Internet killing porn

Louis Theroux, who produced a documentary on the US porn industry 15 years ago, has revisited the industry, and found it in severe decline. The proliferation of free Internet porn and the rise of amateur pornography has combined to take nearly all the money out of the system. He writes about it in The Guardian:

At one of the top LA agencies for performers, LA Direct, the accountant Francine Amidor laments the "devastating" impact of piracy. "There's less work, and there's an abundance – because of the economy – of performers. There aren't enough people shooting to give everybody a day's work."
I put it to Amidor that she owes it to the young aspirants who still make their way to the LA Direct offices to explain the consequences of their decision. She demurs. "Because then I would talk three quarters of the girls out of the business and then we wouldn't be in business."
Fees for scenes, not surprisingly, have taken a hit. "Some girls get $600 [£390] for a scene now," the retired performer JJ Michaels tells me. "It might be $900-$1,000 for a big-name girl. It used to get up to $3,000." For guys, rates can be $150 or lower.

How the internet killed porn

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Business • Sex • web theory

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

oldtaku

And here I always figured the male actors paid them.
- bcsizemo
  
  With pearl necklaces, am I right?
http://twitter.com/prisonrodeo Christopher Zorn

So many ways to parse that headline…
- irened
  
  At least it’s not about the Montreal porn actor turned killer…
lostboy

We may have passed the point where we need ‘new’ porn. Doesn’t the world have a big enough porn archive yet?
- digi_owl
  
  Dunno, you can basically tell what decade the porn was shot in by the hairdos and music…
  - dnebdal
    
    On the other hand, it’s getting harder to separate out anything made since the late 90s – to the point where I wonder if we’re seeing the death of strongly distinct decades or if it’ll only be obvious in hindsight.
    - digi_owl
      
      Heh, walking down the street these days seems like being back in my youth. The girls sport hair and wardrobes that makes me think of the 80s.
      
      Still, i think what defined a decade will only really be apparent when it is over. And i often find that while we talk about 70s, 80s 90s, the actual fashion decade is a bit more like 75-85, 85-95 and so on…
RedShirt77

I just checked… Porn is alive and well. Also, free.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Let’s see….paid performers looking bored and pretending to have sex while mechanically chanting ooh ah ooh ah or amateurs enthusiastically fucking each other into oblivion. I don’t think that money is the reason that the paid porn industry is shriveling up.
  - http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog
    
    Assuming I indulged in the pr0n, nothing would piss me off more than the male actors’ vocalizations. “Wwaaughh” – c’mon, give me a break. It’s not the Golden Ass and you don’t have to try and sound like Iggy Pop.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      What I find problematic is when the noise doesn’t fit the action. Both gentlemen are going oooaaaughooowughaaah when they’re fucking. And then they change position and they’re still making the same noises while they’re fluffing the pillows and having no sexual contact.
      - RedShirt77
        
        Yeah, most audible is terrible, they slap a hamburger over and over and slurp a big gulp even when clearly nothing would be making those noises in the scene.
  - http://pulse.yahoo.com/_OAUXAA362EXWLYVMPJOKLFB5JQ Incipient Madness
    
    I agree. Good riddance to the porn industry.
  - RedShirt77
    
    I know why watch that when you can see amateurs awkwardly hump. But really there is tons of content for every predilection. So to each their own, There are even endless tumblers for those that don’t need the sound effects.
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      There are tumblrs for film clips, too!
Tynam

Cory, I’m interested in your take on this one as a part of the internet-era copyright discussion. The porn industry appears, so far, to be the one place where greater exposure (via torrents/piracy) has not translated into more income for the artists, the way it can and has in music/video/fiction.

Does the ‘if you like it, reward the artist’ mentality somehow not work with porn? (It’s possible to think of reasons this could be the case.) Or are the porn studios making the same mistakes as the music/film studios? (It doesn’t seem likely; a lot of the porn companies have been web-based from day one, with a fundamental level of technical understanding and use of the net that’s missing from management in the music industry.)
- digi_owl
  
  I ran into a claim once that there is something of a war going on between the studios online. I think one such for a while put long clips of their competitions productions online, on various sites they indirectly ran, while putting up short clips of their own stuff. This then potentially undermined the value of the competitions products.
  
