I recently wrote about my resolutions for 2009, and in the same idealistic spirit that surrounds us all as we begin the new year, I would like to make an appeal to you. The appeal is: don't be a pirate. Do not download spanking videos illegally or share them illegally.
So in case you're doing that, stop it. Seriously. You are hurting the producers who have put time, money and a lot of heartfelt effort into the films, you are hurting the models who have worked hard and suffered for our sadistic joy, and most importantly, you are hurting yourself - because the producers will eventually go out of business, and the content we all love and lust after will disappear. Think about that, matey.
Nobody who makes spanking videos is getting rich with them, and very few people in this industry are in it primarily for the money. If you simply want to rake in big bucks, vanilla porn is a much better business - because the market is much bigger. Videos of spanking, BDSM and other kinky activities, on the other hand, are what is commonly referred to as "niche content". Most of the producers and models are themselves genuine, kinky enthusiasts who do what they do as a labour of love. They aren't millionaires with villas, yachts and private planes, but "normal" people with normal jobs, who invest a great amount of their free time, not to mention blood and sweat, to make these films.
However, while they are not in it for commercial reasons, they have to make the work commercially viable. The equipment, the locations, the model fees and travelling costs, the production and distribution, all of that costs money. At the very least, they have to earn back what they put in. Moreover, when you buy a video, it also serves an idealistic purpose. It is a gesture of appreciation, it's basically like saying: "Thank you, you did a good job. I like your work - so much, in fact, that I'm willing to pay a couple of bucks for it." Even when the producer is not in it purely for the money, that is a big boost for morale. When you pirate the videos, on the other hand, people will start questioning if they really want to continue putting in all this time and effort just so that a bunch of wankers can download the films without paying.
I find this kind of selfish, ungrateful disregard extremely lame, and I don't even like to use the term "piracy" for it. Pirates are cool! Well, not the real thugs off the coast of Somalia, of course - but pirates in popular fiction usually are. The word has a ring of swashbuckling adventure and romance to it. As a movie buff, I think of old Errol Flynn titles with dashing, noble outlaws and some fairly interesting (albeit M/M) whipping scenes. But video piracy, or copyright infringement to use the legal term, is neither noble nor cool. It's a form of shoplifting, nothing more. Yes, I know that the analogy is not a hundred percent accurate - there is no appropriation of a physical object involved, you are not literally "taking away" the film. You just get an illegal copy of it. But you are basically taking a product without paying for it, that is the point.
Which is not only seriously uncool, but also stupid - as I pointed out before, piracy ultimately leads to the demise of this kind of content. It has the power to drive some of the smaller spanking video producers out of business altogether, and it seriously hurts even the bigger ones - who can, as a result, not buy new and better equipment, not invest in bigger and more ambitious projects. So if you want the industry to thrive and if you want to see great spanking movies, you have to spend money for them. It's as simple as that.
I'm not going to morally condemn everybody who has downloaded one or two pirated videos sometime. As a matter of fact, I've downloaded a few myself over the years - I even discovered the work of some of my favourite producers that way. But when I liked something, I always bought a DVD or a website subscription of my own, because I believe that good work should be rewarded. I can honestly say that there is nothing in my collection which I shouldn't have. So as a form of "previewing", I'm actually pretty open-minded about filesharing. But not as a means to build a huge video collection without ever paying for anything.
The same distinction applies when I show clips of "kink on the big screen". You can point out that this is copyright infringement, too, and you are right - like quite a few other spanking bloggers, I'm guilty of it in this form. But I think that there is a very significant difference between posting a short excerpt of a film, which is also of considerably reduced technical quality, and posting a perfect copy of the entire thing. The excerpts are not harmful, they are a preview and an encouragement to go out and get the movies. Okay, perhaps not with a total piece of garbage like Project Moon Base - but that one is public domain, anyway, because nobody wants it!
In other words, I don't want to be a holier-than-thou stickler about copyright, I just want you to exercise some common sense and decency. That is all I'm asking for. If you are using the internet to share obscure, out-of-print 1970's exploitation films, great - you aren't really doing any damage, except perhaps to good taste. If you download a few spanking clips "free of charge" once in a while, but pay for most of what you get, fine - I'm not going to demonise that. But if you are one of those clowns who nicks the entire movie catalogue of a producer (or, even worse, who uploads it to a "sharing site"), then you should seriously reconsider what you are doing, and what the effects are. And if you continue to pull that kind of crap, then I am no friend of yours, buster.
