So, imagine you and I are sitting next to each other, at our favorite bar, having a few cold ones. Lately I’ve been all about wheat beers with a slice of orange floating on top. I’ll buy (as long as you’re not ordering Jäger shots), and while we drink, I’m gonna argue my case…cause, with 22 comments (thus far) on Ms. Kross’s entry, I’ve pretty much heard your side.
So listen up: this might get long, but it’s a serious matter; your behavior is effecting peoples’ incomes directly. And this isn’t about going from driving a Mercedes to a Chevy. In fact, a dude who used to work as a PA for Penthouse just stopped by my studio, and I quit writing blogging this as we talked. One topic we covered? His unemployment check.
Since you can’t hear the tone of my voice, just know I’m in a good mood, and since you’re a reader of I Shoot Porn, we’re pals! Which is to say, we’re having a beer, and we’re debating in an adult, friendly manner. Your dialogue comes directly from the comments on Kayden’s blog entry…so I guess I’m having beers with more than one person: there’s “10th & O”, “Luis”, “Shenanigins”, “Good Samaritan”, “angry white dog”, “Ramses II”, and “Booty Baron” — among others.
So pull up a chair and have a drink! Just don’t pull your dick out and start a Circle Jerk, cause No Way Am I Gay:
10th&o: I recall reading an article about Brazzers owning a bunch of tube sites but I don’t see any girls refusing to work for them. I think your industry is eating itself from the inside out and nobody knows who to point the finger at. It will be a sad day when Brazzers, bangbros, naughty america and the like are the only ones putting out scenes.
Brazzers does, in fact, own lots of hugely successful tube sites. I equate “traffic” to “success”, and their success comes from pirated content. They haven’t licensed a single video on any of the tube sites they own. And I’ve had long talks with some of my friends who are agents. Since I’m a “web guy” (as opposed to a “DVD guy”) I knew about Brazzer’s fucked up plan to own adult traffic on the net, and guess what? Agents don’t give a shit, cause Brazzer’s is money and the agents are bigger whores than the whores they represent. And don’t think The Talent Pool is gonna turn down a scene cause Brazzer’s owns Tube sites. They gotta make the rent.
Brazzer’s pretty much controls all the adult traffic on the net, for the most part. And, if you ask me, they’re almost at their goal: using silly copyright laws (Google “DMCA”) and a while lotta money to effectively take over and control most of the porn biz.
Luis: i am sure you are aware of this and know that is what is bringing you guys down, not getting together as an industry.
Amen Luis. The “industry” never really bands together over anything. Example: a long time ago (in internet time) there was a thing called DRM, and while it wasn’t perfect, it certainly would help our current situation. Essentially, once a file was “DRM’d” it was tough to share. Not impossible — but tough. And guess what? Consumers bitched, and when they did, the sites that employed this technology backed down and removed it. Soon, DRM-less content was used as a marketing tool. Even the “Review Sites” would dock porn sites if DRM technology was employed on content.
Broadstreet Bully: Now watch Billy, as soon as [Kayden Kross’s] contract with Adam & Eve is up who do you think one of the first sites that she shoots for is going to be? That’s fucking right, Brazzers. You think this spoiled bitch is going to turn down a paycheck out of principle?
Nope. I don’t. But that doesn’t mean she’s “spoiled” as much as she’d just gonna need the work.
Booty Baron: Men don’t give a shit that the porn at Brazzers is vanilla and boring and awful or whatever. It’s essential FREE porn, which Brazzers capitalizes on. Brazzers could focus on quality all day long and probably end up alienating the average viewer since the site would not supplying him with as much cheap, anonymous, one-size-fits-all porn.
Brazzers porn isn’t free, my friend. Just try going to one of their tubes and finding a full-length scene. Wanna know what cracks me up? Brazzer’s says all the porn that winds up on their illegal tube sites was “user uploaded”. Ain’t it funny how there’s not one, single, full-length Brazzer’s scene on any of their Tubes? Oh, sure…you can get tons of 3 minute trailers from a Brazzer’s scene. I guess all the “users” only upload Brazzer trailers, while good, hard-working smut peddlers are the target of the “users”, and as a result, they get to see their entire DVD catalog on the Tubes. You can send a DMCA Take Down Notice to Brazzers, and for a while it’s gone…until another “user” uploads it again, which means time to send out another DMCA! Ever wonder what a hamster feels like running on a Habitrail wheel?
Ramses II: The world moves on. It doesn’t stop just because you used to make more money for less work. You guys can’t look at the record industry and see that? You think Ma and Pa farmer circa 1955 didn’t want to avoid the Monsanto mess we’re in now? Of course they did, but that shit just fucking works. It’s more efficient. Low rent, ugly, trashy, free (stolen) porn works for about 95% of your customers and if you can’t make enough off the remaining 5%…
Hmmm. Interesting. But I’m confused, Ramses. If your reference to Monsanto means the corporate take-over of US Farms, at least Ma & Pa Farmer got paid something. Might not be like the good old days, but there weren’t a bunch of Monsanto tractors pulling their crop out while they’re sleeping. And I have no problem with working hard…but that’s kinda off topic, don’t ya think? Cause right now we’re talking about all the porn on your hard drive…and how much you paid for it.
Angry White Dog: Honestly, I don’t know how the porn industry has survived this long with the rampant tube and torrent sites out there. I haven’t paid for porn since the pre-internet. The music and main stream movie biz figured out a price point/business model that kept them alive. Porn needs to do the same. Business is always changing: Look at Borders Book Store for example they didn’t adapt to digital media and now they’re done. I think porn has a different dynamic just cause guys will always look at porn but it’s just really hard to pay for something that is given away for free everywhere.
