monopoly/duopoly. Anyone that understands the concept a captive audience would see that a porn monopoly would hurt the product therefore competition is healthy, not only among producers, but even the threat of piracy drives porn companies to make more porn and try to one-up each other to compete for a shrinking pie. It is part of game theory (hot dog stands on the beach).

You have an economics textbook in which the supply curve slopes down, not up? Your logic seems to be that if profit margins are squeezed by piracy then producers have to put out more product to earn the same income. The problem with that argument is that people can put their money into other things - they are not limited to only making porn.

The monopoly tendency you refer to is due to network externality, which is common in the technology sector. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect For example, people want to be on Facebook because everyone else is on Facebook. That doesn't apply to porn production - there's no advantage is buying from producer X just because others do.

[Cereal Escapist]

...
Piracy decimated the industry. You only have to look at how little trans porn there is and how few companies are competitive, with many decent companies or websites going into nosedives over the past years. If companies like SMC (shemaleclub), Ladyboy69 (or the other sites from our of Asia) were able to be profitable, then they'd still be here. You can trace their demises to loss of earnings through piracy. Newer companies have came and gone, or devolved into buying in cheaper (non-American) content in order to lower their overheads, this rarely works and they'll die too.
...

Obviously you know your industry and profit margins but from a consumer's perspective, looking at what is out there now, I actually would have made the argument that transporn is healthier than ever. There is so much more content now than 2 years ago, let alone 10 years ago that, again, from a consumer's perspective, I would not think it as decimated. The way I see it, there are more people producing high quality porn for my membership dollar than ever before.

Like I said, I am not defending piracy at all. It obviously is theft and those who think they can defend it are obviously wrong. It is a crime and those who steal from others are criminals!

That said, Steven, if you were 100% guaranteed an audience because the choice a man would face is either buy your product or have no porn at all, what business incentive would you have to reinvest when you know you don't have to?