Besides, the big-time pirates had better realise that they are not as immune to legal repercussions as they think. I know of at least one major European spanking film producer who has successfully obtained the identities of filesharers via court order and sued them for substantial amounts of damages (which is the reason why you hardly ever see that producer's content pirated nowadays). They have the law on their side and the means to fight back. So far, most producers are simply too busy with their usual work to go to all that trouble. But I know that many are considering "setting an example" if they feel that things are getting out of hand.
My hope is that such legal nonsense won't be necessary and that appeals to common sense like the one I'm making here will work with a lot of people. One more time: video piracy is not cool ("Yaaarrr!"), it is utterly lame and a show of disregard for the producers and the spanking models whose work the pirates claim to like. If you share movies illegally, or if you support that kind of activity by downloading a lot, you are hurting everyone including yourself.
So go forth, and sin no more (and watch a couple of free video clips if you like - it's not like there aren't enough of those in our community, and some are even quite good, as you can see!).
So in case you're doing that, stop it. Seriously. You are hurting the producers who have put time, money and a lot of heartfelt effort into the films, you are hurting the models who have worked hard and suffered for our sadistic joy, and most importantly, you are hurting yourself - because the producers will eventually go out of business, and the content we all love and lust after will disappear. Think about that, matey.
Nobody who makes spanking videos is getting rich with them, and very few people in this industry are in it primarily for the money. If you simply want to rake in big bucks, vanilla porn is a much better business - because the market is much bigger. Videos of spanking, BDSM and other kinky activities, on the other hand, are what is commonly referred to as "niche content". Most of the producers and models are themselves genuine, kinky enthusiasts who do what they do as a labour of love. They aren't millionaires with villas, yachts and private planes, but "normal" people with normal jobs, who invest a great amount of their free time, not to mention blood and sweat, to make these films.
However, while they are not in it for commercial reasons, they have to make the work commercially viable. The equipment, the locations, the model fees and travelling costs, the production and distribution, all of that costs money. At the very least, they have to earn back what they put in. Moreover, when you buy a video, it also serves an idealistic purpose. It is a gesture of appreciation, it's basically like saying: "Thank you, you did a good job. I like your work - so much, in fact, that I'm willing to pay a couple of bucks for it." Even when the producer is not in it purely for the money, that is a big boost for morale. When you pirate the videos, on the other hand, people will start questioning if they really want to continue putting in all this time and effort just so that a bunch of wankers can download the films without paying.
I find this kind of selfish, ungrateful disregard extremely lame, and I don't even like to use the term "piracy" for it. Pirates are cool! Well, not the real thugs off the coast of Somalia, of course - but pirates in popular fiction usually are. The word has a ring of swashbuckling adventure and romance to it. As a movie buff, I think of old Errol Flynn titles with dashing, noble outlaws and some fairly interesting (albeit M/M) whipping scenes. But video piracy, or copyright infringement to use the legal term, is neither noble nor cool. It's a form of shoplifting, nothing more. Yes, I know that the analogy is not a hundred percent accurate - there is no appropriation of a physical object involved, you are not literally "taking away" the film. You just get an illegal copy of it. But you are basically taking a product without paying for it, that is the point.
Which is not only seriously uncool, but also stupid - as I pointed out before, piracy ultimately leads to the demise of this kind of content. It has the power to drive some of the smaller spanking video producers out of business altogether, and it seriously hurts even the bigger ones - who can, as a result, not buy new and better equipment, not invest in bigger and more ambitious projects. So if you want the industry to thrive and if you want to see great spanking movies, you have to spend money for them. It's as simple as that.
I'm not going to morally condemn everybody who has downloaded one or two pirated videos sometime. As a matter of fact, I've downloaded a few myself over the years - I even discovered the work of some of my favourite producers that way. But when I liked something, I always bought a DVD or a website subscription of my own, because I believe that good work should be rewarded. I can honestly say that there is nothing in my collection which I shouldn't have. So as a form of "previewing", I'm actually pretty open-minded about filesharing. But not as a means to build a huge video collection without ever paying for anything.