I’m a book geek, and Border’s issue wasn’t their inability to “adapt to digital media”. Once upon a time the word “independent book seller” didn’t exist, cause all book sellers were independent. The first big chain I remember was Walden Books, then Bookstar, and soon Barnes & Nobel and Border’s. Like almost all mom-and-pop businesses, Corporate buying power put the Mom-and-Pop out of biz. While Borders lack of a digital portable reader played a part in their demise, the very act of reading is dying, and I can’t really blame kids. Shit, I’d rather blow away a bunch of Zombies on XBox — as opposed to reading about it. But I digress.
Good Samritan: People don’t feel like paying to watch other people fuck. They’ll gladly watch it for free. Disappointing to hear, I know, but that’s the consequence of putting a video camera in everyone’s hand. Now they can do the shit themselves. Adapt or die. A Darwinian concept anyone should be able to grasp.
Hmm. I disagree. People LOVE to pay to watch other people fuck, and the last thing they wanna see is themselves doing the fucking. Of course they’ll gladly watch it for free. In fact, people don’t feel like paying for anything, really. So let’s re-word your statement: “People don’t feel like paying for anything unless they absolutely have to”. And it’s not a “consequence of putting a video camera in everyone’s hand.” To begin, it’s way more involved that just putting a camera in your hand. And they might get a kick out of watching their homemade porno, but that gets old quick. You want to watch people you don’t know fuck.
To me, this really gets down to tangibles and intangibles. If you had to stuff a porno DVD under your shirt and walk out of the Porno Shoppe, you wouldn’t. But since a computer file is an intangible, and you didn’t leave your house to get the computer file, you really aren’t stealing…are you?
How much did that file you didn’t steal cost me to produce? A Manojob scene is $750, give or take. Taking Darwinian principles into consideration, until I can figure out how to produce a Manojob scene for free (let’s forget about what my time is worth) how can I adapt? Cause that’s what you wanna pay for it: nothing. And, as of now, that’s what you’re getting it for. Files are replicated over and over in seconds and distributed over and over to millions of people in hours…all for free. Try and figure out how to beat that. Which means I die. I am, by the way. Slowly, too. And the next time some dude tells me to “adapt or die” I’m gonna sock them in the nose and say the same thing while they bleed all over the fucking place.
Shenanigans: I’ll tell you what’s also terribly unfair. When I was a horny adolescent, the internets were completely different. To get off we’d go online and download pictures (imagine that!) from websites like pichunter.com and elephantlist and what have you. They had pictures of random girls, but those of Silvia Saint, Jenna Jameson, or Asia Carrera were the ones I’d go after. These pictures would take an agonizingly long time to download, especially with a 25K or 56K connection – if you were lucky to have one. Not to mention the fact that you had to do it at 2am so you don wake everyone in the house with the modem screaming bloody murder (only later did we learn about the mute option.) Anyhoo, some enterprising souls (such as your truly) would download these pictures and compile a floppy disk of categories to sell to friends. You want to guess which ones sold at a premium? I made quite the killing. The pictures were up for free, and lo and behold, Playboy, Hustler, Club, and all that other jazz is still around and kicking. I could talk about the medium of porn, and the paradigm shift the industry is now facing, vis-a-vis the integral role mobile porn is going to play for survival, but I won’t delve into that. It would be un-Twainlike of me. Anyway, my point is I can’t sell those floppies any more.
Shenanigans, you are buying the next round, motherfucker. And while you’re at it, what exactly do you do for a living now? Cause whatever it is, I’m gonna steal from you. Not that you make anything worth stealing, but if you do, I’m taking two, so I can sell one and still have one for my pathetic, greedy, slob self.
And people think pornographers are shitty.
Sir Spunk A Lot: Anyone tech savvy enough to have been around the internet for the last 10 years or so, should know the dispicable character Shaun Fanning said: “Information wants to be free”.
Mr. Fanning wasn’t really despicable — but the way people abused Napster was. I know, I was one of them. But before I get to that, I’ll spare defining “information”…but can we agree that music and movies are entertainment and not information? Oh, man! Remember when Napster was good?!? Right before I’d leave my house to go work, I’d scan Napster users to see who was on, and what they were “sharing”, and I’d highlight EVERYTHING…even the shit I didn’t really want. Cause it was free. And it was intangible. No effort to get it! Not like I had to walk into a record store and roam the aisles, stuffing CD after CD into my back pack. I wasn’t in a record store! I didn’t have to touch anything! Which means I wasn’t stealing. So when I got home from work there was a gig or so of new music! Since I wasn’t stealing, I didn’t feel bad! Besides, Metallica has LOTS of money, so it’s OK if I rip them off, right?
Of course I was stealing, and it wasn’t “information” I was stuffing it down my shirt. I was stealing music, and it took getting ripped off a whole bunch before I quit doing it.
Z: I’ve worked in the music industry for ten years as a producer, a DJ, an engineer and as a musician. Every single musician I know pirates music. Every single one. They download it from the internet, they pass around CD-Rs (or back in the old days tapes and then MDs) to each other, they buy bootlegged records and DVDs.
So it’s OK to pirate music cause musicians do it?
Don’t get me wrong — I’m all about turning people on to new music. There’s nothing wrong with making a CD comp as a gift. Wanna come over and borrow some records so you can tape them? Of course! Wanna borrow some of my DVD’s? Yep. Burn a couple, too, if you like the movie enough! I’d even lend you porno DVD’s, but the only ones I have are director copies I get, and in the past whenever I’ve lent porn out I don’t ever see it again…so none of my porn for you! But you can borrow some of my bootlegged vinyl and tape that, too! Or burn some of the bootlegged shows I have on CD, especially since they’re not commercially available. What’s my defense now? I guess I can argue the musician got paid for the gig, and I’m not uploading it to a torrent site for a zillion people to copy. It’s one thing to share; what’s going on now ain’t even in the same ballpark.
