[Seattle Sex Examiner] -“Well, ya got trouble, my friend.
Right here, I say trouble right here in Porn City!

Oh, we got trouble
Right here in Porn City
Right here in Porn City
With a capital ‘T’ and that rhymes with ‘P’ and that stands for ‘smutl’!
— My apologies to Meredith Willson for the obvious rip off of his lyrics.

Sex fans; Porn City is in crisis.

Not only have porn producers discovered, to their great dismay, that smut is no longer recession proof. Now the peons are usurping the industry thrones. Lamentations can be heard echoing throughout Pornville. A ringing of hands has replaced the ubiquitous hand job.

Only a couple of years ago, 80 percent of a porn producer’s income came from DVD sales. Today, it’s down about 30 percent. And some speculate that sales could flat line in only a couple of years.

While porn consumers are on the rise; porn profits are tanking. What gives, Dr Dick? You might be asking. Good question. Probably it’s a constellation of causes. Over the last 10 years numerous upstart production houses have cut into the porn pie leaving an ever-smaller pie to go around.

But the bigger problem is American households are using broadband connections to the Internet in ever increasing numbers. 47% at last count and that number will continue to grow exponentially. This brings the immediate gratification of porn to hungry consumers via the web.

Streaming media and download to own capability have choked the life out of the DVD. I mean, who schleps down to the local adult video store to buy or rent anymore? No one I know.

And while sales of internet-based adult entertainment grew 14 percent last year, to a whooping $2.8 billion, that figure would be substantially higher if there wasn’t for all the free competition. We can thank the “Tube Sites” for that. The proliferation of free sites allow anyone and everyone to post all the user-generated content he/she wants. And let’s face it, there’s nothing more compelling than watching the neighbors get it on, right?

Of course there is a boatload of copyright, age verification and privacy concerns, but this is still the internet’s frontier, so it can be pretty lawless out there.

Tube sites thrive on amateur homemade videos that depict real people having ordinary sex, as opposed to the often unbelievable people and unreal scenarios of commercial porn. And these amateur productions cost a tiny-tiny fraction of what a big production house puts up for a feature film. So the amateurs are killing business for the big boys.

To counteract this, some porn producers offer subscription sites, which give users access to a treasure trove of content in exchange for a membership monthly fee. This boosts profits, of course, but it’s still the same old commercially produced stuff. And after a while that gets pretty old.

And on top of that the new membership site revenue stream doesn’t even come close to offsetting the decline in DVD sales. What’s happening in porn right now is just like what happened to the music industry a few years ago. CD sales are down 16 percent since 2005 and we all know that sales are never gonna rebound.

Remember the VHS format? Remember how it revolutionized video entertainment in general, and adult entertainment in particular? Porn moved out of seedy theaters in unsavory neighborhoods and right into our living rooms. Suddenly, pornography had a huge new audience. Millions of new consumers showed up virtually overnight. VHS was king from the mid 1980’s till the turn of the century. But who among us has a VHS player these days? I suppose you see where I’m going with this, right?

When the DVD usurped the VHS tape, DVD sales soared. But the DVD was king for only a few years. Now it’s the web that’s replacing the DVD.. For the first time, technology is hurting Big Porn. Everyone thought the internet was going to be a plus for the porn industry. But the opposite happened. And the big boys are scared…real scared.

There is now a level playing field on the net. Anyone with a video camera and a exhibitionist streak can compete with the porn moguls…and win.

The “Tube Sites” — YouPorn, PornoTube, Xtube, GayForIt, etc — that deliver the content didn’t invent internet porn, but they sure did make it exponentially easier to access. Most of the posted videos are very short, but the variety of the offerings is amazing. There’s gay stuff, straight stuff, and everything in between. It’s a smut bonanza, don’ cha know!

Some of the clips are indeed amateur videos, shot and uploaded by their exhibitionist creators. But, and here is the real problem for Pornville, a lot of the uploaded clips are copyrighted material ripped off from professional pornographers. The “Tube sites” are awash with scenes from high-end features. It’s true that some clips are posted by the porn companies themselves, as trailers for the full-length versions available on their own sites, but most are uploaded by users from their own collections. And that generates zero revenue for the kings of porn, which makes them very unhappy indeed.

Why should I care? You might be asking yourself right about now. Rapacious porn producers deserve what they get, right? After all they get fat on the backs (literally and figuratively) of the adult performers; and that ain’t right. Exploitation sucks…and not in a good way.

I hear what you’re sayin’ — what goes around, comes around. And I’d agree with you, except for one thing — Intellectual Property Rights!

Piracy is piracy, regardless if it’s happening off the coast of Africa or in your den. And when we play fast and loose with the property of others it makes it a whole lot more difficult to protect our own property.

I’m all in favor of the level playing ground where amateurs and pros duke it out for the heart, minds and boners of their audience. But unfair business practices are indefensible.