Porntifications

Posted by mikezillion at February 28th, 2007

When I first heard that Schechter Guitars was going to collaborate with Vivid Entertainment on a new line of guitars, my mind went immediately to the cunnilingus scene in the Tenacious D movie The Pick of Destiny. (Where did those strings go, anyway?) Turns out the new guitars will just be regular guitars, although they will be emblazoned with the likenesses of Vivid stars such as Briana Banks and Stefani Morgan. Inspiration enough, I should think!

Posted by mikezillion at February 27th, 2007

In a not-so-unexpected move, the popular P2P distribution tool Bittorrent is now selling legitimate video downloads to compete with commercial services such as iTunes. But one key difference is that iTunes doesn’t sell porn. Of course, questions about digital rights management, price points, and customer expectations arise as well. But wouldn’t it be interesting to cast Apple as the stuffy, conservative player for once?

Posted by mikezillion at February 25th, 2007

We got back from the GayVN Awards after party early this morning. The show was great, and Michael Lucas took home a record-breaking 14 awards. Not bad for that guy with the persecution complex who thought nobody would ever be able to separate his persona from his company’s work. I guess his charms and talent have won over everyone else the way they won me over. It’s about time.

Posted by mikezillion at February 24th, 2007

Well, all I can say is that it’s about time, but don’t take that as any sort of negative comment about one of my favorite gay porn companies! Falcon CEO (and behind-the-scenes dreamboat) Todd Montgomery tells AVN that the newly redesigned Falcon store site is optimized to deliver easy access to subscription content, DVD’s, and other products in a seamless manner. Personally, I love the inclusion of a company blog feature at the bottom of the page. Fix the link, guys, and please keep the good stuff coming!

Posted by mikezillion at February 23rd, 2007

Titan Media estimates that illegal file sharing online has cost it as much as $30 million in lost revenue. More than three million Titan titles were downloaded illegally last year according to p2p spider research. The company usually charges between $2.99 and $9.99 for its video-on-demand downloads. (They charge as little as $14.95 for unlimited online streaming.) Titan does report a remarkable 80 percent compliance rate from the 318,000 cease-and-desist letters they have sent out.

My question, as always, is whether you can really make a direct comparison between potential sales volume without the marketing value of piracy, and actual download volume when the content is free. Titan’s proposed solution is to move past DVD and toward services which provide digital rights management for downloads. I guess if there’s no other way to watch Titan’s fantastic titles, consumers will follow. Or they’ll get more creative.

Posted by mikezillion at February 21st, 2007

I’m not linking to it, but an anti-pornography campaign is releasing a new movie called Traffic Control, all about the need to combat the rise of internet pornography. To listen to the folks behind this campaign, it’s clear their agenda is getting in the way of their interview techniques. The group is using former-porn-star-turned-activists Shelley Lubben, aka Roxy, as their case study. The filmmakers claim that one porn producer told Lubben that he targets adult websites at children, with keywords that will attract searches from under-age web users. If so, that’s the one guy we need to get rid of, so the rest of us–the vast majority of us–can get on with our legitimate and socially relevant work!

Posted by mikezillion at February 19th, 2007

This quote caught my attention. Mehmet Ali Çevrim, head of the Kayseri Craftsmen and Artisans Association, said that he didn’t know why the only adult shop in a Turkish city was being shut down, but opined that “there must be a good reason.” This is often the logic that supports the undermining of social rights all over the world. If it isn’t your responsibility to know why it’s happening, just assume that it’s being done according to the rules, right? But really, how often is that actually the case when you find out what went on behind the scenes? The key is to ask. If it seems unreasonable, do something. And closing down the only adult store in a city when the owner is following all the local regulations sounds unreasonable.

Makes you wonder about what’s happening in Pittsburgh, as the government closes the last adult cinema in the city, the Garden Theater, via eminent domain, over the first-amendment objections of the owner, George Androtsakis.

Posted by mikezillion at February 17th, 2007

This is a cute PR trick at best. My secret fantasy lover Michael Lucas had the good sense to recognize the ridiculousness of a lawsuit filed on Thursday, seeking to stop the sale of “La Dolce Vita Part 1″ and “La Dolce Vita Part 2″ because the names of the gay adult films allegedly infringe on the trademark of the 1961 classic “La Dolce Vita” by Federico Fellini. I agree with Lucas on this one; nobody is going to confuse one of his films for Fellini’s–although with Lucas’s reputation, I don’t doubt his versions will become timeless classics of gay porn. But the last time I checked, you couldn’t copyright a title, or claim a trademark against a commonly used phrase. Should I check again?

Posted by mikezillion at February 14th, 2007

We just received yet another disappointed letter from a customer, asking why (oh why!) we can’t ship our adult DVD’s to Texas. Local regulations make it possible for Texas to reach out and arrest us right here in San Francisco if we ship products which violate local community standards across state lines, so we err on the side of caution. Now two new bills being proposed in that state would tax adult businesses to fund sex crime reduction efforts. Nobody is making any direct connection between consuming adult media and committing sex crimes, but vague comments about objectification of women seem adequate to justify the tax. I just hope that such a tax also establishes that adult entertainment is officially sanctioned by the Texas government, so we can sell to all those Texan porn lovers.

Posted by mikezillion at February 12th, 2007

I love studies like this. The Journal of Political Economy just published a study by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf which claims that the 80 million unit decline in CD sales in 2002 could not have been the direct result of online file sharing. There simply wasn’t enough music traded, no matter how the numbers are sliced. The music industry has been blaming piracy for declining sales, and using the argument to justify more and more draconian digital rights management schemes. Isn’t it just possible that the quality of the content has an impact on the sales volume, too?