Sir Spunk A Lot: Akin to the forest fire that sweeps through the forest, it is killing off many things, making way for new things. Sure many innocents lose their lives, and homes, and whatever in such a fire….but thats life! It provides OPPORTUNITY for NEW growth.
Um…how many beers have you had, bro?
Sir Spunk A Lot: I mean should we blame Facebook for ruining MySpace?
Should I call you a cab? Cause I don’t think you’re sober enough to drive.
Sir Spunk A Lot: Porn is not dead, in fact it’s more alive than ever. Lets face it though MOST PORN content stinks….it’s poorly made by people with little concern for their customers. I would say that 80% of all content is worthless.
While porn isn’t dead, it’s certainly not “more alive than ever”. Just ask the adult actors and actresses, the PA’s and make-up artists, the photographers and videographers, how much they work now…and how much they worked in 2005. I know our economy is in the shitter, but one thing has always proven true: vices always do OK during economic slumps. Booze, cigs, and gambling fare much better than most every other business during a recession or depression.
And I’m so sick and tired with the defense about how crappy porn is. Last time I checked, if something’s a piece of shit, you don’t have the right to just take it. If that was the case, we’d all be driving Hyundais…for free, of course.
Sir Spunk A Lot: There is a healthy market for QUALITY porn. I am a good example of that, I routinely PURCHASE porn. I routinely RENT DVDs. I have and do subscribe to Internet porn sites. The tube sites DO NOT satisfy the demand for quality.
Not to call you a liar, but I’m willing to bet you only subscribe to sites and/or rent porn only after a fruitless bit torrent search. You probably use the discounted “trial” rate, grab the scene you want, then quit. If I’m wrong here, I’ll buy another round.
Sir Spunk A Lot: So it’s up to all of you in the industry to figure what people want, and how to deliver it to them in such a way as to make a profit. Yeah its HARDER NOW, Boo Hoo Kayden Kross! now you actually have to work, and think and be creative…OH NO…not that! Ask Steve Jobs what he thinks about the DEMISE of the music business. How many BILLION music downloads has Apple sold? Apparently Mr. Jobs was able to THINK, and be creative and MAKE A PROFIT.
I’m not too sure I like the comparison between porn and music…for a couple reasons. When you spend your dough over at iTunes for your favorite new music, what’s your wife/GF say? I mean she might bitch…but probably not. In fact, you two Love Birds might listen to the same music, which means she fully supports your purchase. A few nights ago, one of the girls I used to date a while back called me. She was in tears. Why? Hubby has all sorts of CCBill charges on their credit card statement, and when she used The Google Machine, she figured out what was up. “Am I not good enough for him anymore, Billy?! Why does he like barely-legals? These girls look ridiculous in pigtails!! OMG I HATE HIM! Does this mean he’s not attracted to me anymore?! Should I get botox? Fake boobies maybe?!”
So what’s easier? Defending your jack material as your wife sobs? Or hitting the Tube sites after she falls asleep? With Tubes, there’s no more crazy codecs to figure out! No viruses (for the most part)! Just click on the play button and watch a full scene for free!! It might not be want you really want to see, but Wifey’s never gonna know.
Oh yea…I agree about price points, too. If we could completely eliminate piracy, I’d have no problem charging 99 cents per scene. Same price as iTunes just charged you for a song.
In the end, all you guys seem to want is free porn. And I’m being sincere when I say that…and this: one way to provide free porn is through advertising. I’m not even sure how the business model works, as far as ad revenue paying for bandwidth. I am certain ad revenue would NEVER pay for the cost of all that content — as well as the bandwidth.
Another problem: most of the companies actually willing to use pornography to advertise their stuff are fraudulent — penis pills and dating sites are two quick examples that immediately come to mind (no, there are no girls in your area who want to fuck you right now). I don’t see this changing until mainstream corporate entities are willing to pay for the immense amounts of traffic free porn generates.
But that won’t happen in our life. I don’t think it ever will. Porn is the filthy vice no one wants to talk about — or defend. Porn gets what it deserves. Same can’t be said for cigs, booze, or gambling. I’ve always maintained it’s gonna take the two companies who own the operating systems — Apple and Microsoft — to make it difficult to pirate content (of course Apple and Microsoft would be defending music and mainstream movies from pirates, not porn) or the major ISP’s who would do it.
And it looks like help might be here.
So let’s finish this round and head get out of here. I’m exhausted.
Although I agree with the fact that piracy is hurting many industries. I don’t believe piracy is possible to stop. Other than full on monitoring ALL traffic on a steady basis.
Even if they do block a website, there will be a new one up within days. Most of the piracy sites you see nowadays (other than the tubes) are actually aggregated from other sites. These sites will provide numerous links to other sites with more links or actual content.
There will always be proxies available for use (a computer to bounce your connection through). As blocks become more prolific, the number of proxies will increase. There are even addons for mozilla firefox browser which will automatically find a proxy from a list and set it up for use. Some of these you can’t block either as they may be hosted on hacked machines.
Have you ever used a work/school computer that had internet block on it? Some sites that shouldn’t be blocked would be blocked. This would mean millions of requests daily for sites that shouldn’t be blocked. it would be a terrible clusterfuck, not to mention risk other companies rising up against them for privacy and providing internet connection services without the blocks.
