Despite a reputation as the most profitable of businesses, life is not all beautiful women, hot tubs, and a constant stream of money for porn kings these days. In a tell-tale sign of financial stress, Vivid Entertainment Group — one of the largest pornography shops — is suing a Web site called PornoTube and its parent company for copyright infringement.
Vivid is asking for $4.5 million in damages and an injunction against Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network from continuing to operate PornoTube. The amount is based on the statutory maximum of $150,000 per copyright infringement.
“PornoTube and AEBN have exactly the same responsibility as any other adult content distributor or producer to obey U.S. copyright laws,” said Steven Hirsch, cochairman of Vivid. “We’ve decided to take a stand and say ‘no more,'” Hirsch added. “We will go after all the free sites.”
Porn 2.0 vs. Traditional Media
Vivid is something of a poster child for the pressures the traditional industry is suffering at the hands of Porn 2.0 — the numerous sites modeled on Google’s YouTube that allow users to upload their own video content. While much of the content on those sites consists of illegally copied content, users are uploading their own amateur videos. As the trend continues, viewers are finding fewer reasons to pay for porn.
Three years ago, 80 percent of Vivid’s income came from DVD sales; today, it’s about 30 percent. In a profile for Conde Nast Portfolio magazine, Hirsch told writer Claire Hoffman that he expects DVD sales to hit zero within five years. In 2007, DVD sales dropped 35 percent, he said.
With those trend lines, porn producers such as Vivid are betting on Internet sales to make up the difference. But that’s going to be hard if users of sites like PornoTube are just going to copy their content…