The same distinction applies when I show clips of "kink on the big screen". You can point out that this is copyright infringement, too, and you are right - like quite a few other spanking bloggers, I'm guilty of it in this form. But I think that there is a very significant difference between posting a short excerpt of a film, which is also of considerably reduced technical quality, and posting a perfect copy of the entire thing. The excerpts are not harmful, they are a preview and an encouragement to go out and get the movies. Okay, perhaps not with a total piece of garbage like Project Moon Base - but that one is public domain, anyway, because nobody wants it!
In other words, I don't want to be a holier-than-thou stickler about copyright, I just want you to exercise some common sense and decency. That is all I'm asking for. If you are using the internet to share obscure, out-of-print 1970's exploitation films, great - you aren't really doing any damage, except perhaps to good taste. If you download a few spanking clips "free of charge" once in a while, but pay for most of what you get, fine - I'm not going to demonise that. But if you are one of those clowns who nicks the entire movie catalogue of a producer (or, even worse, who uploads it to a "sharing site"), then you should seriously reconsider what you are doing, and what the effects are. And if you continue to pull that kind of crap, then I am no friend of yours, buster.
Besides, the big-time pirates had better realise that they are not as immune to legal repercussions as they think. I know of at least one major European spanking film producer who has successfully obtained the identities of filesharers via court order and sued them for substantial amounts of damages (which is the reason why you hardly ever see that producer's content pirated nowadays). They have the law on their side and the means to fight back. So far, most producers are simply too busy with their usual work to go to all that trouble. But I know that many are considering "setting an example" if they feel that things are getting out of hand.
My hope is that such legal nonsense won't be necessary and that appeals to common sense like the one I'm making here will work with a lot of people. One more time: video piracy is not cool ("Yaaarrr!"), it is utterly lame and a show of disregard for the producers and the spanking models whose work the pirates claim to like. If you share movies illegally, or if you support that kind of activity by downloading a lot, you are hurting everyone including yourself.
So go forth, and sin no more (and watch a couple of free video clips if you like - it's not like there aren't enough of those in our community, and some are even quite good, as you can see!).
24 comments:
Very well put,Ludwig. I see your reasoning behind your argument about downloading a few clips, however I do not agree sompletely with it.
I think that if you choose to go against piracy, then you should do it all the way. There is not "grey area"...you either do or you don't.
Taking the same argument and applying it to something more extreme...it's like saying you can kill some people some of the time, but mass murder is wrong. In order to be completely ethical, you'd have to buy every single video clip...or just download the ones that the producers make availible to the public.
That being said, I in no way condemn you or anyone else for downloading as I (and probably everyone else) have downloaded my fair share of stuff. Just putting the argument out there.
But then again...is there anyone out there who it completely100% ethical? I doubt it.
In theory, there shouldn't be a grey area...but that's only in an ideal world.
Well, you've basically already given yourself the answer that I would give to the point you are making: "There shouldn't be a grey area, but that's only in an ideal world."
What I wrote is: "If you download a few spanking clips 'free of charge' once in a while, but pay for most of what you get, fine - I'm not going to demonise that." Obviously, the "...but pay for most of what you get" addendum is very important.
Is downloading a few clips okay? No, it isn't, really. But basically, by paying for most of their videos, such a person is still supporting the industry as a whole, so I don't want to paint what they do in the darkest colours. Especially as almost everyone is guilty of downloading a pirated clip once in a while - you admit yourself that you have downloaded "my fair share of stuff". But as long as you also pay for a fair share of stuff, hopefully a much larger share of stuff, I'm willing to overlook that. As in law in general, there is no sense in demonising and criminalising every petty little transgression.
The people who really irk me, and who I'm really addressing here, are the ones who download and share tons of spanking videos, without ever buying one in their entire lives. Because they are the ones doing the real economic damage, never mind that they show utter disrespect for the producers and models who make the videos.
"Taking the same argument and applying it to something more extreme... it's like saying you can kill some people some of the time, but mass murder is wrong."
I'm not sure how sensible an analogy between copyright infringement and killing people is - I think the latter example is too extreme indeed to be of much use here. But actually, you are using an example which I would say supports my point.
Is it ever okay to kill people? That is a very complicated moral question and the philosophical debate about it is very much undecided. What about a situation where you can potentially save a lot of lives by taking others? For example, what about the prevention of genocide by military force, what about liberating a concentration camp? Is it okay to kill the guards if that is the only way to free the prisoners? What about the assassination of dictators, "tyrant murder"? Or, to use another scenario, what about euthanasia, "assisted suicide"?
