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

[ph0b0s123]

This is something to consider for just plain movie piracy as well. Take the case of the Human Centipede 2 or this movie [http://www.movieline.com/2011/01/31/police-raid-uk-blockbuster-because-of-a-horror-film/], the legal cuts of these movies are what you get if you rent or buy them. If you pirate them you are likely to get a cut deemed illegal at least in the UK. The possession of such a cut would not get you in trouble for piracy, but a sex offense conviction and admittance to a register as well, at least in the UK. This is the other side of piracy that people are not aware of yet.

Neither of those films are edited for US release, you can get the full copies legally and have no problem.

Oh, OK, because the US is fine there is nothing anyone else in the world has to worry about.... USA, USA, USA, etc.....

Sorry, the difference between UK and US cuts were the reason for that particular issues with pirating these movies.

 

[kouriichi]

Its not. But its just impossible to really keep track of it.

Porn Hit the web. People buy it. It shows up on 30 different sites. People download them from those sites, upload them to others.

Before you know it, your porn is in 1000+ different places, ready to be spread more.

Not to mention..... its porn. Pronz. Smut. Naked pictures, possibly of your mother. ((Thats right, i made an Electric Six reference.))
Even if it being pirated, not many people other then the porn companies actually care. Its not like the movie industry where real actors are being paid millions, and everyones job is literally tied to sales.

Im sure most of the porn out there if amateur porn anyway. Un-regulated, trailer grade spank'in videos. Costs them nothing to produce, and probably was never charged for to begin with.

In other words, its still wrong, but not even 1/10th as many people care. Millions of USD arnt on the line. So Millions wont be put into stopping it.

 

[Kahani]

Due to the social stigma most people just would never pay for porn

Due to the social stigma, most people would just never admit to paying for porn. As a hundred billion dollar industry that has been one of the first adopters of and one of the main driving forces behind the development of first photos and then video, it seems a lot more people are willing to pay for porn than most people seem to think. And remember, for most of the time porn has existed, paying for porn meant actually physically going to a shop. How many more people will be willing to pay when they can do so behind the relative anonymity of the internet?

Of course, that still doesn't answer the question of whether piracy harms porn sales, has no effect, or actually increases sales due to free advertising. It's the same problem faced by the music, games and film industries that no-one really has a clue what the answer is or how to sensibly find out, but with the additional problem that no-one even wants to talk about it in the first place.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Spoiler: other stuff...

No, those ratings are voluntary by the industry. Their is no law enforcement behind it only industry fines and sanctions. That is because Movies and Games are protect free speech (remember that big supreme court case last year), so you cannot put in legal restrictions.

Porn is different, Porn was ruled not to be protected free speech so legal requirements can be put on it's sales etc.

Cinema's and games sellers are legally allowed to let children watch MA films, buy MA games. They don't though because if they get found out the movie industry fines them and does not give them any new movies, so they go out of buisness. Same thing with the games industry.

That's my understanding of the difference anyway. Also this is just the US. In a country like the UK the age certificates are legally enforced.

Really? I didn't know films were rated voluntarily. I knew games were, but I thought there was a government body for films.

Makes sense, though.

Good question overall. But this kind of thing is based on the old ideas about copyright.
The concept of Intellectual Property that is pushed really hard these days doesn't gel well with the implications of this...

Think about it. If Porn cannot be copyrighted at all that makes it public domain by default.

If the status of anything that someone made an effort to create is public domain by default, then it implies they never owned it to begin with.

Which makes the whole concept of 'intellectual property' a bit of a joke.
(The default idea of property is not that it's collectively owned by the public unless stated otherwise. Which would appear to be the implication of copyright laws...)

I honestly don't know how to feel on the subject, to be honest. On the one hand, copyright protection was to support the power of the individual, allowing people to own their own ideas and profit from them. I've heard many people conclude that it is the reason the US is so powerful economically. Not so much capitalism as it is the fact that people can own what they create.

On the other hand, it's interesting to think that a copyright is basically only enforced if there is some benefit to the community. "The advancement of science or the arts." Kind of a collectivist idea behind an individualist idea. I mean, we don't think you have a right to what you make, unless it's something that makes everyone else better.

Seems rather self-defeating.

Spoiler: more unrelated stuff

However, on a slightly different note, I would argue that an R or MA rated film or game isn't technically obscene.

For something to be obscene generally means it was refused classification altogether. (or has a classification in line with it being considered obscene.)

That may mean an R rating is unenforceable legally... (Which if I understand US law is actually true; - Games ratings are voluntary. Not legally enforced.)

Of course, that's very much a US thing. The ratings systems in other countries have far more legal weight behind them, because most other countries don't technically have freedom of speech as a fundamental concept.

(People in the UK & Australia for instance don't technically have the right to free speech. They have such rights in practice, but there's no actual fundamental legal protection of the idea of free speech...

Which might go some way to explaining UK libel laws, or the fact that an idea such as a 'super-injunction' is even possible...)

The idea that people in other countries don't have the right to free speech is terrifying. I've heard it before and I understand it, but it's nauseating to imagine people being locked up for their political views in otherwise "enlightened" countries. Truly horrifying.

Well, the modern copyright laws derive from something that seems contradictory, but it's basically this:

1. For the public good, it would benefit everyone if people shared their knowledge, inventions and artistic works, rather than kept it all to themselves.
2. To encourage people to share what they've created, society will grant them a limited, short-term monopoly on their work, (And the part that generally gets forgotten in modern times: Under the understanding that when this monopoly ends, the work will become public property.)

That's basically modern copyright law.

However, older copyright laws are essentially royal patents. (I think you can see where the term 'patenting' comes from)
A royal patent is a declaration from the monarch (King or Queeen) granting exclusive rights to produce something to a particular person (or company).

For instance, at one time someone might have held a royal patent on wine production. Or Bread. Or Beer.
Or... Printing books.
And this 'patent' rarely, if ever had anything to do with who came up with the ideas required for any given field...

Yes, the original 'copyright' didn't grant any rights whatsoever to the creators of works. They merely regulated who had permission to own and use a printing press.

The publisher rarely even paid authors, and authors didn't have any rights at all. If there were any rights that were legally protected, it was the publisher that held them.

And the point of this? Not to promote anything, but rather to restrict published works to those the monarchy approved of.

Thus, copyright was a form of restricting the flow of information before it was ever anything else.
(Then it became an attempt to promote creativity... And now it seems to have come full circle, and seems to be about control again, though in this case, control held, in principle by creators, but in practice often by large corporations.)

So... Yeah. The history of this stuff is quite confusing...