  As for rewarding the artists, sure. But there is this social taboo on porn. Notice how it appears to be much easier to get someone to settle a porn piracy lawsuit than any other. People just don’t want to be seen as someone that looks at porn.
- RedShirt77
  
  I think its more about the enormous glut of content. Don’t forget about how many millions were flowing into porn for decades, everybody wanted in and lots of people tried, and there was no language barrier so lots of foreign industries got into it to. its not like music or movies were there are only so many titles and you really want to hear your favorite artist or the latest thing. I would love to see an estimate on how much porn has been digitized in the last 40 years, I bet it rivals any other medium. Being free is kicking the studios out the same way as in music, its just that there are so many performers, the shares of what is left are pretty small.
- oldtaku
  
  I can think of couple reasons.
  
  It’s not creative, for one, except in coming up with hilariously bad titles. It used to be that porn tried to string a flimsy plot around the sex, but they don’t really bother with that any more – though it sounds like they’re trying to return to it. I heard that big budget porn version of Pirates of the Caribbean did pretty well.
  
  It doesn’t really take any what you’d think of as talent, either. Being able to thrust like mad for an hour without blowing does actually seem like a skill, and keeping toned and fit is work, but if you look at all the amateur stuff hot bods and jackhammer action aren’t a requirement. So it’s just mostly interchangeable dicks and holes. The big star is really the camera guy – how good is the camera, how good is the lighting, how good are the shots? But you don’t see him.
  
  And because of that, like the article says, almost anyone can make porn, so it doesn’t have much value. You’re like a migrant farm worker. Everyone loves fruit, but once you decide which ones are your favorites most people don’t really care who picked it or what farm it came from.
  
  Until you get into the weird stuff – I wonder if niche porn is doing better.
  - Editz
    
    Some spoofs are creative:
    
    http://www.reachfrequency.com/
- petsounds
  
  The few places where music and film artists are making more money post-piracy are where artists are completely DIY. Most are making much less money. And the same is true in porn I guess; the girls who try to create brands for themselves and have their own sites try to engage with their audience directly, and they’re probably making more money than most of the porn actors. But in any medium, DIY is not an instant recipe for success.
digi_owl

So porn is the only industry that pays females more than males? Dear deity…
- vrplumber
  
  No, females also have the surrogate womb market sewn up.
tw1515tw

Surprised Cory missed this sentence in the article
“Does the stigma attached to porn make it OK to steal it? ”

Copying something ≠ stealing it.
- RedShirt77
  
  Your computer just downloaded a copy of this website.
  - chrimux
    
    But it is still available for everybody else, right?
    - RedShirt77
      
      Well, there is only so much bandwidth, so its sort of like a hotel.
- spejic
  
  But it is something. Unless you think no one should have any sort of ownership of data. Obviously the people making this sort of data are being hurt by your non-stealing actions.
  - Anony Mouse
    
    Copyright infringement is copyright infringement.
    - spejic
      
      tw1515tw is obviously not talking about making backups of porn DVDs.
lostboy

Porn needs to add product placement for supplemental income: how about some 5 Hour Energies, Domino’s pizza’s and Amazon Kindles appearing on set? Maybe Nickelback can be performing live in the background, similar to how The Young Ones added guests like Madness and Dexys Midnight Runners!
- malindrome
  
  “Maybe Nickelback can be performing live in the background”
  
  I think I just lost my erection. Forever.
- http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland
  
  Historical reenactment of the life of Fatty Arbuckle.
http://www.gyrofrog.com/ Gyrofrog

Why didn’t you excerpt some more?

“The accountant shook her head, wondering about the bottom line. Just then, the studio executive entered the office. ‘I can help you with that bottom line!’”
- RadioSilence
  
  Cue wah-wah guitar soundtrack.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KLDXI7FI3NUHYC23SUHMGLNBCQ Tom

It’s extremely difficult to judge if a work is copyrighted, unless you already heard about it from a studio who is promoting it.

