French Porn Execs: Ignore Piracy, Focus On Quality; Japanese Porn Execs: Sue Everyone

Culture

from the a-bit-of-a-split dept

It seems that the porn world has had a “love/hate” affair with file sharing. Over the years, we’ve seen stories of porn film makers embracing piracy to their advantage, and others complaining about it. It’s really not all that different than the rest of the entertainment industry. So, it should come as no surprise that different porn execs are responding quite differently in two recent stories. First, comes the news that Japanese porn film producers are looking to sue 65,000 people in South Korea for uploading. That’s about double the number of people that the RIAA sued in the US for uploading. Wow.

Meanwhile, reader PrometheeFeu alerts us to quite a different story in France, where industry execs are taking a much more reasonable view on things (article in French, translation provided by PrometheeFeu). The execs admit that it doesn’t make sense to try to keep things from users:

“Today all of our new productions simultaneously come out in DVD, download and streaming on our website and on our partner’s VOD platforms. Back then, we looked at the music market as an example of what not to do and how to react”

And they know piracy happens, but they figure that it’s just a part of the market, and you can’t blame people (or sue people) for file sharing:

“If you leave unattended a bag of candy and some children, they will not understand why you punish them for eating the candy. Illegal files are 3 clicks away for just about anyone. It’s normal that consumers will take advantage of those.”

But, they’re figuring out ways to compete, by focusing on high quality, high-end material:

“Of course, the large majority of free and illegal content is low-end. […] The public rejects this mass of identical video. Whatever small amount of high end content obviously stands out.”

The producers in Japan might want to visit France for a lesson on how this works.

Filed Under: france, japan, korea, piracy, porn