It would be like an auto dealership trying to stop an individual from committing ticket-able offenses. They have the technology now to monitor all your activities in a car if they wanted to but they don’t… competitors would win out especially if you got a ticket every time you drove over the speed limit.
When they look at porno, they wouldn’t typically see a Billy trying to make ends meet shooting pornography. Instead they see hugh hefner living in a mansion with 100 naked chicks.
The less money people have, the more they resent those who have more money than them.
Some lesser known bands actually release their content for free on their websites now and instead rely on concerts, of course they would sign on to a high paying contract if they got offered it. Which of course wouldn’t work for you.
The only option is to offer the public something incredible, something awesome. Something new.
The internet is a dangerous thing, its an extremely competitive market, if your idea isn’t the best you’ll get beaten out by someone else, and you are forced to constantly strive to make it better.
As time progresses, I actually see entertainers having lower incomes. Whats to stop anyone from creating another bang bros style site. Perhaps the porno princess days are coming to an end.
Holy crap, that blonde girl’s nipples are huge!
I am a little confused. Is your solution to piracy is to persuade pirates that what they are doing is “bad.”
Cause I do not think that is going to work.
Or is it that the ISPs will voluntarily start cracking down? In which case, unless the government starts enforcing things, and finds a way to enforce things, ISPs that opt-out of the program will suddenly have a competitive advantage.
Dude, you might think what is going on is wrong, and will (and is) resulting in worse porn, but I do not see a realistic solution. Do you?
One other thing — if no one is making money except Brazzers, why is Kink expanding?
Might their model (very high quality, niche material with a lot of live content,”factory” like production with a lot of infrastructure, etc.) be the future, where people might not pay for the content but will pay for easy, instant access to content?
I know you think you’re getting fucked here Billy, but while we’re on the topic of Monsanto I want you to Google “Percy Schmeiser” and find out what a good and proper fucking is all about. You have punks stealing from you, but at least they aren’t hiring lawyers to force you to buy their ‘product’ back. The small farmer was killed by the same consolidation and price collusion that is going on in your industry. You might think he got fairly paid but, as the son of a farmer, let me just tell you that there’s no price to be set on the land and life you inherited from generations of your blood. The worst thing that happens to you is you get another job, the farmers got driven out of their lives… but I’m not crying for them as much as I think they got it a lot worse than you because they were less efficient. Adapt or die, and very, very few of them could adapt.
So these tube people; They’re not really doing it for free. They’re getting paid, even if it’s pennies on the dollar you once made. Hell, maybe they only get paid in some fucked up kind of respect, but if they value that enough to whore out your content for it and you can’t protect it… guess what? There’s the train again.
See what gets me is that a farmer is a handshake kinda guy. He can’t see this corporate shit coming. It’s so far past his horizon by the time he realizes what the fuck is going on he’s collecting his guts off the caboose… but you are in the business of using. You use and are used by these suitcase pimps, these whores, and every other dribbling cock or cooze that hangs onto the dregs of your industry and the game was always that way. How did you not see this coming? Did you really think Sleazy McSmut down the way wasn’t just oiling his little porn-stache at the thought of busting his nut all over your ‘copyrighted’ content?
No. No way are you telling me you’ve seen even a tenth of the shit I have, myself being no epic consumer of porn (I think I’ve mentioned I never paid for the stuff, and my consumption goes back nearly to the dark ages of the ‘net), and not noticed that everybody in your business is looking to fuck everybody else.
Are civility and civilization just the thin, scummy veneer we all desperately try to slip over the nasty, scrabbling, disturbing reality of our dark and desperate needs? Perhaps, but if so that comforting blanket of bullshit must surely be near it’s thinnest when cash follows cock filling cunt with come. You didn’t move fast enough. Maybe you only lost a foot though. Maybe you can still work for awhile. So stop with the fucking whining and get in there and grind out every last goddamn dollar your shitty little industry has left to offer you because as much as I’d love to buy you a beer (My solemn word on that, you drop by my town and you drink for free) we don’t have a lever long enough in your comments section to turn the world.
So you don’t like my analogy with small farms? That train does not give a fuck. It’s still coming and the tracks run right through here.
@Tyrion the Dwarf: You’re correct, I’m arguing piracy is “bad”, and you’re right, I know that isn’t going to stop it. I had lunch with my lawyer today, and there’s some interesting things cooking. It’ll take a few years to implement, but there might be a light at the end of the tunnel. *Might* — and I’m not so foolish as to think piracy will ever end.
Kink is a fetish company, and in general, the dudes who pay for fetish content aren’t the same dudes (demographic) who want to watch a boy-girl scene from Brazzers. Sounds silly, I know…but it’s true.
@Ramses II — duly noted. And I’ll take you up on that brewski, my friend.
Porn ain’t going anywhere. Cave drawings to 3D HD, whatever.
There is a market correction kicking porn’s ass. The gonzo industry destroyed the value and quality of porn and bloated the market with inflated pricing structures in both production and retail. Cheap crap sold for too high a price and everyone made mad money for a few years. Times change.
Maybe now some talented producers will step up and make something people want to pay for.
Thanks for the beer billy, if you ever come down to Guatemala im buying lol.
Cheers
I think to fix this you guys will have to convince the guys who took off the incrpytion to put it back on and continually change the incrpytion from time to time. Maybe let it leak from time to time and then plug it up again.
Another thing isn’t a 3 minute unincrpyted clip from something a little too long to be putting out for a porn ad? Of course if it’s 3 minute clip with half being the logo of the company, these could be handed over to the tube sites for their use. Everything would have to be encrypted. As our preisident say’s, “In a cap and trade system electricity would necessarily skyrocket.” Substitute “porn” for “electricity.”
