Pink Visual- on Piracy

Editor in Chief,

I have been following the 3 part series by Jake Harris entitled “Those Piracy Lawsuits” and I wanted to provide feedback to him so I hope you are able to pass this on.

First, I only write since Jake Harris poses the question “Will Pink Visual’s strategy work?” and being that we are Pink Visual, I believe that we have the complete understanding of what our strategy is and what we are looking to achieve, and what we believe has been achieved.  And with this, we are willing to share that in a proactive manner.

First, our strategy has been to shift the pressure of piracy from the content-owners like us, to those who engage in piracy.  For many years piracy in the adult industry went without consequences and contributed to the devaluation of adult entertainment. 

As we have publicly released, our anti-piracy strategy is quite dynamic.  It includes litigation against the site operators who engage in and induce copyright infringement and we seek the use of digital finger print filtering to prevent infringement. We also seek resolutions outside of court. Our strategy also includes the use of technology services for quick monitoring and DMCA take downs.  We also incorporate good business practices like ways to minimize surfers or members from massively downloading our content and provide clear information to the consumer about the consequences of many adult piracy sites.  Lastly, we work to inform other studios about their rights and support them in seeking education on piracy and solutions.

For us, we have seen results not just from our own anti-piracy strategies, but from the increasing number of adult studios who are implementing anti-piracy strategies. These results come in the form of

-7 adult tubes are committed (legally) to utilize digital finger print filtering. (Not yet live in all cases)
 -A Few additional adult tubes have made indications of voluntarily moving towards finger print filtering
 -Probably Millions of End-Users have become informed about potential consequences around copyright infringement. (Millions based on the amount of press, not the number successfully sued) And a large percent of those probably now think twice before engaging in copyright infringement
-“Do Not Upload” Lists are increasingly growing with the use of technology based removal services

-Increasing numbers of “removed per copyright holder request” messages are appearing on piracy sites due to the use of removal services and worsening the free porn experience.
-Adult Tubes have been increasingly licensing content in order to properly retain rights.
 -Adult Tubes have been adding increasing amounts of advertising to offset these new costs, but also to the detriment of the consumer experience
 -Adult tubes have been consolidating with tube owners concerned about the liabilities
 -2 Adult Torrent Search sites have been closed and in my theory probably because the liability was not worth the financial gain there.
-Meta data filtering has become a feasible technology for both board owners & torrent search and cyberlockers to utilize and I’m aware of adult board owners researching the use of this technology.

All of the above has happened within a relative short time frame of about the past 9 months.  While from 2007 to 2009 we only saw a small number of similar events.

In addition, the precedents being set often by the mainstream media companies, continue to establish good law that benefits adult studios as well. Specifically, for example, is the IsoHunt case where that torrent search site has been required to utilize meta data filtering technology to prevent infringement.  Also, more and more governments cracking down on piracy, we have also already seen benefits, but we can’t rely on governments  alone.

This is a quote from Peter Mandelson, EU Commissioner–

“The fact is that in a commercial culture that doesn’t protect intellectual property, today’s violator is tomorrow’s victim.  There are no long-term winners from growing intellectual property theft.”

In summary, we had that unprotected culture for way too long in our industry and it didn’t work out.  Now I believe there is significant evidence to show that by protecting and enforcing our industry’s intellectual property rights we are successfully shifting the pressure away from content owners and on to those who engage in piracy.

I hope you consider this perspective on our strategy and understand our goal is to shift pressure on those who contribute to piracy and influence them to operate more responsibly. 

As a side note, despite the issues that exist with piracy, we do not discredit other problems that have and currently do exist in the adult industry, like, for example, the fact that some companies do not improve their consumers’ overall experience and companies’ failure to evolve with technology.  Pink Visual is aware of the fact that piracy is not the only problem effecting the industry and we are not associating piracy as the only reason companies in the adult industry are declining.  Piracy is a distinguished issue; Pink Visual recognizes that.  In addition to being a tech-forward company and enhancing our own consumers’ experience, we are also taking steps to reduce online piracy; all of which are independent of each other.

Allison Vivas

President

Pink Visual | Top Bucks