Prague report - is it accurate

[DennisAttitude]

Starting to get a bit worried about the Prague situation:
In R-rated Oldrich Widman says there was much less porn shot currently in Prague than in previous years.
From Prague based girls I heard they are shooting more and more in Budapest because there were nearly no jobs in Prague.
I know we still have Brno in Czech.
But sounds alarming at least!
What happened?
Will only Budapest survive?

R Rated with the interview from Oldrich Widman will be out 01 August 2008.
But indeed, his quote is a start from the whole 3 pages interview.

Regards

[alexxx]

Starting to get a bit worried about the Prague situation:
In R-rated Oldrich Widman says there was much less porn shot currently in Prague than in previous years.
From Prague based girls I heard they are shooting more and more in Budapest because there were nearly no jobs in Prague.
I know we still have Brno in Czech.
But sounds alarming at least!
What happened?
Will only Budapest survive?

R Rated with the interview from Oldrich Widman will be out 01 August 2008.
But indeed, his quote is a start from the whole 3 pages interview.

Regards

Mmmmhhh, I prefer to not claim always on the situation.
In my opinion and also because I am a bit distant now I can say that things are changing and this may sounds shocking and alarming but I also think that those who will adapt themselves will survive.
But it will take time... especially to protect and exploit the copyrights in a different way.

Besides this, production can go up and down but if the "mindset" remains stable I do not see any risk to shut down porn in Czech Rep.
Hungary will profite but the situation is not such different.
Russia is completely different but no one can predict what will happen there because is not like Hungary was in the early 90s....

[DennisAttitude]

It is worst then you even can imagine the situation today.
As an insider and speaking with insiders only, it is all based on facts.

2008 is the most difficult year in the history of adult entertainment ever.
Also this year and 2009 will decide who will stay and what will be effect from this current situation that the x world is dealing with the last 1,5 years.

Till now I can say the big ones are making a good change to survive by following the market and to invest in new and better technology.

The rest... end case.

Regards.

[BEP]

I think that filming in Czech Republic is very expensive this days. Stars want 10000-15000 czech crowns (400-700 euro) per scene. Every day czech currency grow according euro and american dollar. Producers have no interest to spend so much money here. US performers and russian performers cost much cheaper....

And free porn from torrents and rapidshare kill business for all...

[sbando]

And free porn from torrents and rapidshare kill business for all...

It's almost pointless to produce new stuff, 90% will go to the leechers.

Not to mention that thanks to President Monkey 1 $ is worth 3 cents nowadays. People like me are immensly hurt by that, income-wise, while costs for producers are multiplied.

[DennisAttitude]

I think that filming in Czech Republic is very expensive this days. Stars want 10000-15000 czech crowns (400-700 euro) per scene. Every day czech currency grow according euro and american dollar. Producers have no interest to spend so much money here. US performers and russian performers cost much cheaper....

And free porn from torrents and rapidshare kill business for all...

there was a time (3-4 years ago) producers where paying from 1.500 euro till 2.500 euro for a top star, but then in that time, the DVD's selling and distributing network was still stable, and there where only maximum 15 labels and 10 directors who where able to pay that prices. Today the cast and new faces are shooting for 200 till 250 euro, even with those low prices, new content is not being shot as much as then. And the stars with a name, they are doing other things then shooting movies. And they are making a good living with this, what means that labels and directors are having less big names in the cast list.

Regards.

[alexxx]

It is worst then you even can imagine the situation today.
As an insider and speaking with insiders only, it is all based on facts.

2008 is the most difficult year in the history of adult entertainment ever.
Also this year and 2009 will decide who will stay and what will be effect from this current situation that the x world is dealing with the last 1,5 years.

Till now I can say the big ones are making a good change to survive by following the market and to invest in new and better technology.

The rest... end case.

Regards.

Hi Dennis,
I didn't mean to say that everything is easy but I wanted to remain positive.
I think that until now free dowload has grown without stop and this has only damaged most of producers and distributors of content.
The big only survived just because of their size and connections and not because they solved the problem.
As always happens the first who pay are the small ones (cast included).
But because this situation affects also the mainstream biz I think one solution will be found.

