When Sex Doesn’t Sell6

by Damon Martin

The porn industry is undergoing some of the same strains and stresses that the music industry has gone through over the last several years as the internet, once thought of as the savior of the adult entertainment business, is now helping to cripple the very animal it once helped thrive.

The free content being provided over the internet via the likes of YouPorn, RedTube and PornHub is taking a chunk of change out of the adult film market, and while the United States economy continues to struggle, people are less and less willing to pay for something that they can simply watch for nothing on their home computer.

According to Alexa.com, 5 of the top 100 websites in the United States are these free ‘tube’ sites. Obviously, Americans are still watching their porn, they’re just not paying for it as much. Industry folks from the adult world have known about this problem for a long time, but it’s simply not something that’s easy to rectify, and now they are being forced to go in other directions to try and find new ways to sell sex.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” said Adam Glasser, known throughout the adult world as actor, director and producer Seymore Butts. “There’s people out there that are very savvy within the internet’s inner-workings, and they’re benefiting. Then there’s a lot of people who are actually being hurt by it because, like you say, the proliferation of free porn is everywhere, which makes it difficult to convince people to buy it.”

Though some of these sites offer user uploaded homemade porn, much of the content being offered is third party material created by the major players. Stopping the internet providers who host this copyrighted content without the permission of those who create it is harder than you might imagine. Companies can send Cease & Desist notices, but their effect is limited and is often easily circumvented.

“Right now it doesn’t look like there’s an easy solution,” said Glasser. “The fact is if somebody wants to go out there and steal people’s copyrighted material, and post them online, which is in my estimation what the people are doing that run the tube sites, there’s really not a lot you can do to stop them. If they’re stupid enough to sit their servers here in the U.S. maybe, but generally they’re not. They’re savvy people and they know what they’re doing, and they’re going to base their servers somewhere where it’s going to be a real pain in the ass to get at them legally.

“Even if you do get at people legally, the decisions are not necessarily in favor of the copyright holder at this point in time, as far as the precedence that the courts have set in regards to the tube sites. It’s a difficult situation.”

Steve Hirsch, the head of Vivid Entertainment, one of the adult industry’s biggest companies, spoke at the recent Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, and gave an optimistic outlook on the future of the adult industry with regards to the internet. He hopes that the United States government will come to the rescue, giving the industry some much needed legal backing.

“The laws need to change. When we find a clip out there, we send out a letter, they have 48 hours to take it down, and on the 49th hour, it’s back up again,” said Hirsch. “(There is) a bill winding its way through Congress that would set up a board to take down sites showing content they don’t have rights to. There are a lot of issues concerning privacy etc. surrounding it, but we’re for it.”

But Glasser doesn’t believe the ‘tube’ sites are going away any time soon and for the adult industry to survive on the internet over a long period of time, much less thrive and grow, they have to look at other avenues and ideas.

“I’m tending to move away from producing pre-recorded content, and getting into other areas that aren’t so troubled by thieves. In other words, that can’t be effected by thieves,” Glasser explained. “For example, live chats, interactivity within the online space via contests, and things like that. Not to say we’re going to completely abandon shooting content, video, HD, whatever, maybe even 3-D, but it’s not going to be our focus going forward.”

Despite the toll that readily available free online content has taken on the finances of the X-rated film industry (revenue is estimated to be down by 30% to 50% from 2007 levels), there have been some benefits. The increased ease of availability, coupled with the anonymity of delivery that the net allows, has helped porn proliferate into the mainstream over the last few years like never before. In the past, the adult entertainment world has been one that the mainstream media has shied away from, but that’s not so much the case anymore.

CNBC did a special on the adult industry in 2010 titled “The Business of Pleasure.” They followed that up earlier this month with a special on their website called “The Dirty Dozen: Porn’s Most Popular Stars.” CNN covered this year’s AVN awards, and several porn stars have appeared on the G4 series Attack of the Show as well as specials on the network focusing around the Adult Entertainment Expo and other adult conventions. And Sasha Grey, one the most popular porn stars of today, has successfully transitioned into more legitimate areas of the entertainment industry, starring in the Steven Soderbergh film The Girlfriend Experience as well as appearing on the HBO series Entourage.

“From the start of my career 20 years ago it’s been a gradual evolution so to speak, the mainstreaming of porn and the acceptance of it,” Glasser stated. “But still today you had a major obscenity trial happening in Washington D.C. this year, you have Max Hardcore sitting in jail somewhere, so yeah while the mainstream acceptance has increased there’s still certainly some resistance, to say the least, in certain areas, in certain places, especially amongst the religiously oriented. Hopefully things are going to continue the way they are. I can’t imagine the evolution is just going to stop here as we have our conversation.”

There’s no quick fix for the problems currently challenging the San Fernando Valley-based XXX industry. Hollywood has run into the same issues, and the music industry continues to battle piracy as torrent feeds give away albums at an exponential rate. To survive, the porn industry’s battles will have to be fought inside and outside of the courtroom, and may lead to some unlikely alliances with those in the business of mainstream entertainment and the highest echelons of power.