So... why is it okay to pirate porn?

[Zhukov]

No, seriously.

Simple enough question.

Torrent a movie, music or video game? "Scum of the earth!"
Watch non-amateur porn on a tube site? "Yeah... so?"

But surely it's exactly the same crime, right? It has exactly the same effect.

Anyone remember this?

However, this isn't about moralizing, it's about hypocrisy. Because it would seem to me that anyone who has downloaded porn for free, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that probably applies to at least half the people reading this, then said bad things about video game pirates is a perfect hypocrite.

So, just why is it considered okay to pirate porn?

 

[kurupt87]

It's exactly the same, yes.

The porn industry doesn't run it's own copyrights inquisition like the software and music businesses do. And I imagine most porn producers could care less, while they see the money pouring on despite free distribution of their work, just like is happening to producers of music and software.

Spoiler

 

[Jonluw]

It's the same.
It's just that porn is seen as a morally bankrupt industry, so no one really cares about protecting their rights. A sort of Robin Hood mentality in the subconscious saying "if they're bad, we can steal from them all we like" keeps the general public from caring.
Porn isn't taken as a serious part of entertainment media. Simple as that.

If Universal studios creates a campaign to stop the pirating of their movies, they will get the full backing of the government, but if some sort of porn studio did the same, no political figure would want their name assosciated with them. So the porn industry is left to fend for itself.

 

[Esotera]

The porn industry doesn't run it's own copyrights inquisition like the software and music businesses do. And I imagine most porn producers could care less, while they see the money pouring on despite free distribution of their work, just like is happening to producers of music and software.

Porn companies are actually some of the most vocal & agressive defenders of copyright, bringing several pay-up or else lawsuits (see torrentfreak if you want examples).

OT: it's not.

 

[Alterego-X]

Because, as a Cracked article once put it, "There's more porn than air now. Literally -- air is limited, but we have machines that can convert energy into .jpegs of titties from now until the heat death of the universe. titties are post-scarcity".

The porn industry doesn't need to be protected, because the audience doesn't really care about the production of more of the same porn. As long as the currently existing porn stays with us, there is nothing to worry about. No one cares about the individual porn titles, as long as the concept known as "porn" remains.

On the other hand, narrative media are supposed to be surprising, evolving, and changing styles. Though piracy also gives us "infinite amount of games", even if you factor in that everyone wants to play everything only once, there are thousands of good existing games, that you could spend several lifetimes with, it would kill the gaming culture of waiting for new ones, seeing how old flaws are getting improved, etc.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

I'd say anyone who is stupid enough to actually download porn to their computer deserves whatever happens to them. They have youtube analogs for a reason.

As for the people who upload pirated material to those sites, that's their problem, and the site owner has to deal with it.

 

[Zipa]

Its simple really, a lot of people are hypocrites.

 

[TheMatsjo]

On-Topic: yes, it is the exact same problem, and yes there is a double standard at work. The ironic thing to do would be to pirate adult entertainment if you're opposed to its existence. Now that's taking the moral high ground (that sentence was intended only as food for thought, t'was not a response to any replies or statements made within this thread thusfar).

Off-Topic:
- Copyright infringment, not stealing
- Who is the guy at 1:11? Don't remember seeing him.

 

[Erttheking]

Mainly because people view it as a less respectable "art" I guess.

 

[xedi]

My three best guesses:

1. Everytime you hear about losses, you can't really talk about losses, because nobody knows how many who have pirated the product would've payed for it if they were not able to pirate. This is especially true for porn is my guess. Due to the social stigma most people just would never pay for porn, so the question is, would more people on average pay for it, if it weren't available for free?

2. Intuitively most might say yes, but my intuition says otherwise. I could imagine that all those short low quality clips which are available for free everywhere are the best advertisement the porn industry could get. I think much more people get addicted and want more and are willing to pay for longer high quality porn after having watched porn for some time for free than a population which can only see porn if they would pay for it.

3. I do not have any data or so, so again, purely intuition, but my guess is that most just stream porn and do not download it. In many countries this is a grey zone legally or just does not get persecuted and I guess most people share the intuition that streaming something is not as bad as downloading.

 

[the rye]

Well considering the amount of amateur porn on the internet people are seeing less reason to pay for porn when its free and just a click of a button away. And with sites that allow you to stream porn, pirated material is going to get uploaded. I don't see any turning back at this point, if the porn industry doesn't adept its going to lose to streaming websites which offer a better variety of porn for free.

 

[Zen Toombs]

Spoiler: Because it's porn.

Because it's porn.

Yes, legally speaking and ethically speaking, it's the same a pirating anything else. But most of [male]humanity is only thinking one[footnote]Well, two things, but the other thing is boobs.[/footnote] thing:

So what? It's porn.

 

[BreakfastMan]

They seem the same to me. The people behind porn need to eat just as much as the people behind games do. I think the difference might be because porn is seen as more taboo than games, therefor more acceptable to pirate? I dunno, that is the first reason that came to mind.

EDIT: Also, digital copies of a porn movie would be much easier to hide from parents/significant others than a physical copy.

 

[TheTurtleMan]

Even if they do take down all the studio made porn from those websites, they'll still do fine considering the MASSIVE amount of "amateur" porn videos. So I say go ahead make stricter laws for actual copyrighted porns.