These are very complex questions, and again, there don't seem to be clear-cut, black and white answers to them.
"I'm not sure how sensible an analogy between copyright infringement and killing people is"
It's not...it's just been on my mind.
I think in the situations that you just described, I'd lean more towards Kant's Categorical Imperative, in that it isn't the results that matter, and that every single human being has unconditional worth. Because of this, I wouldn't say that to kill one person for the greater good of many people is right.
On the flip side, if you take a more utilitarian stance then the situations you have described are okay. I guess it really depends on how important the results are.
"The people who really irk me, and who I'm really addressing here, are the ones who download and share tons of spanking videos, without ever buying one in their entire lives. Because they are the ones doing the real economic damage, never mind that they show utter disrespect for the producers and models who make the videos."
I agree completely with this. I'm not asking out of disbelief, I'm asking out of curiosit, but really...how much of an impact does it have on the companies?
"I wouldn't say that to kill one person for the greater good of many people is right."
Well, the classical hypothetical scenario would be "assassinating Hitler to prevent WW2". Of course, what effects a successful assassination really would have had is speculation - how history would have turned out, and how many lives might have been saved. In addition, there is the usual moral problem of "prevention" scenarios - is it okay to kill someone to prevent horrible things which they are planning to do, but haven't yet done?
But let's say for the sake of the argument that killing Hitler in, say, 1938 would have prevented the war in Europe as well as the Holocaust, and that it would have saved millions of lives. So, would it have been a moral action? My answer tends towards "Yes". In any case, I think it is a question where you could find good arguments for either answer.
"How much of an impact does [piracy] have on the companies?"
It differs a lot from company to company. It depends on how big the company is (one of the major producers or a very small one), how much of an effort the producer makes to actively fight piracy (do they have people looking for illegally shared files and deleting them?), and also on how popular the producer is, of course (how much of their content gets shared in the first place?).
But generally speaking, it's how I wrote in the original post: piracy does, if it goes unchecked and gets out of hand, have the potential to put some small producers out of business, and to do serious damage to the big ones.
Of course, as with all cases of copyright infringement, it's hard to measure the exact amount of damage. How many people who downloaded something illegally would have bought it legally if they hadn't acquired it the other way? Not all of them, but probably quite a few.
In any case, I think it's undeniable that piracy does cause significant economic damage, whatever the exact amount. Not to mention that it is disrespectful towards the producers, that it rightfully angers them a lot and that it is bad for morale. All of which hurts the industry and, by extension, everyone who likes spanking videos.
Well, there you go. It never takes long before a German is talking about concentration camps. That is all you people can think about. As I tell my children at every opportunity, all Germans are Nazis and the only good German is a dead one.
Michael
Michael: You are either trolling (in which case your "humour" is very crude and boorish) or simply a stunningly ignorant and prejudiced individual. Either way, I'm not going to dignify your little hate speech with more than these two sentences.
Oh, my, first categorical imperatives and utilitarianism, and then it went downhill from there. Even I can bring joy and light into this conversation!
I do understand why people want to view a $40 to $70 film before buying it, which is why I like "renting" them, via the streaming option on the rather terribly named legitimate business partner Hotmovies.com, ITony Elka was the person who first drew it to my attention when Shadow Lane started working with them.
[APPLAUD] Gosh! Well done Ludwig. People don't seem to appreciate that behind the spanking sites there are not a huge team of rich benefactors, and a call centre of people waiting to deal with enquiries.
At our site, there is Paul and I. That's it. We do all the uploading, scheduling, editing, advertising, marketing by ourselves. It's a 70 -80 hour week for both of us just keeping the site ticking over, and though it now sustains itself in terms of costs, we still do not make a take-home profit and neither of us take a salary from the business. Hence we have to have other jobs too to keep a roof over our heads.
And costs, as you point out, are massive. The average shoot costs us £3000 in total, and this will be with 2-3 girls at once. That's before you factor in costs of computers, software, cameras etc that need updating. An average member pays $25 to join our site. By the time the credit card processing companies, the hosting companies and the bandwidth charges are done taking their share, we see about $8 of that ourselves per member.
It's not that hard to do the maths. Selling DVDs is a good way for producers to boost their income, but it's infuriating when people then try to make a profit out of them by copying them - and in our case I often see our films being sold by pirates for way more money than we charge in the first place!
