Online porn piracy fought in same way as RIAA fights music piracy
By Dave Parrack
Pornography has long been one of the main draws of the Internet. Although most people would deny using the Web for looking at porn, everyone knows that in reality it’s one of the biggest online pastimes, whether at home or work. Internet pornography may be disgusting to some, but it’s big business, with lots of people making a huge amount of money from it. And where there’s money, there’s pirates.
In the same way that the music industry got greedy and is now being punished for that greed, it could be argued that the porn industry did the same. While the early Internet was a lawless place, with people sharing pictures with each other, it’s now become a much more organised place. Most porn sites are now subscription only, and a great deal of money is charged for the privilege of looking at a few naked ladies (or men).
Which means there is an obvious market for pirates, obtaining purchased material and making it available for free via illegal means. Peer-to-peer and torrent sites are a huge problem, and one which no-one in either the music, movie, or adult industry has really managed to get under control. But there are also many ‘tube’ sites online offering clips, some full-length, of copyrighted pornographic material.
The porn industry has tried going after individual file-sharers, and much like the RIAA, has universally failed to dissuade anyone from taking the risk and sharing content online. But now, taking its lead again from the RIAA, the porn industry is going after the websites that make this content available.
Its first target is the already mentioned ‘tube’ sites, whose number and popularity seems to grow on a daily basis. The PAK Group was founded in September 2007 to help stop the spread of porn piracy on the Web. The group’s co-founder Jason Tucker recently told Xbiz (reported via DailyTech) about the scale of the problem.
The use of stolen content had become so pervasive that I couldn’t surf the adult Internet without running into stolen copies of our images.
The big problem I see right now is not outsiders doing this; rather, it is people who purport to be contributing members in our industry. As a result, we know who is doing this, we know where they are, we know where they process transactions, we know where they bank, we know where they host and we know where they live.
This means when we come for you, we know how to get you. To the thieves that laugh about this, remember that we are coordinated. We are your affiliates, we are the guys you sit next to at industry dinners and the people that bump your posts on boards. Hiding is hard to do when we know what you look like, bro.
While his threatening attitude is hardly helpful, it’s clear that the adult industry sees piracy and illegal file-sharing as just as big a problem as the music and movie industries do, and it is also determined to do something about it. The PAK Group claims to be close to filing a suit against a major ‘tube’ site, and is promising this is to be the first of many. Could it possibly be that the days of free porn on the Net are coming to an end?
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