Not All Porn Companies Suing File Sharers; Some Are Looking To Adapt And Compete

Business Models

from the good-for-them dept

In the last year, we’ve seen a ton of porn producers go after file sharers with the typical mass p2p “pre-settlement” letter threat shakedown campaign. Thankfully, not all of them think that’s the best strategy. Greg Sandoval, over at News.com has a good story about one porn producer, Pink Visual, that actually decided to engage with its community and see if it could adapt to the market, rather than fight its customers. The article includes a list of really good points by the company’s spokesperson, Quentin Boyer:

• You’ve had a lot of companies, both in mainstream and adult entertainment, who’ve been kind of stubborn on the question of access and convenience. They want people consuming their content the way the companies want it consumed. They want to monetize it the way they want to. About two years ago we began to see that as a losing battle.
• In November, we actively began to engage user communities. Some people would identify them as pirate communities. Certainly, that’s not the term we would use. For sure, there are content pirates among them too, but there are a lot of fans and a lot of potential customers. We started asking them ‘What would make you more likely to purchase?’ ‘What do you want to see and what don’t you want to see?’
• A consumer who will come onto the Internet and buy adult content is someone who wants access and convenience. At the end of the day, lots of people provide the same kind of content. So, how do I differentiate myself as an adult-content producer? I give them better technology, better user experience, and better price point.
• Part of our thinking is that you don’t really benefit from bickering [or] by pointing fingers at the large user base that’s out there. Setting aside for a second the question of whether some of them are ripping your content from a DVD and uploading it to the torrents, what do I have to gain by ostracizing this huge group of people, which is a mixed bag of people who might be willing to purchase and people who will never purchase?
• I don’t want to paint them all with the same brush. I think that’s the mistake that some in mainstream entertainment have made, and I think that mistake’s being replicated in the adult industry. I certainly understand the frustration that rights holders feel. We experience the same frustration. But at some point you have to be pragmatic and say, “OK piracy is a fact of life. It’s been there for a long time. Now what?”
• The important question is, can you make your appeal more effective? Can you make your marketing more effective and draw the people who are willing to purchase from you out from that population and get them to buy what you’re selling?

Nice to see companies realize that suing is certainly not the only way to respond to a market that involves file sharing.

Filed Under: adapting, engaging, file sharing, piracy, porn
Companies: pink visual