Prostitution is the future. Your job is simply to promote the live experience. “Intellectual Property” is theft. It will not stand.
/Quick and to the point.
Cap & Trade System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4
Ain’t it cool?
Oh c’mon Billy, you’re not really going to try to tell me that you don’t think this girl is spoiled are you? I mean, I know she might read your blog and all but let’s call a spade a spade here.
Let’s take a journey through her life a bit here shall we? Her wikipedia page says that she started stripping at the age of 18 to earn some extra money to buy a poney, how sweet! I wonder how many champagne room handjobs she gave to get that poney? Hard work huh, gotta keep your forearm muscles in tip-top shape. Then I came across an article on some site called Mike South.com where she talks about being thrown off of her horse because she’s too lazy to put a saddle on it and then bemoaning the fact that she won’t be able to properly support her weight for blowjobs and doggy positions. I mean, this is this girls idea of hard work, you really can’t make this shit up. Now this girl grew up riding horses, which means her parents probably had some dough and i’m guessing they sent her to college with it. So instead of finishing out her degree and getting a respectable job she took the easy way out.
All the philosiphizing and rationalizing won’t change the fact that she’s a glorified prostitute, and girls like her are, for the most part, pretty fucking spoiled. She shows up for a scene, probably sits around on a set for a couple of hours, sucks dick and get’s fucked for a couple minutes and then goes home with a thousand dollar or so check. That’s like two weeks pay for some people. And she’s bitching and moaning about her site not taking in six figures monthly? Talk about an inflated sense of self-entitlement. Maybe it’s more laziness than being spoiled though. Either way once you smile for the camera and stick that cock in your mouth you’ve lost all your integrity and credibility in “civilians” eyes.
Now I grew up in a working class neighborhood in South Philadelphia. My pops split when I was a baby and my mother had to take care of me on her own. My mother never went to college as her family didn’t have the money for that, so when Atlantic city legalized gambling and the casinos started opening she took that hour and fifteen minute drive down there to go to blackjack school to support us. She worked down in A.C. for 20 some years, working her way up from dealer to floorperson to pit boss, and driving an hour and fifteen minutes each way to work each day so we could have nice things. My mother was a good looking lady(they didn’t hire ugly dealers back then) she could have easily gone over to some seedy strip joint on admiral wilson blvd. in Camden and made some quick cash, but she wasn’t spoiled or lazy. The worst thing she’s ever done probably is date a mid-level mobster during the 80’s who payed for us to go on vacations and took us out to nice dinners with “blood money” as she called it and she regretted that. Now my mother worked for a certain casino for 28 years until the economy started going downhill and just like that, she was out of a job. 28 fucking years! And they just laid her off that quick.
So I don’t want to hear this bitch Kayden crying in her fucking beer to me(is she drinking with us too?) And don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike this girl because she’s a whore, it’s a shitty rat race and we’re all just human beings trying to find our way in this crazy world. It was the whole tone of her letter that perturbed me. The fact that she seems incapable of stepping outside of her little porn world bubble she lives in and putting things in perspective. I know it’s hard when fans and agents and whatnot got you gassed up buying you shit off of your amazon wishlist in exchange for a pair of soiled panties or telling you how beautiful and special you are all day. But like I said, try to practice a LITTLE humility.
Yeah, it sucks Brazzers is taking over the internet porn like Starbucks to coffee shops but like Ramses said, did you not see this coming? Now i’m a union construction worker laid off six months and on top of that we got these cocksucking republicans trying to break our backs and get people to work for chump change to pay for two costly wars and the fucking mortgage crisis mess that they created! So maybe things ain’t all that bad for you after all? Stop by Doc’s union pub in South Philly and the next round is on me, I don’t have any side-work coming up anytime soon.
And just to give Kayden a little more perspective here’s how desperate life can be right here in America, yes, this is a first world country. Right here in my city.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSX0CXjzDS8
And here’s some funny shit Louis C.K. the comedian has to say about Corporations taking over places like mom and pop book shops. Skip to about 11 minutes in for the bookstore thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IndWcEnFhTQ
Hey Billy,
Thanks for the beer. That youtube video with Louis CK is pretty funny and I am sure Borders, Barnes and Nobles killed Mom and Pop book stores BUT Kindle and Nook would have done it a little later down the road; it’s called progression. The big box book stores just sped up the inevitable.
You can argue that though with every big box chain the US. Anyways, About your response to my Borders Analogy. I said Borders got crushed because they didn’t adapt to the digital age and you said it’s because people aren’t reading. That’s only partially true: People are still reading but their reading is in several different mediums: The web, E-readers, tablets on their phone and still paperback and print.
This was the first year that Amazon sold more Kindle copies of books then paper back. You can’t have all this real estate (IE Borders Brick and Mortars) full of books and print and the sales of those items falling off a cliff. The point is that people are reading the same it’s just now there are many more forms of media so the market is much more fragmented.
The same is true for porn. Back in the old days – like you were talking about 56k downloading jpgs etc – porn was hard to get and really took some tech savvy to get for free. Now porn has so many different channels of distribution that the market has been fragmented to fine bits and there is probably not a whole lot of dough for any one person.
Think about it: You have torrents, tubes, tgp sites, 4chan, sites giving out free access codes to pay sites, friends sharing login info. You’ve got sites with free trials, $1 a day sites and it goes on and on.
The good side for you, bet you didn’t even think there was one in this whole thing, is that to make porn has got to be a lot cheaper than it was “Back in the day”. Especially if your strictly an internet producer. I think you probably do a lot better then you lead on because you service a niche market: handjobs, asseaters and whatever you shoot not everyone is into it but those who are will probably pay.
