What is Playboy’s position on content theft? 27-Sep-09 08:45 pm
opinion/editorial from Oprano.com’s forum board
In a move earlier this week ICS Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Playboy, sold a prominent advertising space on their adult industry message forum gfy.com to a brokerage firm specializing in traffic from tube sites PornHub and Tube8.
These sites are loaded with stolen full length videos from many of the other advertisers on the forum.
Speculation is that the brokerage firm is owned by the membership site Brazzers who is using the videos from competitors to draw surfers to watch them for free.
Oddly enough the videos from the suite of Brazzers sites are clipped and do not exceed 5 minutes on the average while giving the consumer the competitors content for free and making Brazzers seem more appealing by only releasing a short clip.
Brazzers seems to benefit from a loop hole in copyright law referred to as Safe Harbor and they maintain that the full length videos from their competitors or not stolen but instead are uploaded by users.
The decision for Playboy to accept the advertising from a source such as this comes as a surprise to most industry insiders since PLA has a reputation for aggressively protecting their own copyrighted content.
Curious times indeed especially for us stockholders.
Makes me wonder just how bad things really are….
gonzo@oprano.com
Sentiment : Strong Sell