Shanelle has already been forced to stop producing DVDs and films due to pirates as it literally put her out the business.
However, this is not always the fault of the consumer as it is not always obvious whether someone is a licensed seller of material or not. There are plenty of companies out there who look completely legitimate, and they are not. Cane Pro are the biggest culprits in the UK market, and charge more than producers do for the discs!
Basically, if you are unsure, contact the producer directly. Ask them if you have found a licensed seller, or better yet purchase directly from the producer if you can. Often you get a better deal that way anyway. For example, our distributor looks after all our buyers and they often are offered discount offers, money off vouchers and free preview discs.
As for downloading clips. Do you really have to do it? It will cost you $25 to join our site. For that price you are getting access to over 100 hours of spanking film and over 200,000 photographs. We never recycle material so that's all unique stuff. Can people REALLY not see the value in that as opposed to spending hours trawling little file share sites looking for the odd freebie?
Thanks for bringing this to everyone's attention Ludwig, and readers, please support the spanking industry and purchase your films. Please, please :-)
Well done Ludwig. I too am a producer and like Lucy am sick and tired of seeing my material on free sharing sites. The costs of making films is not cheap.
I recently bought another second hand video camera and it cost me £2000! Where do these sick thieving bastards think the money comes from? Shoots are expensive to produce and the time taken to produce the film, edit it and market it all have to be taken into account.
Several sites linking to material on file sharing sites have been closed recently and I hope many more will be soon as the producers fight back.
I hope someone may be able to clarify a situation that I find myself in.
I have surfed around and found a couple of pay sites offering older material from other producers.
If these sites are legit it seems to be a good thing. Producers can sell on their older material, that has outlived it's bandwidth life and is no longer of any of use to it's original producer, while making a few extra bucks. People like me can catch up on material that they may have missed (it only became viable for me to join sites half way through last year, when I changed to a new ISP system) and also see material from several producers on one site, thereby aiding in choosing which site to join next.
These sites did seem to have a bit of a dodgy feel to them though, so I refrained from joining them.
How can a potential member, of this type of site, find out if the material has been honestly purchased from it's original producer or if it is being illegally shown and the original producer has not been properly paid for the material?
Sometimes it is hard to be an honest punter. Is there a list of honest sites anywhere? A guideline like that would be useful.
Prefectdt
I would use the original site's help system to ask them if the site with their content on is legitimate. If it isn't they will tell you. I have heard some sites may even give a free membership to the first person to tell them of a pirate site.
Thanks for the info. It would be nice if there was a quicker way to find out though, most of these sites have material from several producers, which would mean multiple email exchanges.
Prefectdt
You could just write one email and send it to all of the producers...
Interesting Prefectd. And a great idea I think if there was away to put all this information together in one place for people to refer to that would be very useful for the consumer. Sadly, I suspect not every producer would co-operate or be interested, especially the bigger fish. Though I still think it's got mileage if we can set something up. Does anyone have any ideas how we could do this?
Unfortunately, because by staying a non profit making amateur I enjoy a certain level of protection under Belgian law, I cannot offer my own blog for such a facility. But there are blogs who could host such a list. All Things Spanking ( http://allthingsspanking.com/ ) springs to mind, as Mitch's blog is a well known resource blog who already makes money from affiliate programs and could potentially make a little out of it himself from affiliate programs from sites on the list. This would require a combined effort from both clients and producers in identifying the good sites.
I can't help feeling that there is a better alternative. Perhaps one of the established producers, such as Northern Spanking or one of the other sites that are out there that have a good reputation and can be trusted by clients and their fellow producers alike, would be able to set up a site showing older material from multiple production companies.
This may not be one of the most popular sites as the material being older would not be on a level of quality available from production sites now.
Apart from people, like myself, who for one reason or another want to catch up on material no longer available from it's original producer, the main potential clientele of such a site would most likely be spankos coming of age. Youngsters entering adulthood and moving into their own place, going off to university or just getting their first computer, as an adult, that is not under parental control. After spinning around the blogs, forums and chatrooms on the 'Net many of these people must be curious about material containing their favorite stars or coming from their preferred producers that is no longer available for them to view legitimately.
The lower traffic of such a site would be compensated for by having no shooting production costs. The costs for such a site would be better calculated by someone with more knowledge of site design/production than myself but it would require the usual site production and bandwidth costs of any other site.
