
The Geek-Kings of Smut - chaostheory
http://nymag.com/news/features/70985/
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ankeshk
Lessons for people not in the porn industry:

1\. See what is new and working in other industries. And replicate them for
your industry. Youtube's success gave rise to all the xtubes. The first few
people to ride that bandwagon made it big.

2\. Select a niche and focus on it. Dominate it. Then use the cash flow from
one niche to venture into other niches. Then earn even more cashflow and start
buying people out. This picture is an awesome example of parlaying to
domination:
[http://images.nymag.com/news/features/sextube110207_2_560.jp...](http://images.nymag.com/news/features/sextube110207_2_560.jpg)

3\. When faced with a threat - brainstorm on what dilutes that threat value.
"Unlike recorded porn, live cams are immune to piracy..." (But live cams can't
be scaled up either. You can only have so many people watching you live.)

4\. Being a platform is always better than being a player. People doing live
cam shows earn $1200 or so a month. The website where these live cam shows are
streamed earn that much too - per person. But they have thousands of such
people participating... so $1200*thousands. (Apple will always make more money
than a single developer. Facebook will make more money than Zynga.)

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henrikschroder
> Fans don’t understand that if they don’t pay for porn, we can’t make a
> living. They’ll have to watch crazy European porn.

I am speechless. Maybe they could ask for government subsidies like the
agriculture business does? :-D

~~~
joshu
Govt porn subsidies seems like a nice background detail for a dystopian scifi
book.

~~~
die_sekte
It could make sense in a Brave New World scenario.

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tzs
Like many, I'm puzzled why one would pay for porn on the internet when so much
is given away for free. I don't just mean the amateur stuff--the pay sites
give away a ton of their stuff as samples.

I did an experiment once. I picked a particular model, and would follow links
to that model whenever they showed up thumb nail sites, trying to get to the
sample photo sets for that model--the ones that give you a dozen good photos
and then say the full set is available at some particular paid site.

After my collection for that particular model had stopped growing, so I
figured I had most or all of the free stuff, I bought a one month membership
at the pay site, and grabbed all of that model's material and compared.

There was nothing there I had not acquired already from the sample sets via
the thumb nail sites.

It seems to me one should be able to automate this. That is, make an
application that you seed with a list of a several free porn sites, such as
thumb nail sites. The application would crawl those sites, and follow the
links to other such sites, looking for sample photo sets. It would use face
recognition to build up sets of photos classified by model. You could pick
specific targets from those sets, or point it at targets you identify in your
own browsing, and it would seek to find as much free material involving those
targets as it can.

~~~
jasonlotito
> Like many, I'm puzzled why one would pay for porn on the internet when so
> much is given away for free. I don't just mean the amateur stuff--the pay
> sites give away a ton of their stuff as samples.

This didn't make any sense until I got to this

> looking for sample photo sets.

People don't pay for pictures. They pay for 2000+ HD quality videos, carefully
and accurately categorised by various topic, by scene. They pay for getting
exactly what they want now. They pay to stream in HD, and download HD quality
video. They pay for updates. The pay for the exact niche they want.

I work in the industry. Piracy does hurt. We are looking to fight this through
quality. Simply put, you can't get the same level of quality from us that you
can from free sites. For some people, this doesn't matter. For some, it's the
difference between VHS and BluRay.

Our focus is about quality. Quality in the content. Quality in the customer
support we offer _. Quality in the offers we provide. It's a business, and
those that are successful treat it like such. It's actually sad that their is
a negative perception around the business. Granted, I just assume that anyone
with a negative outlook on the industry is ignorant. Anyone that lets that
ignorance affect their judgement is a fool, and is fairly worthless.

_ Yes, quality customer service. Obviously being in a high risk industry means
we have to jump through hoops to keep customers happy, especially when people
make the assumption that porn sites are run by crooks.

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cheeky
I am a little surprised, but so glad that someone posted this article. As a
matter of fact, the prime reason I joined Y-Combinator and Hacker News is
because the business I am developing is a solution to this very problem that
the adult industry's experiencing. As I write this I am busy with my
application for the Summer funding round.

The article is really thorough and provides a great summary of the overall
state of the industry. The most important point raised is that while the
traditional avenues of generating revenue from porn are dwindling rapidly,
there are still many new (and also undiscovered) methods of generating
revenue, and lots of it.

In my opinion, the only way to go about this, is to work with the content
producers, not against them. Tube sites all work against the industry, but
surfers go there because they have what they want. Isn't it obvious that if
there was a solution that worked WITH the industry that the benefits would be
much greater for both the producers and surfers?

Apple charges peanuts for a track in their iTunes store, but they generate
massive revenue because of the sheer volume of content sold. And it's not just
because their content is cheap, but because its convenient and easy for the
users, so people keep going back and back again. If you had a solution
delivering porn on similar principles, you would be generating revenue and
supporting the industry. Just like with music, you will always get those that
download illegally and those that pay. Same principle for porn. Just make sure
its on terms the user is happy with and you may even convert non-payers into
payers when they realize how much more convenient the new service is that
trawling through the net searching for their stuff.

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steveklabnik
> “Fans don’t understand that if they don’t pay for porn, we can’t make a
> living. They’ll have to watch crazy European porn.”

I'll just leave this here: <http://www.reddit.com/r/gonewild> (If you don't
notice that this link is NSFW... then you didn't read it.)

(To spell it out a bit more explicitly: there will always be amateur porn.
People claim to like it more in the same way that they claim to like unsigned
bands. The industry faces more threats than just piracy...)