You been to Atomic records in burbank? I bet you do. Same idea just different target market. Sorry im rambling. Hey if you come to DTLA send me an email or give me a call i’ll buy you a beer
I’m confused :/
Booty Baron: Men don’t give a shit that the porn at Brazzers is vanilla and boring and awful or whatever. It’s essential FREE porn, which Brazzers capitalizes on.
But…
Billy: Brazzers porn isn’t free, my friend. Just try going to one of their tubes and finding a full-length scene. … Ain’t it funny how there’s not one, single, full-length Brazzer’s scene on any of their Tubes? Oh, sure…you can get tons of 3 minute trailers from a Brazzer’s scene.
Then…
Billy: I guess all the “users” only upload Brazzer trailers, while good, hard-working smut peddlers are the target of the “users”, and as a result, [the smut peddlers] get to see their entire DVD catalog on the Tubes.
And Also…
Billy: With Tubes, there’s no more crazy codecs to figure out! No viruses (for the most part)! Just click on the play button and watch a full scene for free!!
“Hmm. I disagree. People LOVE to pay to watch other people fuck, and the last thing they wanna see is themselves doing the fucking. Of course they’ll gladly watch it for free. In fact, people don’t feel like paying for anything, really. So let’s re-word your statement: “People don’t feel like paying for anything unless they absolutely have to”. And it’s not a “consequence of putting a video camera in everyone’s hand.” To begin, it’s way more involved that just putting a camera in your hand. And they might get a kick out of watching their homemade porno, but that gets old quick. You want to watch people you don’t know fuck.
To me, this really gets down to tangibles and intangibles. If you had to stuff a porno DVD under your shirt and walk out of the Porno Shoppe, you wouldn’t. But since a computer file is an intangible, and you didn’t leave your house to get the computer file, you really aren’t stealing…are you?
How much did that file you didn’t steal cost me to produce? A Manojob scene is $750, give or take. Taking Darwinian principles into consideration, until I can figure out how to produce a Manojob scene for free (let’s forget about what my time is worth) how can I adapt? Cause that’s what you wanna pay for it: nothing. And, as of now, that’s what you’re getting it for. Files are replicated over and over in seconds and distributed over and over to millions of people in hours…all for free. Try and figure out how to beat that. Which means I die. I am, by the way. Slowly, too. And the next time some dude tells me to “adapt or die” I’m gonna sock them in the nose and say the same thing while they bleed all over the fucking place.”
Adapt or die. You punch me you better take that wheat beer glass and slice my throat with it because I’m gonna do everything within my power to make sure you pull back a bloody stump. I ain’t no Internet tough guy either, I’m a real life scumbag.
I can tell by your tone that this muffs you in a way that no one can understand. How do you think a painter felt when photoshop came about? How does a graphic designer feel when a shitbag that owns a porn site downloads illustrator for free and decides he can do this designey shit himself (or thinks a whore can do it)?
How does a chef feel when some douchenozzle says that sizzler is just as good as his truffle butter pancaked garlic French fries? You seem to have this air on sanctimoniousness that what you do is fucking special. It’s not. You pay whores to fuck naggers on film. Big fucking deal. Ten years ago your industry owned the distribution of it, but today I can convince a whore to suck my balls for twitter.
Get your head out of your ass, we all suffer. Why don’t you write for a living? I would pay to hear your stories, but sorry, I have no interest in paying you monthly to watch whores I could pay myself to fuck naggers. Not hot.
“To me, this really gets down to tangibles and intangibles. If you had to stuff a porno DVD under your shirt and walk out of the Porno Shoppe, you wouldn’t. But since a computer file is an intangible, and you didn’t leave your house to get the computer file, you really aren’t stealing…are you?”
Here’s an idea. You should relish every person who calls you to be a stunt cock. That is your core customer. You push those guys away and then bitch that no one buys your stuff when the answer is very simple. Relish thosevloyal perverts and bring them into your world like entertainment companies haVe fan activities.
Business advice.
Don’t want to be hard on you dude (and don’t worry the beer is on me) but seriously, in an economy of 12 percent unemployment in LA, and no future, bitching about downloading rings a little hollow.
Why don’t you be the guy that embraces the downtrodden and gets them into porn? Talk about an angle. How many big dick guys and cock sucking whores just need the excuse that “they needed the money” to suck and fuck on film? So what, someone will download it for free.
Last time I checked, Avatar made almost a billion dollars.
Billy, I’ve followed this blog and been a fan of the dogfart network for well over 10 years I’d assume. Now that all the sites are connected, I’ve been a constant member — one month here, another month there but never two consecutive.
I visit this blog daily, visit the sites you shoot for often, follow you on facebook and twitter because you’re selling yourself: an active online presence is marketing that does well (or better) for your business than without it. I consider myself someone that would back you up if we ever crossed paths and you had a problem.
That said, I agree with your points. Practically all of them. Am I a hypocrite? Yes. I’ve never gotten a free full scene of a BoB, GH, MJ, WMDGB, Spring/Katie, etc., because I’ve come to want to support you as a videographer (even though I assume you don’t have majority ownership in any of the sites??? — maybe MJ?) I’ve gotten plenty of free Bang Bros, Reality Kings, Naughty America scenes in addition to scenes from dvds online. I actively subscribe to videobox. I don’t find Brazzers films to be interesting although I visit because they shoot alot of my favorite models.
So why don’t I steal from the dogfart network? Because to me the company has a personal connection with me through you. It’s obviously a major player, but when you get a personal connection to it, that dissuades you from cheating them, if you don’t respond to everything I write. Think about the true individual model sites — not the corporation “individual sites” — like Cathy’s Cravings or Alanna Thomas or Oasis. I’ve been devoted to them without ever stealing because of that connection they have to their fans, and it doesn’t hurt that they keep it personal by shooting fans.
