gonzo
09-14-2007, 02:35 PM
It's hard to have sympathy for a dirty, exploitative medium when the producers of it cry foul over piracy – after all dirty is as dirty does, and karma can be your friend or your enemy. But at the same time, copyrights are copyrights and are intended to protect the truly artful from thieves as much as they protect the scummy.
And this time, I'm not talking about the MPAA or the RIAA, I'm talking about pornographers – who, if you want to get technical and nasty about it, leverage a loophole that immunizes them from prostitution charges so long as it's done on video.
But, in this instance, we're not here to make moral judgments – that would be plain, um, inappropriate.
The porn industry is looking for a way to combat online piracy of their films and is targeting BitTorrent as the chief enabler. Overall, in the US alone, porn brings in about $50 billion in legitimate sales.
But on the Internet, where as much as 25 percent of the content is adult in nature – or at least sought after – a maximum of 20 percent (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070910-porn-industry-hard-up-for-solutions-to-piracy-problem.html) of the content available is legitimately acquired.
Again, it's hard to have a pity party…ask the peddler how large a cut he gave the starlet he exploited, and then about what's fair and you probably won't like the answer. It's a matter of what's legal, what's business, and supply and demand.
Regardless, copyright law makes it illegal and they have certain rights, and they're forming coalitions to fight torrents, where the bulk of their content is pirated. But instead of trying to take down the torrent sites directly, the leading solution is to target the backbone providers like AT&T.
And this is where it gets really problematic. This is where you get ISPs deciding directly what content goes through and what doesn't at the request of interested parties, without any type of due process, because, as it is, there is no such thing as Net Neutrality protection.
And of course the excuse, especially in light of the DOJ's recent (confusingly unnecessary) opinion on the matter, will be made in the name of something more heinous, like child pornography.
TorrentFreak (http://torrentfreak.com/how-the-porn-industry-plans-to-wipe-out-bittorrent-070911/) cites a proposal by Ron Cadwell, CEO of CCBill, a porn site credit card processor:
read the rest of the hate here (http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/09/13/porn-picks-bone-with-torrents)
And this time, I'm not talking about the MPAA or the RIAA, I'm talking about pornographers – who, if you want to get technical and nasty about it, leverage a loophole that immunizes them from prostitution charges so long as it's done on video.
But, in this instance, we're not here to make moral judgments – that would be plain, um, inappropriate.
The porn industry is looking for a way to combat online piracy of their films and is targeting BitTorrent as the chief enabler. Overall, in the US alone, porn brings in about $50 billion in legitimate sales.
But on the Internet, where as much as 25 percent of the content is adult in nature – or at least sought after – a maximum of 20 percent (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070910-porn-industry-hard-up-for-solutions-to-piracy-problem.html) of the content available is legitimately acquired.
Again, it's hard to have a pity party…ask the peddler how large a cut he gave the starlet he exploited, and then about what's fair and you probably won't like the answer. It's a matter of what's legal, what's business, and supply and demand.
Regardless, copyright law makes it illegal and they have certain rights, and they're forming coalitions to fight torrents, where the bulk of their content is pirated. But instead of trying to take down the torrent sites directly, the leading solution is to target the backbone providers like AT&T.
And this is where it gets really problematic. This is where you get ISPs deciding directly what content goes through and what doesn't at the request of interested parties, without any type of due process, because, as it is, there is no such thing as Net Neutrality protection.
And of course the excuse, especially in light of the DOJ's recent (confusingly unnecessary) opinion on the matter, will be made in the name of something more heinous, like child pornography.
TorrentFreak (http://torrentfreak.com/how-the-porn-industry-plans-to-wipe-out-bittorrent-070911/) cites a proposal by Ron Cadwell, CEO of CCBill, a porn site credit card processor:
read the rest of the hate here (http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/09/13/porn-picks-bone-with-torrents)