~~~
theBobMcCormick
I think the "reddit gone wild" site is a clear example of what's a much bigger
threat to commercial porn than piracy. Why would anyone pay for porn with
bored looking actors/actresses, fake boobs, etc. when there is tons of high
quality free naked real people on sites like gonewild? I assume that the only
reason commercial porn sites still exist is because most people suck at
searching on the internet and porn companies are so good at stuffing the
search engine results?

~~~
steveklabnik
Consider this: pornography can be an escape into fantasy land. Some many not
want 'real girls,' specifically because they're fantasizing about some sort of
ideal. Which may be different than your ideal.

Also, porn can still make money from the long tail. Yes, if you're into blue
eyed, blonde haired girls, you may have it easy, but what if your tastes are
more specific?

If there's anything I've learned from /b/, it's that human sexuality is
incredibly varied and complex.

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krig
To take the topic a bit more seriously, it seems to me that having to watch
crazy European porn is, perhaps, not such a big deal. The music industry often
likes to say that without big money coming in, no one will make music. I don't
think that's true, but I especially don't think it's true when it comes to
porn. Somehow, I have a feeling porn will survive even the coming of the
internet...

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jefe78
Information wants to be free! So does porn, it seems.

The fact remains, they'll find a new way to monetize or the industry will die.
And we all know, porn is here to stay.

Edit: I particularly like the line, "Unlike recorded porn, live cams are
immune to piracy...". That seems mildly delusional. I'm no expert, but I'm
certain that a few minutes of searching would uncover numerous guides on how
to circumvent any number of 'cam' sites.

~~~
Stormbringer
I never did understand why anyone paid for internet porn in the last 15 years,
given there was such a _fecund_ variety of the free stuff floating around.

Then there was that thing which was prevalent 5-10 years ago where sites would
pretend to be legit, but then trick you into clicking a link that would take
you to a free porn site. How pointless is that?

The funniest thing though, is when the pron people get preachy about how
piracy is bad. Yeah, about that 'moral high ground'? Sorry guys, you kind of
conceded that a _long_ time ago.

~~~
saturn
> 'moral high ground' [..] you kind of conceded that a long time ago

I hope you realise that that is simply your opinion you're stating as fact.
Many people, including myself, have no moral problem whatsoever with porn, and
would consider their piracy concerns as legitimate as anyone else's.

~~~
mynameishere
There's no question that smut peddlers basically slimed their way around local
obsenity laws throughout their industry's history. _It's your opinion_ whether
this is good or not, but the fact is that those laws were, and are,
perpetually being violated, just as copyright laws are.

~~~
alextgordon
Whether or not that is true, it's entirely irrelevant because it has nothing
to do with morals.

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speleding
Suppose that the porn industry somehow manages to curb piracy, then they still
have a problem: there is 50 years of porn out there that the internet can
unlock at a cost that is surely much less than creating "fresh" porn. (I'm not
a connoisseur but I assume porn from 2011 looks pretty much the same as porn
from 1990)

~~~
jasonlotito
Porn from 1990 doesn't look as good as porn from 2011. Not only does fashion
and look change, but so does the quality of the video.

Try taking a 90's porn flick and turning it into a 1080p HD quality video. It
won't be pretty.

