About 50 US and Japanese adult film companies have filed complaints with the Korean police against thousands of Korean netizens for violating copyrights.
No!!!!!!!
The firms allege that Korean netizens have been illegally uploading the fruits of their labor on to so-called “webhards” and P2P sites and charging members for downloads.
Illegally uploading porn and charging for downloads? That’s just wrong!
The firms claim that while the netizens have been making up to 20—30 million won a month (!) from their nefarious activities, the production companies themselves have witnessed an 80% drop in sales.
Lawyers say they’ve included on their complaints about 10,000 IDs they accuse of regularly uploading videos, and are considering issuing further complaints regarding the roughly 100,000 illegal downloads they’ve managed to discover so far.
The companies plan to drop their complaints against IDs that belong to minors, however, as long as the kids apologize.
Damn You, YouPorn! Damn You to Hell!
This ties in very nicely with a recent piece in the LA Times that reports that free online content at sites like Pornhub, YouPorn and Redtube are killing California’s porn industry:
The adult entertainment business, centered in the San Fernando Valley, has weathered several recessions since it took off with the advent of home video in the 1980s. But this time the industry is not dealing with just a weakened economy. A growing abundance of free content on the Internet is undercutting consumers’ willingness to pay for porn, and with it the ability of many workers to earn a living in the business.
For Stern, 23, the rapid decline of job opportunities in the porn business over the last year has been dramatic. She has gone from working four or five days a week to one and now has employers pressuring her to do male-female sex scenes for $700, a 30% discount from the $1,000 fee that used to be the industry standard.
Less than two years ago, Stern earned close to $150,000 annually, sometimes turned down work and drove a Mercedes-Benz CLK 350. Now she’s aggressively reaching out for jobs and making closer to $50,000 a year.
As for that Mercedes? She’s replacing it with a used Chevy Trailblazer — from her parents.
Shit, somebody call Bob Geldof!
Before we damn the free online content providers, however, keep in mind that sites like Youporn produce wholesome, ethical porn:
This is why I like youporn. I think it’s a good role model for the sexually naive. Most porn is junk sex, made on an industrial scale, in porn factories. What I think we all need is ethical, homemade, organic porn. Real porn. Slow porn. The kind of porn Jamie Oliver would make a programme about.
Porn that Jamie Oliver would make a programme about. Consider that.
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They forgot shade-grown, fair-trade, bird-friendly porn.
“The firms claim that while the netizens have been making up to 20—30 million won a month (!) from their nefarious activities”
Damn Mizar5, I had not idea you were pulling in that kind of dough. I guess all that down time during the long uploading sessions allows you to comment so much up here in Marmot’s.
Sean O’Neil, whose writing so beautifully captures the misanthropic schadenfroh that I feel for so much of humanity, did I fine article on Big Porn’s problems here:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/daily-buzzkills-the-decline-of-porn-spells-disaste,31518/
I didn’t know that Korea had such a nefarious hand in Big Porn’s downfall, though. Pun intended.
Sorry. Didn’t close my tag. Link works, though.
Ah, porn. Keeping loveless marriages together since 1896!
Btw… I read that LAT article. I got a little teary eyed when Ms. Stern couldn’t make six figures anymore and had to settle for a new income of $50k/year and had to sell her Benz and trade it in for her parent’s Ford.
And the odds of actually gaining a cent / won from these Korean netizens? I’d guesstimate at 100:1.
It does seem ironic that porn producers would be suing it’s best customers much like the music industry. We’ve seen how successful that effort has been..
“I didn’t know that Korea had such a nefarious hand in Big Porn’s downfall, though. Pun intended.”
Coincidentally, Big Porn is the name of a masseusse I know in Chiang Mai. A very lovely woman. I think.
It’s also why I am not at all proud of and don’t understand the Koreans championing their E-sports stars. What’s the pride in being an end-user champion and yet not having the originality to produce their own quality games?
They don’t even have the imagination to produce quality porn that they have to resort to stealing from the Japanese…I think 2MB should say something like “Why doesn’t Korea have an AV star like ____ ? ” and pump some government money into it. (NOT)
Yuna,
So you’ll be advocating Korea’s withdrawal from the next World Cup and from the Olympic Games?
No, but that’s because I somehow don’t think wanking to illegally uploaded porn is a quite a sport requiring skills and endurance comparable to those needed for football or running. The emphasis/skill is on the creativity when creating good porn, and video games. As for Starcraft, I still think it’s not that much different from porn. You sit in front of a computer and you move your wrist very fast.
In my class, I remember hearing some guy say that he had a “Nintendo wrist” and his friend saying “Oh, is that what you call it” and I was the only one who burst out laughing. I was very embarrassed for that laughter.
Yuna, your example, that I was referencing, was “E-sports stars”, being an end user champion without the originality to produce their own quality games. Not as your retort comment at #11 “Porn Stars”, being a wanker, and endurance/skills none of which weren’t mentioned in that particular aside.
As for the last LOL, I think you spent too long in england and have picked up our penchance for instant mirth on any unintended double entendre.
You know the porn industry is actually an early adopter of new technologies on the Internet and has historically been a driver in content delivery on the web. This might actually hurt innovation.
“A growing abundance of free content on the Internet is undercutting consumers’ willingness to pay for porn, and with it the ability of many workers to earn a living in the business.”
Right, this coming from an industry that only very rarely pays royalties to its performers.
That’s good for Koreans, lets flood the Internet with ripped off versions from American and Japanese. There are many active Korean torrent unloaders at popular porn torrent sites, all ripped off from American and Japanese porns, and it’s for everyone to download for FREE, and biggest download are Chinese and Russian. This is why American and Japanese porn makers are angry.
Why sue only the uploaders? Because it’s not feasible to serve process on the entire male population of a country. The cops would have to serve each other, and the judges would have to take turns being the defendant.
I feel bad for the teenagers, but this is something that needed to be done. Foreign capitalists to the rescue, again.
From the Korea Times article: “But many independent lawyers and judges claim the suit is legally groundless. A senior judge said, ‘It doesn’t make sense that those running illegal businesses file complaints against users of illegal content.’ ”
But they are not “illegal businesses”. They are legal businesses whose products are being stolen by pirates who happen to from a land where such businesses would be illegal, if they existed there. Which they don’t. What arrogance! and unsound legal thinking on the part of the anonymous “senior judge” — unless I’m misreading the posts and/or not understanding who’s ripping who off.
If they’re really serious about cleaning up copyright infringement, why does nobody tackle those selling bootleg DVDs in the open? Any weekend in the electronics market features little tented stands down the sidewalks, overflowing with copied materials- movies, games, music, you name it. The police just drive on by.
I think the winning argument is- does it really effect their bottom line, if they’re not allowed to sell their porn in Korea? How does the copyright infringement impact on their income? It doesn’t.
Besides, some users are probably paying for it, assuming that their downloads are therefore legal and legit (I’ve heard of this in other countries, concerning music). Only the uploaders are benefiting, by raking in money. The consumer, in this case, might be innocent. As to the morality of porn- greater access to it in many countries and regions has also meant a coinciding decrease in sexual assaults. So much for the argument that it causes a society’s breakdown- it actually helps make it better. I think a lot of people are trumpeting this response only because of the industry it is dealing with.
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