HOUSANDS of Web sites are putting
Playboy magazine's pictures on the Internet - free. And Randy
Nicolau, the president of Playboy.com, is loving it. "It's direct
marketing at its finest," he said.
Let the music industry sue those who share files, and let
Hollywood push for tough laws and regulations to curb movie copying.
Playboy, like many companies that provide access to virtual flesh
and naughtiness, is turning online freeloaders into subscribers by
giving away pictures to other sites that, in turn, drive visitors
right back to Playboy.com.
When Mr. Nicolau is asked whether he thinks that the
entertainment industry is making a mistake by taking a different
approach, he replies: "I haven't spent much time thinking about it.
It's like asking Henry Ford, 'What were the buggy-whip guys doing
wrong?' ''
The copyright rumble is playing out a little differently in the
red-light districts of cyberspace. That neighborhood is increasingly
difficult to confine, what with a fetishwear-clad Janet Jackson
flashing a Super Bowl audience of millions, and Paris Hilton making
her own version of a "Girls Gone Wild" video. Professional peddlers
say they are hard pressed to compete.
Still, the business of being bad is very good, especially for the
biggest players. Though the industry has felt a financial squeeze
during the economic slowdown, it nonetheless has sales of as much as
$2 billion each year, said Tom Hymes, the editor of AVNOnline, a
business magazine for the industry.
And the pornography industry, which has always been among the
first to exploit new technologies, including the VCR, the World Wide
Web and online payment systems, is finding novel ways to deal with
the threat of online piracy as well. The mainstream entertainment
industry, some experts say, would do well to pay attention.
Music executives say their campaign of lawsuits has been
successful. They say they have spread the word that downloading free
music infringes on copyrights and that there could be consequences
for large-scale file sharers.
But the pornography industry has been dealing with Internet
copyright issues since the 1980's. By comparison, the movie and
music businesses are relative newcomers. Mr. Hymes said companies in
his industry had come to realize that suing consumers and promoting
"draconian laws" were not the answer. "No law written can stem the
tide," he said. And so, he said, companies are seeking ways to live
with the technologies that threaten them and are trying to turn them
to their advantage.
That is not to say that the companies have not been harmed by
free copying and distribution of copyrighted material online. Mr.
Hymes's magazine warned recently that such companies were "losing
incalculable amounts of cash" to peer-to-peer file-sharing networks
like Kazaa, LimeWire, Grokster and Bit Torrent.
"As the networks continue to grow and even more sophisticated
programs are created, the P2P networks might prove a bigger threat
to the revenue stream of the porn world than all the censorious
right-wingers in the country put together," the article stated.
Maybe. But many companies that distribute X-rated material say
they do not worry too much about consumers sharing among themselves;
they often unleash their lawyers only when someone is trying to
profit by copying their goods and trying to sell them.
When people in the industry talk of copyright, there is none of
the grand speechifying about revering artists and rewarding
creativity, and the near-tearful paeans to the yeoman key grips and
stunt men, as is favored by movie and record executives. Instead,
there is just this: We spent a lot of money to get this stuff out to
the market. Somebody else is making money off of it. We want the
money.
"We haven't gone after Joe Citizen who's sharing something he
printed off something from the Hustler Web site with another guy,"
said Paul Cambria, a lawyer who represents Hustler, Vivid Video and
other companies on copyright issues. He does send out some 20
letters a week, he said, warning for-pay Web sites to remove
material owned by his clients.
