Question for those of you complaining about content theft....
 

Other than building a paysite and installing some sort of password protection script, what else did you all do to protect your content?

Obviously I'm not condoning stealing of content or anything else but here's how I see it...

A brief history:

"Hey look, here's a new thing called DRM. It protects your content from being stolen.

Hey that's cool, we should all do that.

Oh wait, some of our members cried about DRM and the review sites dock us for DRM and streaming videos so we are going to go back to allowing full downloads.

Hey wait, our entire content library is available for free all over the interwebs now. Oh no! How did that happen?"


Members complained about DRM.
Webmasters complained about it too.
This was all due to greed.

So the majority of this industry made the awesome decision to abandon protecting their content rather than face a decline in sales. Guess what? That decline happened anyway but now in FAR greater numbers.

We as an industry ALLOWED the MEMBERS to dictate the delivery methods of OUR content. Had we banned together and adopted a simple solution this would not have happened. Now the non-members have the content anyway and rather than take another SERIOUS look at protecting content, the majority are crying about what they allowed to happen in the first place.

Yes, I know there are ways around DRM and the such but it still would have made a significant impact on content theft.

So I ask you again....WTF did YOU do to protect your content? Most of you don't even register the copyrights.

I never understood why full downloads were allowed.

word to your moms, here to drop bombs!`

Greed from the members.

Greed from the webmasters.

Greed from the content owners.

Short term greed = long term loss. :2 cents:

It is never too late to change. As quality improves and fashion changes new content is easy to tell.

agreed, in fact I think that good quality sponsors could use the fact that they are streaming only as a selling point to affiliates, making them stand out in the crowd that is the other way at the moment :2 cents:

Bravo fine sire. :thumbsup

All true Aaron, can't argue a word of it.

When you rent a porn DVD or VHS movie from an adult video rental shop is there not safeguards in place to prevent people from making illegal copies? I see no difference between that and having something in place on a pay site that prevents downloading. After all, you're paying to VIEW the content, not own it.

Like Metallica said: "Sad But true"

It's impossible to totally protect content from being stolen. They can take a screenshot, after all.

Thank you, I hadn't thought of that before. :thumbsup

i dont think people realize that drm can run silent... and that you can kill a video file at once..

imho i think that this all goes back to crm and if you have a relationship with users you can explain away why you killed a file and that they can grab it again after a mass file kill..

just my :2 cents:

if you dont understand what i am talking about, just ask..

is this at all similar technology that the satellite companies use to combat piracy?

do you mean killing the card?

I think Aaron hit the nail on the head. But asking this industry -- or any industry, for that matter -- to act as a collective whole is foolish.

Especially this industry.

I meant in an encrypted kind of way, where the whole stream is decrypted on the fly (if I understand correctly that that is the way it is done)

i dont know how satellite works, but drm can run silent and let everyone even download the file, but then kill the license in 1 action... leaving the file unplayable..

How do you do this?

you run silent meaning drm will allow you to auto give everyone a license. you can set the rule to kill a fill on demand.. the end user will view or download the file and it will be transparent...

you can mass kill a file whenever you want..

i am def. not a pro when it comes to drm. but if you want to talk to one of the originators and leaders in drm technology, pm me and i will give you their contact info...

hindsight is 20/20

It's not hindsight for everybody.

More of an "I told you so" for some of us.

Not my qoute but "herding cats" comes to mind. Look what happened with TGP2.

I hear ya...

Great minds think alike :winkwink: I posted the same thing in another thread. Who knows, the next big sponsor may have super content, in lots of niches, and like the Pinkertons* making sure their content is not all over hell or at least not on say the top 100 biggest sites.

But hey, it's not my place as I'm not in the content or paysite biz and god knows, talk is cheap.

*relentless detective agency on horseback who chased the 1860-1895 outlaws around incl Butch and Sundance out of NY and down to South America.

Cause frankly threads like this, that may be true but are impossible to deal with, give me a headache if I don't escape. :)

I think most of the members complaining about DRM are not pirates. But unfortunately it only takes 1 member (/competitor) to do significant damage.

Maybe also the paysites should start thinking different and value their members. For instance, they could give extra months or bonus sites to loyal members... and that way "compensate" for restrictions like DRM. That can be done within a program, and across programs.

