Kink.com Owner Inoculating Against Piracy By Selling The Scarce
from the the-wrath-of-pron dept
Usually when I have the godly duty of writing about porn on this site, it has to do with a pornographic company acting (shockingly) nefarious. Maybe they're reaping millions in a judgment over a handful (unintentional innuendo) of films. Or else they're attacking speech using IP laws to silence critics of their jack-ass-ery. It might be very easy for readers to assume that pornographers as a whole (still unintentional, I swear) would be aligned against the philosophies and economics that we discuss every day. They're an easily painted "bad guy" for a host of social reasons.But, as reader Flix alerts us, in the diverse population of pornographers, some of them do see the opportunities in the digital revolution. Such is the example of Peter Acworth (possibly NSFW, check your local listings), founder and CEO of Kink.com, who took part in a Reddit AMA. One of the first topics discussed was the impact of piracy on his business and what he plans to do about it.
Q: When its as easy as typing "the name of the movie" + torrent into google and getting at least a dozen sites that have the torrent. How do you deal with piracy of your videos?Note that he doesn't list off all the reasons why piracy is such a huge problem for him and his business. He just goes straight to how he's improving his business model to inoculate against piracy by supplying un-pirateable content, like live shows and connections/interactivity with models.
PA: Good question!! We are investing heavily in live and social aspects of our products and then integrating them together. I.e. in the future you will join divinebitches.com, and that gets you the material, but also live shows with models, interactivity on their blogs, etc.
This is CwF + RtB at its core. Moreover, assuming the content he's supplying is of a quality that his customers enjoy, it's unbeatable. Sure, you can pirate the films if you like, but you forgoe the rest of the product. It's a wonderful response to all the boobs (okay, that one I did on purpose) shouting "you can't compete with free!"
Of course you can. Sell the customers something scarce in a way that also connects with them.
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Filed Under: competing with free, cwf+rtb, porn, selling scarce
Companies: kink.com
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Must...not...follow...links...while...boss...is...giving...presentation
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The definite scarce IS what sells
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If only more of them tried things like this instead of lawsuits.
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You can film HD with a phone now.
People are making a living uploading their homebrew to tubesites, and that pisses the pron biggies off.
They (big pron makers) think tubesites only make money "stealing" their movies. In some cases you can find clips and whole movies on some tubesites, but if you send a notice they come down.
Tubesite stars pay more attention to what people want and react much faster to those wishes. They know if they churn out boring mechanical porn the fans will move to someone else. They understand people sharing clips leads to... *GASP* more fans and some of them buy access.
Pron used to push technology, now they just push themselves back on their laurels remembering how they used to be kings. Its like the **AA's all over again. An industry content to stay in a model that ignores reality.
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At this point you can sell internet porn based on it be scarce but what is scarce is interaction with the stars. It's exactly the same idea behind why gigs are more important now for musicians than they have ever been and it's not at all odd that this is also the case in porn.
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If you're into this type of life style, then the chances are high that you'd want to connect with other people who share it.
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Re: Huh?
Guess I am the 1%
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I can already see it: dude trying with one hand to configure his capture tool and capturing his tool with the other hand.
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It's not the video that's scarce, it's the live and interactive nature of it. Recording it doesn't matter.
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I have not clicked through the links (still at work), but I would assume these are subscription sites with live "events" on some sort of regular basis. There may be some live pay-per-view type events, but my guess is that they try to get some monthly or yearly subscription out of their customers to have access to live shows, chat, etc.
In addition to the live shows and interaction, their customers get high-quality access to old shows, movies, etc. This way it feels much less like you are paying $1 per minute of a 45 minute show that you only end up watching for 9 minutes.
Sounds like a reasonable business model to me. Even if it fails, he is actively trying something other than sitting around complaining that piracy is ruining his business.
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Unintentional Innuendo
Are you saying that unbeatable didn't even register as innuendo?
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Re: Unintentional Innuendo
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The contracts are awful as they will tie you down to them for years.
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lets just abandon 300 years of intellectual property?
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lets just abandon 300 years of intellectual property?
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lets just abandon 300 years of intellectual property?
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