It would be advantageous for the producers as well. The limited amount of money that they can make from selling on their old material or getting a cut of net profits based on how much their material is viewed or whatever renumeration system is set up, may not represent a large sum but it would be more than the 0 Pounds/Dollars/Euros that they would get from material sitting around on a storage device and not being seen at all, except by people involved in pirating.
I have no knowledge of producing sites so I am aware that my ideas might not be viable, on a money making level. If they are not there must be other solutions that can help people want to be honest clients be just that, rather than being suckered into joining sites that may be less than honest.
Prefectdt
Indy: Actually, I use hotmovies.com myself to "preview" videos sometimes. The site is mostly about good old-fashioned vanilla / gonzo porn, obviously, but they also have quite a few spanking movies from various producers, including RGE / Lupus Pictures, Mood Pictures, Calstar, Strictly English, Shadow Lane, and so forth. Previewing a title there is a good, cheap and legitimate way to decide if you want to buy it.
Prefect, Lucy: I'm not sure about the feasibility of a "golden classics" site along the lines Prefect suggested. Agreements would have to be made, various legal and copyright issues would have to be taken into consideration, which may be difficult to impossible when the producers we are talking about have been out of business for years.
Add to that the practical work involved in running such a website, and you have a lot on your hands. From what Lucy mentioned about the workload involved in Northern Spanking, I'm sure she wouldn't fancy taking on that additional task!
It is, however, quite possible and sensible to do what Lucy had in mind - spreading the word about which paysites are legitimate and which ones are not. If we have links to paysites, that is a task that concerns all us bloggers, anyway. To the best of my knowledge, all the links I have here are fine. I know from Colin of Strictly English that spankingvids.com are legitimate, for instance.
I agree that it might be a good idea to have a "white list" of sorts where all the legit sites are collected, and a "black list" with the others. However, a blog is not the best or most obvious place to do this. Perhaps one of the big spanking movie review sites like spreview.net - I could ask John about it.
I like my idea from the point of view of a user but it does have many kinks in it that could only be sorted out by a person or persons with more knowledge of site production than myself. Perhaps I'm missing something here but as long as everything is done above board, I cannot see any issues with copy write if the material is obtained with the full knowledge and co-operation of the copy write holder. Time issues are a major concern to most producers, this may be a project for someone who is well known and trusted, within the vid production community, who is not at the moment running their own site, a reliable honest person with a well known reputation.
A "white list" would be a great asset, wherever it finds a home, as long as it is easily available and well known about. I would happily provide a link to such a thing. A "Black list" on the other hand could be used by less than honest people as a resource list. Best inform the original producer and otherwise keep quite about a suspect site, for fear of sending them traffic.
Prefectdt
Yes, Prefect, of course it would be alright if everything is done with the full knowledge and consent of the copyright holders - but it's *contacting* the copyright holders of a lot of this old material that might be difficult in the first place. That is the point I was trying to make. You would probably need to invest the time for quite a bit of "Where are they now?" detective work, in addition to all the other things.
I agree that a "black list" might not be such a great idea for the reasons you mentioned. But a "white list" definitely would be. As I said, maybe spreview.net would be a good place for this.
While some of the "black sheep" who make money from videos without the original producer's agreement are difficult to spot, they are pretty obvious in other cases. As you said, the site that prompted your original question had "a bit of a dodgy feel" to it in your eyes, and that was that. With a bit of common sense, I think a lot of them can be avoided even without an official "black list".
I do agree with Ludwig's post arguing against pirating. But I have to disagree when you say that no-one is making lots of money from spanking videos. It's like any other line of business - some go under, some just about get by, and others make money - quite a bit of it. Mr M of the Realspanking sites used to have a blog where he'd be surprisingly candid about the finances of his sites in response to questions. I can't remember the figures, but he did in the past publish rough subscriber numbers, and say that the sites made enough profit to go and invest substantial sums in other businesses, as well as saying that the websites employed a number of people who all made much higher salaries than in any previous jobs they'd held. Nothing wrong with that either. 'Tom' and 'Sophie' of GBS also by all accounts have a very comfortable lifestyle in the Mediterranean villa where their movies are made.
