
Obscene Losses: The porn business is in trouble (2007) - bl4k
http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/culture-inc/arts/2007/10/15/YouPorn-Vivid-Entertainment-Profile
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mml
Tl;dr: porn DVD sales through floor. Big studios nervous. Youporn mysterious,
huge, unprofitable, looking for a buyer. Big studios won't bite, due to
obvious potential legal liability of hosting user generated content.

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frankdenbow
Heard a talk recently from Marc Bell, CEO of Friend Finder Networks. He ran a
tech company previously called Globix. An interesting tidbit from his talk is
that Friend Finder Networks (which runs over 30,000 sites) actually creates
most of the amateur content themselves and lowers the production value so that
people believe it is real.

They also run BigChurch.com, which is a christian dating site. You cant make
this stuff up.

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rdtsc
> They also run BigChurch.com, which is a christian dating site. You cant make
> this stuff up.

Someone should try to "cross the streams" and randomly move some rows from FFN
database to BC and vice-versa.

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sanxiyn
The article writes, "As this issue went to press, YouPorn's Alexa rank was 51
and rising".

Today it is 72, and falling since 2009. Still a damn big site though.

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rguzman
The falling may be due to the fact that other similar sites have popped up and
started gaining traction.

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r0s
At the risk of appearing too knowledgeable about this subject...

The cultural landscape of recorded sex is changing. The availability of sexual
media is breaking old taboos about recording sex acts and amateur pornography
is scaling up in every way. This is a new sexual revolution.

I look forward to the day when sex media holds all the taboo of personal
vacation photos. I think eventually everyone with access to a recording device
will record themselves in every aspect of life.

There have always been attempts to push in that direction:

[http://sexinthepink.baywords.com/2010/10/24/free-culture-
por...](http://sexinthepink.baywords.com/2010/10/24/free-culture-porn-for-a-
sex-positive-society/)

~~~
Psyonic
If everyone will record themselves in every aspect of their life, that will be
a lot of recordings. I assume people will watch at least some of them, meaning
that people will be spending a good chunk of time viewing these videos. This
also is an aspect of their lives, so that means we'll end up with a lot of
recordings of people watching recordings. I believe this becomes a recursive
loop, as well, so the future's going to be pretty meta. Though I suppose
they'd probably choose not to watch those videos, even if they recorded them,
so maybe not.

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gwern
If we teach everyone how to read and write, they'll be able to read and write
about every aspect of their life; that will be a lot of writing. I assume
people will read at least some of them, meaning that people will be spending a
good chunk of time writing those things. This also is an aspect of their
lives, so we'll end up with many writings about people reading writings. I
believe this becomes a recursive loop, so the future will be pretty meta! But
maybe they'll choose not to read everything, even if they write about
everything, so maybe not.

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Psyonic
Doesn't work, because the original claim wasn't that they could record every
aspect, but that they in fact would record every aspect of their lives. Which
seems absurd to me, and that's what I was trying to point out.

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Jabbles
2007? How accurate was this prediction?

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pmcginn
Disclosure: I skimmed the article.

But, basically, the gist is right. The middle of the porn market has fallen
out. The only movement is in the super low end stuff (the kind that advertises
6+ hours and sells for $5), with a little bit of action at the top end. The
top end is kind of dying out, although I wouldn't go so far as to write an
obituary for it. The parody craze is still limping along, and while there
hasn't been a movie to cross over as well as Pirates/Pirates 2, there are
still a few studios that can regularly command $30-50 retail for a blockbuster
and turn a profit doing so.

If you read nothing but Xbiz and AVN, you'll get the impression that it's tube
sites and piracy killing the industry, but I think the truth is that quality
porn is a luxury good, and it's just not going to do well in this economy. The
smarter studios are leveraging their existing assets (semi-current footage
that can be repackaged into cheaper compilation DVDs, contract girls that can
still move expensive films) to make it through the recession, and wildly
trying any sort of product diversification (you can find everything from
condoms to vibrators branded by the big studios now, on a much greater scale
than before.) The smaller firms are finding pretty quickly that porn isn't a
one way ticket to profit, which at least allows the big guys access to cheaper
talent and inventory as they fail.

Government intervention is a persistent worry as well. Stagliano's trial and
especially its vague ending have the edgier gonzo guys worried. Different
groups in California are clamoring for more regulation re: HIV testing, and in
a market where many of the producers just don't have breathing room in their
budgets, that could have a serious effect.

On top of all that, Blu-Ray never took off like anyone hoped it would, and
really none of the traditional studios made a big dent in streaming (except
maybe Evil Angel.)

The people with the most sustainable business models seem to be those who
embraced online from the beginning of their existence (guys like Brazzers,
Kink, Reality Kings.) Which really follows the basic premise: if you can offer
people lots of porn for cheap, be it hundreds of gigs of content for $20 a
month or 6 hours for $5, you'll still do OK in this market. People are
treating porn like a consumable now--the online guys follow the Costco model
of giving you a ton of stuff cheaper than anyone else does, and the
compilation guys are hoping you'll settle for single ply.

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brc
Surely the problem here is emblematic of the entire motion-picture industry.
Streaming, attention competition, piracy - all these things are hurting the
major mainstream studios. With porn, you can add to that the fact that there
is still a social stigma with the physical purchase and (seemingly) a willing
set of amateurs who are happy to produce for free.

I've certainly wondered how any porn company can stream content at youtube-
like levels and become profitable. Surely the conversion rates to a paid
alternative are pretty meagre once the 'job' is done?

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ciupicri
> _The revolution began with VHS, which moved porn out of the theater and into
> the home. This made watching pornography private, an advance that created
> millions of new customers overnight. But to buy the stuff, you still had to
> venture out to the store, and who knew who you might run into?_

But when you buy something online, doesn't the credit card company (or PayPal)
know that you went to the store?

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HeyLaughingBoy
Most people don't care if a corporation "knows" they did something; they care
if their neighbor knows.

~~~
Dilpil
In many cases people simply don't understand or think about what data is
collected and out there. One of my friends at work was shocked when I informed
him that our IT department might theoretically be able to check what websites
we visited, and probably does. This friend was a software engineer.

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hcurtiss
Anyone else find it . . . interesting that the article totally outs the guy's
identity?

(I almost put "troubling," but I guess I'm not all that troubled by it)

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kijinbear
Maybe Jones is not his real name after all?

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paolomaffei
Please please when articles are this long can someone provide a tl;dr?

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clistctrl
ah reasonable enough request, the beginning of the article talked about the
acquisition of youporn.com by vivid entertainment (a large porn company)
however they were experiencing problems with labor unions who represent
plumbers (a key component to many a porn film) apparently they feel these
films poorly broker an image of the life in an every day plumber, additionally
it is creating a dangerous workplace by increasing the expectations of lonely
cougars. To counter act this they are asking youporn.com to be shut down as it
is most commonly reached by middle aged housewives typically looking for
youtube.com in an effort to find videos about knitting.

However this article was from 2007, and obviously no court would uphold the
labor unions case.

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iwr
Do you have a relevant link with the plumber story?

What's next, postmen's union suing too?