Much like Good Samaritan said, I’d be alot more willing and likely to join sites that have a personal touch. Similar but opposite of the Cathy’s, real fans shooting scenes with porn stars is more intriguing than seeing the same three guys from Brazzers, or the same 4 guys at Bang Bros or the same 4 guys here. I don’t go for the guys and can care less about their performance, but once it’s “real” it becomes more interesting. I was a regular for Easy Dater, which wasn’t real but was scripted as so. I love Dirty D’s sites. My favorite parts of Bang Bros is the Fuck Team Five where they get “real” guys to shoot with the porn stars. If your network was the first to pioneer using “real” guys over stunt cocks, I could see tremendous growth.
1) You can get away with paying them even less than John E Depth or Wesley, etc. I know the main problem you have is can they perform when it’s time. I bet you can find enough guys each month to actually pay a fee to be a part of the production, thus offsetting any complications that may arise.
This has gone probably longer than your post so I’ll stop. Just thoughts though
What I really hated about Kross’ guest post, was the missing distinction between criminals and pirates. The guys who run streaming platforms, file hosters, sharing forums, torrent trackers, etc – THOSE are the truly evil guys. They take content that doesn’t belong to them and they make a shitload of money off it. And obviously (given a large enough audience) ad revenue and referals ARE big money. Just some weeks ago they took down kino.to, a major streaming platform for blockbuster movies. Among the frozen assets of one suspect: A spanish bank account containing 2.5 million Euro… (and they ran their own infrastructure – so that’s the money one guy had left over after technical expenses!)
Anyway – those are criminals and they should be hunted and taken down together with their sites. Their business model is to steal content and offer it to the masses! This is simply unacceptable.
Now pirates might still be bad, but they operate on a whole different level. They don’t make a living of other people’s content. They are just weak and lazy, so they take what’s coming to them for free. And let’s be serious: The idea that 1 download equals 1 lost sale is nothing short of ridiculous! I’d estimate that less than 5% of people downloading a porn scene would even consider paying for it. Maybe less than 2% even. Just like you yourself downloaded gigs worth of unneeded music, just because it was available. And most people who download aren’t exactly on a big budget either (students, etc), so there is very little incentive AND possibility to pay. And let’s be serious again: If there was no professional porn available over night anymore – I’d be back to amateur stuff and preview pics (like I was 10 years ago), sooner than you could even beg me to subscribe to one of your sites. There will always be free porn with full consent of the rights owner. People are flexible. They take what they can get.
Conclusion: Weed out the professional criminals with no mercy. Go ahead and try to talk sense into average pirates, but I really doubt that there is much of a market to be taken back…
Your stories on this blog are pretty incredible, I mean you’ve been working in porn for a really long time and not just any porn, real trailblazing shit, I mean I’m 24 and DogFart was probably the 1st porn site I ever saw. You’ve got a really great writing style, why not try to get a book published about your life in porn? Normally I wouldnt suggest to some dude who writes a blog about porn to write a book but obviously your pretty prolific. E-mail me back if you get a chance I’d like to hear your thoughts on this.
Good post.
As a legit porn distributor in another life, I understand some of the things happening to the industry now. And that understand is why I eventually left the business.
First, porn is probably better than it ever was. You can find more variety and quality than ever before. Marketing, technology, distribution and access has improved. With that success, piracy has reared its head as well.
The industry biggest success, embracing new technologies has also been its Achilles heel. How do we get more people to buy more porn without having to go into a video store or hide a stack of VHS/DVDs? Go to the net. Now we make the videos high quality, small file sizes and without DRM. Meanwhile, Internet bandwidth to the home became faster and hard drives became larger so one can download (and upload) more content faster.
So now you have more people steal from you at a faster rate (and I count the people who get the bootlegs as theft, as well). This could be mitigated if two other situations didn’t exist. One, the industry and its key players (e.g. talent, agents) aren’t actively fighting the problem. In some ways, they are contribution to the theft by not boycotting Brazzers and the like. It’s like the store’s employees helping people shoplift. Secondly, the legal community (e.g. lawyers and law enforcement) doesn’t really care about the industry as a whole. An federal friend who is also an attorney told me that they only go after really big cases that are “slam-dunks” like child porn or massive content distribution rings in terms of pornography. Average Joe with a few gigs (hell, a few terabyte as storage is so cheap) has little chance of getting catch and even less chance of get prosecuted.
So from the view of those completely outside the industry, at the end of the day, average Joes steals content from suitcase pimps and whores which eventually puts them out of business. The religious right is happy. All American church-going family is happy. It protects our community. And, according to Shelley Lubben, save women from a life of porn. Two wrongs canceling each other out make a right. Everyone wins!
The ISP crackdown you post may be help on the way. There are one large problem with it, though. Did you see the list of players, RIAA, MPAA, NCTA, US government agencies. None of the guys will get near the porn industry with a ten-foot pole. NCTA members know that they get money from subscribers (e.g. residential and commercial) for bandwidth to download stuff. Three biggest downloads; movies, music, and porn. Would they shot themselves by eliminating all three? Do they want to be in the news as protectors of the porn industry by stopping people from stealing porn. Especially, when industry itself does not have a handle on the problem.
I hate to see the porn industry collapse on itself. In the early Internet marketplace days, DVD piracy was rearing its ugly head. I knew that wholesalers where pirating DVDs. You could tell when you saw the shelves. The porn industry, unlike movies and music, really never did a “stop and check” itself; there was too much money to be made. You would not see a Brazzer in the movie or music industry. What would Sony music do if Universal was steal and re-branding/reposting its content? Bad things, I assume you. Until the agents and starlets stop “don’t giving a shit” as you put it, yes, honest hardworking player in the industry will be robbed blind.