Ludwig talks about BDSM as also a 'niche' which doesn't make the money of vanilla porn. Well, the Insex archive was put up for sale with an asking price of $5 million when that SM site closed, and the finances of Kink.com are also widely reported in the public domain after the multi-million dollar purchase of the Armory in San Francisco. No shortage of fund generated by bondage porn there, and Peter Ackworth happily admits to having become a multi-millionaire from the bondage business.
Fair enough, many smaller producers may be making good quality films for little money, and I feel for them just as I do for the small shopkeeper fighting competition from Tesco. Personally, I'll always subscribe to websites I like for a number of reasons, and I'd recommend others to do so too. For one thing, it's really pretty damn cheap. When I first started buying spanking porn before the days of the internet, I'd spend £30-40 on one video, some of which turned out to be rubbish. Sometimes I'd send my money to a mail order company and get nothing back. Now for 30 or 40 bucks you can get usually scores, and sometimes hundreds, of hours of good quality video - far more than I usually get round to watching. And that's probably where it becomes so hard for many website owners to make much money. With modern download speeds and cheap external hard drives with vast storage capacity, for a months subscription you can strip all the content of a website and move on.
How to deal with this? Some sites have gone down the DRM route so that you lose access when you change your computer or even after a sub ends. Others put on daily download limits, or rotate content like Spankingserver does. But that puts some of us off joining those sites at all. It's a difficult one to manage.
For the record, I have subscribed to Northern Spanking (and contributed to Pandora's promotional spanking when I did so!) and it was well worth the money. Will I join again though? Maybe one day, but there are many good sites I haven't been a member of for a few years - Firmhand, real-life-spanking, Spanking server - and with lots of unwatched content sitting on my hard drive already, there are only a small handful of sites I tend to go back to. I suspect I'm not alone in that.
I can see Tyke's point when he talks about modern download speeds, external hard drives, and download limits, however in today's society, where everyone has so much content availible, it is impossible to set a download limit without losing business. Surely, a large amount of subscribers would find a better deal if spanking sites started limiting download allowances. Unless everyone moves forward and puts limits on the amount of downloading allowed, more and more companies will die off. An issue here though, is whether or not the quality...or...value...of spanking clips and movies will decrease as a result of mass-downloading while only purchasing a one-month subscription.
I don't really know what i was trying to say...just a procrastinatory ramble.
Tyke: What I wrote was, "nobody who makes spanking videos is getting rich with them". I had originally started the sentence with "very few people", but changed it to "nobody" to emphasise my point. In the "very few" version, I think we would both agree with it. In the "nodoby" version, it's a matter for discussion. At the end of the day, I suppose it comes down to how you define "rich" - your definition might be more modest than mine!
It's true that there are some producers who make enough money from spanking videos to make a living, even a comfortable one. Whether "making a living" equals "making you rich" is a matter for debate, though. Moreover, many of these better-off producers probably weren't penniless paupers to begin with. And for each producer who makes a living, you can find 10 peopke like Lucy and Paul, who do their website purely as a labour of love and just about earn as much money with it as they invest.
So I stand by the point I was trying to make there. The average spanking video producer isn't easily making a living from it, much less getting rich (not according to my definition of the word, anyway).
When you talk about sites like kink.com, which really are making a lot of money no matter how you define it, we have to take into account that these aren't pure spanking sites. I would even argue that they aren't pure "kinky" sites, either - I think a large part of their success comes from the fact that they are attractive for relatively vanilla audiences (with slight kinky leanings), too.
For example, there's quite a bit of vanilla sex on the sites of the kink.com network - blowjobs, intercourse, lesbian encounters, you name it. They also feature a lot of pretty well-known vanilla pornstars. With that approach, of course you're going to be very commercially successful. The logical result is that I see kink.com mentioned on mainstream porn forums (and shared on "mainstream" pirate sites) much more often than pure spanking sites like GBS (or pure bondage sites like Restrained Elegance, for that matter).
So my point about the niche content stands as well. A pure, "traditional" spanking / CP site that appeals to us spankos, or a pure bondage site, will not have the audience of a site like kink.com with its vanilla elements. And they can't even begin to rival large mainstream porn producers like the Private Media Group or the Larry Flynt empire.
So, while I agree that my original wording could have been a bit more nuanced and less black-and-white ("few" instead of "nobody"), I think my main points are still very much valid. Especially when it comes to piracy, which is doing damage to all producers, regardless of whether they are big or small.