... and why is review sites so important? There are many skilled affiliates who can make sales to DRM protected sites with cross sales, if they are only paid a decent PPS. Let the affiliate do the marketing work, and then paysite take care of keeping the members inside the program or across a network of programs. :2 cents:

You forget that DRM makes absolutely no difference to the guys who are responsible
for 93% of the stolen content. Only about 7% is shared by casual users rather than
"professional" or "hardcore" rippers. Of that 7%, DRM might cut that in half, for a total
reduction of about 3.5%. The other 96.5% is still out there, so you've pissed off your
members, but really not done any good since 96.5% of your content is still out there.

All of the big music sites, itunes, napster, amazon, Wal-mart, all spent millions setting
up DRM systems to sell music. All eventually gave up on that idea and started selling
plain MP3s because they all found that DRM doesn't work. You're advocating
something that has proven time and again to be a complete FAIL. Your post might
have made since in 1998, before we knew better, but we tried that and it doesn't work.
Even when Microsoft spent tens of millions on DRM2 it was a complete and utter failure.

Horse shit.

I'm not forgetting anything.

What I am doing is seeing unprotected content all over the place yet I RARELY see stuff that I know has only been distributed through DRM and streams.

DRM protected downloads is really not the best way to protect your content as it is likely to piss off your members big time and, most importantly, it will reduce file sharing by 50% max.

Streaming is another matter, that is far more effective, and your members will be far less pissed.

DRM could be used for streaming too - if you DRM protect your source files and let it play only if the MAC address matches to the one of your server. This kind of DRM protection is not going to cost you any of the member bitching, at least not any more than a streaming only model, because they woudn't even know there's some kind or DRM there, for them it'll work just like any other stream does (only those trying to rip your stream off will know, but you don't give a fuck about their opinion any way).

I agree but thats nothing new to this industry:winkwink:

We did nothing, but not for the reasons you mentioned - since piracy was more or less under control up until recently, there was no sense in enforcing some kind of inconvenience on our paying audience. A few steals here and there wouldn't worth it. Hell, we didn't even watermark our videos because we wanted to provide top quality viewing experience to our members.

Yes I bitch about piracy every day, but it has nothing to do with either greed or stupidity whatever. We were just fully committed to the user excellence and believed that intellectual property is reasonably well protected in the civilized world, thus no need for harsh content protection measures.

This tube thing caught is by surprise.

Really now?

VHS has been using anti-piracy technology since I was a teenager. Why would they have wasted money on it if it was under control until recently?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...y/15/drm.apple

But what's the real effect of DRM? Last year, EMI began offering songs without it on iTunes. "The industry has finally been able to get some hard data about how removing DRM restrictions from legitimately purchased tracks affects piracy," says Bill Rosenplatt, DRM specialist and president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies. "The statistics show that there's no effect on piracy."

No effect. The assertion is remarkable. If DRM does not in fact discourage piracy, then it is merely a nuisance for the user.

Don't you think it's a bit different when you can buy the CD then share it vs. protected member content that is not distributed on CD/DVD and such?

Yes and no, my main point though is that DRM annoys people :warning

why is it that movie studios and track downloads from torrent sites and automatically blast out warnings to isp's for copyright violations at your ip address... but pornographers can't.

drm is one thing... but trust me, when you get 3-4 "warnings" from Verizon or whoeverthefuck, you definitely lose that feeling of being anonymous or that there's safety in numbers right away.

Well, it annoys me that I have to constantly update my models freeones bio's because you allow anybody to edit them with BS info....Yet.....I deal with it because I like your traffic. As such, if a member likes your content, they will deal with the measures you put in place to protect it.

I said more or less under control, not fully under control. Don't know about VHS, but in our business piracy was never a huge issue up until maybe 2007. Sales were good, industry flourished and there was no sense in pushing paying members into but minor inconvenience.

Thats easy, lmk which bios you update and when done we can lock them to prevent things like this.

I've been shooting since 1991. Piracy was a problem when I distributed through my BBS.

Although I appreciate your offer and I will take advantage of it.....I think you should still see my point.

I can contact you just as easily as a member can deal with DRM.

it doesn't matter, I could use screen capture software and download the video anyway. :2 cents:

Drop me an email with all what needed to be changed. We do the same for models who contact us themself.

Thing is, we have seen quite some negative responses from our visitors on DRM. We at first didn't mention it on our reviews but got complaints and loads of requests to ad it. So we did.

Maybe, just maybe if DRM was enforced from the start and everybody would have done it it could have worked though. But in general right now most people will see it as a negative thing they need to avoid.

Thats our experience, if you see/hear diffrently than more power to you ofcourse ;)

I disagree. From what I can tell, the majority of the tube content is DVD Rips.