but since that can't happen right now I guess this is the next best thing
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – The notoriously fragmented porn industry is uniting to expose Internet Age pirates threatening its survival.
Studios have begun collaborating on lawsuits targeting people who share digitized adult videos at peer-to-peer networks and are exploring technology tools for automatically tracking and protecting copyrighted material online.
Pink Visual is rallying dozens of adult entertainment studio operators at an unprecedented Content Protection Retreat in Arizona in October to train in ways to combat piracy and defend intellectual property.
"We joke that we can't agree on where to go for lunch, but this is getting big and we are ready to put aside the egos and sit down to work together on solutions," said the head of Lightspeed studio Steve Lightspeed.
"Piracy on the Internet is much more available to the average user than it ever was."
Internet technology that started as a boon for porn producers by allowing videos or images to be discreetly viewed on home computers has turned against the adult industry, according to Pink president Allison Vivas.
"People were willing back then to pay top dollar for porn, now it looks like the majority of users think adult content is free," Vivas said. "That is a huge shift in just a few years."
In recent weeks, porn producers began filing lawsuits against "John Does" that share copyrighted adult material at BitTorrent sites that use peer-to-peer networks of personal computers to swap digital content.
Larry Flynt Publications sued 635 individuals in a court in Texas on September 20 in the company's first suit aimed at users of BitTorrent sites and vowed many more such suits were to come.
Suits threaten to expose names of accused porn pirates as part of the legal process, and that alone might prove a deterrent.
Studios are working with lawyers at Media Copyright Group and Copyright Enforcement Services on the litigation, with an initial legal barrage focused on videos touting shemales or 18-year-old girls....CLICK POST TITLE TO GO TO YAHOO AND READ REST OF THE STORY.
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