Next round is on me…
You know what Billy? Your answer to the iTunes comparison is where the problem is. You guys are lazy.
The new lazy.
Read about how Steve jobs launched the first iPhone. He got over so many more problems than you described. But you knw what the difference is? You look for problems… They are an excuse to you to try and preserve the way your life is now.
Steve, However, does not see problems, he sees challenges, and overcomes them. And trust me, he overcame bigger issues than the issues the porn industry is facing. Too bad he won’t do porn, cause he would totally save the industry’s ass if he did:)
That said, your excuse about not being able to charge people because of their wives is weak. Yeah it’s a huge problem, but you know what buddy? It’s time you solve it. It’s your job.
Your job used to be just filming, and you worked hard, and eve did a bit of marketing etc. But working hard is the new lazy. In 2011 not being lazy means working X5 as hard. In my case it was figuring out how to still make a living after Facebook killed my business model. In your case it means solving problems like payment and piracy.
And you know what? Too often I was so turned on by a trailer – that’s how us guys work: we fall in love with a porno princess and we have to have her right here right now whatever the cost – and even though all I had to pay was $1 on pink visual’s awesome iPad site, I couldn’t, because of the CCbill.
I was like, wahttttt it’s 2011, and they didn’t solve this shit yet??? Are y’all sleeping???
I couldn’t even pay with paypal.
And that’s the point. eBay had huge problem, and they invented paypal to solve it, which was super not obvious at the time. Steve jobs did it twice with the iTunes store and the app store. And trust me, he had much bigger problems with the iPhone.
They always said the porn industry was responsible for most technological advances. But you guys got scared or lazy or whatever. Time to go back to the glory days Billy. I hope you make it.
(written on my iPad excuse typos please)
Lol I just made that email up, didn’t know it would show up this dude. Billy can u edit the last comment to some other random email please?:)
Ouch, Billy – Ouch.
You seem to misinterpret my story. Firstly, I was a teenager when this occurred, not to say that’s excusable for theft, but I mean honestly, were you the epitome of good behavior in your adolescence? And if you read carefully, I threw in a small nod your way “I sell stocks” which highlights my point further. I’m sure THAT was an honest and upfront occupation that didn’t condone any malfeasance on your part. Don’t kid me, and yourself, and say otherwise. The point of that little parable was to highlight a few issues – technological advancement, pornstar popularity, and the concept of gain from theft.
If you read more carefully you’d know I’m a college student (Grad school) and the only thing I have that you can steal are my ideas – and you’re welcome to them. Eventually I plan on working in a certain industry, and I’ve studied a little accounting for it. You know what they teach you in accounting? Irrecoverable debt. It basically amounts to theft. They have alot of names for it, but it boils down to a “loss.” It’s something you live with in the business world. You have to account for as a percentage in everything you do. I’m sure you’ve dealt with it in the past. Now I’m not going into details about how porn and music should be compared (especially when it comes to losses due to technology)- they can – but I’ll just say that all these pirated copies, tubesites and what have you will add to this “loss” for the porn industry. Let’s not delve into the morality of the issue, stealing is wrong, agreed, but the psychology behind it is more complex – bringing an issue of morality in an already morally ambiguous industry isn’t going to solve anything.
The point is simple – technology has caused this loss margin to increase. But the counter point to that argument can also be that technology has allowed porn producers to be more productive, therefore increasing their profit margins. From an economical standpoint this hypothesis is bulletproof. The efficiency of production due to technology has increased exponentially, and allowed pornstars and producers to harness it to increase their profits. That’s the double edged sword of technology.
Regardless of the loss margin, the industry as a whole is experiencing growth, albeit the profit margins have decreased. Yet, I’d love to see a study taking into account the wages of pornstars from the 80s (in totality, not per shoot) and now (adjusted for inflation.) What do you think you’d find? Or a study to see how the profit margins have increased compared to the losses by the introduction of these new technologies.
I could go on and on about the medium of porn, the expanding technological factors (3D porn? It’s here… and it’s fucking sweet) and the income concentration for pornstars. But your right, it does boil down to the fact that it’s easier to copy (no matter the DRM, horny adolescences will find a way) and distribute. The producers will find a way around it, much like the music industry has, and the pornstars need to start being more creative and think outside the box. Look at Sasha Gray going mainstream, she’s capitalizing on her looks and porn. The rest? Welcome to the curve. You make money when your ahead of it, not when your behind it.
Do I have all the answers? Fuck no. I’m not condoning or abhorring anything, just stating my opinion on the matter. And you know what they say about opinions… However, let me make this very clear: I don’t agree with pirating. But it’s here to stay, what do you do about it? Either way I’d love to talk more about it, and will gladly buy a round. I’ll be in LA sometime in early August and heading to SFO for Outsidelands music fest (Wilco’s got a new album!?) and I’d love to pick your brain, and meet the man himself, over a brew or two.
@Shenanigins — remember, my tone was friendly! I didn’t literally mean I was gonna do whatever I said I was gonna do…I was just venting. I see eye-to-eye on a lot of what you said, and if you’re in LA, I’d meet up for a cold one.
Yeah, sorry, I don’t have any money and tube sites are free. That about seals the deal. I think the quality and variety of tube sites is great too. I’ll be curious to see what happens to the porn industry as I get older, but I gotta admit I don’t really care if it lives or dies. I’ll happily buy you a beer to drown your sorrows with too. Good luck…