As well as that, we are not only talking about the producers here, but also about the spanking models - who certainly are not making a fortune, not even the most famous ones. Granted, they are not as directly affected by piracy as the producers, but by extension, it hurts them, too, not to mention that it shows diregard of the work they put in.
I agree with you that it has of course become more difficult to make a living with spanking videos in the days of the internet, of high download speeds and cheap storage capacity. But all of that is manageable, I think, and there is enough of a niche (spanko) audience for a considerable number of niche producers to enjoy a moderate success - as long as piracy doesn't get out of hand, that is.
I wish I was making a lot of money from my spanking videos. Despite my site being listed on page 1 on Google I barely make a enough to keep going ... and no, I am not a profligate spender!
May be if I dropped quality and went for quantity I may make more money, but I won't do that.
It also would help if Verotel did not screw up its money collection service and then charge ME back this week for subscriptions they paid me over 2 years caused by serious mistakes on their part in getting a truthful and reliable direct debit payment collector!
Needless to say I think Verotel may go to the wall over this as they are charging back thousands of site owners! If you trade with them make sure they are not holding back large sums of your money!
I for one no longer will trade using their system.
I suppot anti-copyright movement. It is the only right thing to do.
And fucking stop calling it piracy. It is just sharing. Share and enjoy.
And going out of business? Why, yes! The sooner, the better. The sooner this idiotic media system falls down, the sooner real work will be done, not money grabbing lobbying copyright law pondering shitbags. And art and commerce ARE incompatible. Always were.
Anonymous: Instead of spouting generic, sophomoric anti-copyright slogans, you should read my post properly and switch on your brain for a minute.
You rant about "the idiotic media system" and "money grabbing lobbying shitbags" as if my post were about big record companies or movie studios (by the way, using swearwords does not in any way improve the force of your arguments). But it isn't. It's about spanking films. Many of the producers out there, like Northern Spanking or Sound Punishment, are one or two people operations. Even the "big" CP film producers like Lupus or Mood are pretty small businesses in absolute terms. We're not talking about Paramount Pictures here. These small companies really get hurt by illegal filesharing (whether you call it "piracy" or "just sharing" is a matter of semantics, and quite irrelevant).
The usual anti-copyright arguments (which I partially agree with, by the way), like artists getting ripped off by corporations, big business and lobbies stifling creativity etc., do not apply in this situation. Instead, the argument from my post applies: if you like spanking videos, you should pay for them, because if you don't, the producers will go out of business or quit in frustration, and there won't be any more videos.
By illegally sharing spanking videos, you are not hurting some big faceless corporation, you are hurting the kinky artists themselves. So please, take your anti-corporate tirades elsewhere.
I don't suppose that you have ever been at a professional spanking video shoot. Well, I have, and I can tell you that, despite being "only" kinky porn, it is real, hard work. I can also tell you that it is immensely frustrating for the producers, directors and actors to see their hard work getting ripped off by a bunch of cheap, greedy, selfish freeloaders (which is what most illegal filesharers are, regardless of your attempt to make it appear like some noble crusade).
It is all the more frustrating, and infuriating, because most spanking video producers are genuine kinky enthusiasts who do what they do not for the money, but for their love of the kink. To then hear freeloaders like you making pseudo-political speeches about "money grabbing lobbying shitbags" is absurd, and only adds insult to injury.
"Art and commerce ARE incompatible. Always were."
Another empty slogan proving that you have no understanding of what you are talking about. And you're barking up the wrong tree, my friend.
I do what I do purely for art, not money. When I travel to shoot with SM-Circus or with Lupus Pictures, I actually lose money, because the acting fee they pay me is less than my travel expenses. And that's perfectly fine - it's not about making a profit for me, it's about making a movie I like. Many of the producers I work with feel the same. Their main priority is making videos they like, while the profit is secondary, something that is necessary to keep them in business.
But that is precisely the point: while you don't want to commercialise your work as an artist, you still have to make it commercially viable if you want to stay in business (you know, to keep making more art!). This is especially true with an expensive artform like movies. If you were a real artist, if you had ever worked on a movie yourself, you would know that.
So, therefore... If you want to illegally share spanking videos, go ahead, I can't / won't stop you. But don't kid yourself that you are "supporting the anti-copyright movement". You're just being cheap, and grabbing a free lunch.
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