If I go to a random website, and there’s a link that says “hey this is my band, we’re trying to get known, download my song”, how could I possibly know if that song was pirated? Same with porn: “Hey this is some actress I met who wants to break into porn, watch what I do to her naughty bits.”

Porn is even more transient than pop music. If I like the new Adele song, I might seek it out and download it (illegally) and listen to it a dozen times before I’m sick of it and delete it. I have never sought out a particular porn clip, nor watched a clip more than once, unless it was a blooper and I was trying to tell the difference between the mistake and the desired depravity.

I care even less about particular porn actors and actresses than I do about particular pop musicians. I suspect I’m not the only one.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Porn is even more transient than pop music…I have never sought out a particular porn clip
  
  Colt Studios does a thriving business selling compilations of their own vintage porn films from the 70s and 80s. We shall never again see the likes of Ledermeister or Moose.
Nicky G

You know, the Democrats just tried to pass an equal pay for equal work bill, and I’m sickened that it did not include provisions relating to this issue. I mean, I’ve never watched any of this so-called “pornography” — but I would imagine the men are working at least as hard as the women in many circumstances, if not harder. Total bullshit, once again, us men-folk have been sold out by the Democrats.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  As long as you don’t mind being paid by the inch, no problem.
That_Anonymous_Coward

But but but its piracy’s fault!
It isn’t because porn used to push tech and innovation and then quit.
It isn’t because anyone with a webcam now can make porn.
It isn’t because real people having sex is better than bored people fucking.
It isn’t because there are way more porn outlets now.
It isn’t because we put out a movie and expect to get $60 when some college kid is selling hotter stuff for $20 a month.

Porn producers join the list of but piracy ruined us players.
MPAA, RIAA, PORN.
The world changed, you stopped embracing change and want it to stay the same as it once was.

You can still make money, just not as much as you did once upon a time.
You have lawyers telling you it is because of piracy, and just sign here and we’ll sue the dirty pirates. You sued an 80 yr old woman who isn’t a secret porn freak and they tried to get nearly $4000 from her. Your take after the lawyers fees is 10% and people remembering your the studio shaking down people based on “evidence” that would never stand up in court. They all threaten to out their victims as secret porn freaks with werid tastes… or did you think them pursuing the titles that are the most outlandish was a coincidence?

Maybe you should embrace filesharing as advertising, and sell content at a price the market will pay. Offer things to your customers to make them want to pay you.
The market is full of people who are putting themselves out there and making money without you, maybe its time to innovate again.
http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

Won’t it be marvellous when the same conservative types who want a police state to enforce copyright are presented with the fact that lax copyright enforcement might help to kill porn?

You can almost hear the jugulars bursting.
- digi_owl
  
  Kill the corporate made stuff, maybe. But the equipment is out there for just about anyone to record and upload.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ben-Roberts/828949171 Ben Roberts

The prOn industry has itself to blame for it’s decline. Mechanical sex, no story, no fantasy An utter ocean of this crap has been created. Maybe the studios are attempting to produce films with more of a plot and some sem-realistic setups but they’re going to have to really invest some capital to make this work. Remember Boogie Nights? it was the story of the decline of erotic films. My favorite line in it was from the cameraman, who was a real craftsman, shooting video. He didn’t have to go for a good shot or conserve expensive photographic film, he just had to point the camera. When asked how filming was going his reply was “It is what it is” So marked the beginning of the end.

With the advent of the video camera, anybody could shoot porn and they did! I remember a time when there were about five regular guys starring in porn movies, then the industry exploded. Not for the better in most cases.

Fast forward to the present and now an HD webcam produces a better picture than the gear 80′s porn was shot on. With the will to do so, every room in a persons house is a porn studio. They’re screwed.
TheMudshark

“Interactive erotic software. The wave of the future, Dude. One hundred percent electronic! People forget that the brain is the biggest erogenous zone.”
- http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman
  
  “Yeah well, I still jerk off manually.”
pKp

There’s another interesting side to the story : the people who have actually managed to make money with it, mainly the *tube guys, are eating the other players. Manwin, the corporation behind (sorry) Pornhub, has recently acquired Brazzers, the biggest US producer. Recent porn studios making money all have a specific niche (X-Art, Passion HD).