Well, this is a twist that no one expected; with another twist. European porn company Private announced a few days ago that they are totally cool with “pirating” because they see it as free advertising for services they want to develop that will be made of content that people *actually* want to pay for. To me, I like the sound of the pressure of market forces in this statement: I’m seeing new torrent sites go online every week (especially in Eastern Europe) that are packed with files, and I think that for businesses whose pockets are not infinitely deep, it’s better to come up with a reasonable and sustainable business plan that adjusts around distribution changes, than to try and control something that is looking uncontrollable (meaning the relationship of consumers to purchase point content). Give people something that’s worth paying for — now that’s a bold idea for entertainment, erotic and otherwise, isn’t it?
The next day, Private announced an enormous federal lawsuit for trademark and copyright infringement against a number of named tube sites — for piracy.
Anyway, the reaction to Private’s initial announcement has been mixed. While people like me are curious to see entertainment product makers explore the creation of new opportunities that could be consumer-led, others freaked out about Private’s certain path to doom via their “piracy-okay” announcement. Their stock price plummeted the day they made the announcement. So, did they backpedal?
Techdirt has a nice unbiased story an interesting video in which Private’s spokesman explains that the internet killed the porn industry:
Just a few weeks ago, we wrote about an economist who tried to apply the whole CwF+RtB concept to the porn industry. Apparently, some porn execs have been doing exactly the same thing. Private Media Group is a publicly traded, multi-million dollar porn company, that has been a leader in porn in Europe for many, many years. The company just went through a management shakeup, bringing back an old CEO, Berth Milton (the son of the company’s founder). In discussing his initial plans, he said that the internet “turned into the worst thing that’s ever happened to the adult business.” But, if you read between the lines, he isn’t saying that it’s the internet that’s the problem, but that the internet pulled the rug out from old business models. He immediately followed it up by saying:
But there are also plenty of opportunities. There are ways of making money from non-paying traffic and that’s what Private is going to do. I can’t reveal anything more about our strategy, but we’re going to be more and more free, which will help us recruit paid subscribers.
That was just a few weeks ago… but he’s now moving forward with those plans, and is saying that he wants to embrace “pirates,” in a new interview with NewTeeVee:
“We will be extremely happy the more people are pirating our content and the more they look at it.”
Why? Well, it looks like Milton has come to the same conclusion as many others in terms of content business models… (…read more, techdirt.com)
Photo by Modern Citizen.