In the meantime yes, production cuts will slash down cast prices and will benefit few ones.
The result will be that only with more shootings at lower price it will be possible to maintain the same sales.
This will not last forever... but not everybody will survive until the end.

At the same time the market is growing in terms of demand and will not disappear....

[DennisAttitude]

I agree with you on the most points.

Good saying Alexxx!

Dennis

[sbando]

I think that until now free dowload has grown without stop and this has only damaged most of producers and distributors of content.

Labels are disappearing. Important content producers are cutting down content on their websites. Many other sites and labels are so devoid of direction nowadays that probably people think they're out of business (Hustler -which IS out of business-, Ana/Dia, RLD).

Putting out new stuff is not relevant anymore!

And what do we see in this Board? A few posts here and there by people expressing some worries. Perhaps this is the first "serious" topic tackling the general state of our world.

[just_me]

Speaking strictly as a consumer with no inside knowledge of the industry and who wants to comment on what's being discussed - it's not torrents and rapidshare that is hurting the porn industry, it's the economy. 2008 is the worst year in history for a wide range of industries, retail, housing, banking, auto, airline, etc., etc., etc. The porn industry is not immune to reality.

And if content producers were not already planning on the downfall of dvd sales, then that's their own fault. The future (and even the present) for the consumer is the internet. Period. The economy is just speeding up the inevitable.

Right now there have got to be somewhere around 5,000-10,000 subscription porn sites out there. That's a gross overabundance of content for tough economic times on everyone. The market will adjust. In a couple years the economy will rebound, and so will the porn industry.

Torrents and rapidshare are problems that other industries are also fighting against, and is a problem that ISPs will be specifically working on in the next few years. When ISPs finally go all-in on bandwidth based rates, who's going to be the one left seeding a torrent knowing it's costing him actual money now every time someone grabs the file? If there's one thing that universally labels "leechers", is they refuse to spend money on anything. They will stop when file sharing starts costing them more and more $$.

Bottom line, as a consumer I see nothing to worry about. Czech girls having trouble finding work? Welcome to everyone else's problems.

[BEP]

I think that there is no economics troubles, i think that people do not want to pay more for porn. No one economic problem will force the user to stop jerking off. Jerking off for men is also like food... But now everybody can enter to google name of movie and receive list of free torrents and rapidshare links.

What we have now? Only low budget gonzo movies. Nobody from producers do not want to spend big money on high cost production. For example Woodman did perfect start one year ago. Now he have only one new movie per month, and mostly gonzo...

[sbando]

I agree on many of your points just_me, but like it or not, the pirated content is getting bigger and bigger and easier to get and not the other way around.

You pay for your connection and electricity but you won't perceive it as a purchase if you can download 10 movies a days, music and software. A Rapidshare account is a few euros a month. I have friends that keep eMule running 24/7 and use Bittorrent and Rapidshare, at once.

Again, no one says it should be illegal, I won't root for the RIIA or Brein, I don't think that's the best way to solve the problem. But THERE IS a problem for content creators, let's not fool ourselves! Also, I agree that in the 90's there was some generic idea of digital freedom behind warez, but now?? Most of these kids are right wingers full of bias.

[Nihilist]

This was a very good and very relevant quote from Dennis - "Till now I can say the big ones are making a good change to survive by following the market and to invest in new and better technology. "

That in fact is the way forward and the only way to maintain a profiltable enterprise the adult world. I have a unique perspective in that I know from an insiders view what happens on set and I also understand the technologies and systems involved in torrenting and sharing.

The adult industry has spent a lot of time complaining about how every production they make is simply shared around a community of leechers and thieves but have so far done little to address it. Hollywood is the same and have spent millions of dollars fighting something that they should be embracing.

The technology exists whereby movies no longer need to be created on DVD format at all (if I am being blatant). HD movies could be taken direct from source, or even from the DVD and sold by porn producers using their own sharing system. Using the extensive torrent systems to share and then having a DRM system to unlock once downloaded.

Now VOD for all its attempts, remains dire. Stringent rules about what you can view and download, or pay per minute, etc. VOD simply misses the critical point that its useless. Find a VOD site that actually offers a "complete DVD" (i.e. backstage, photos, etc) and you will be searching for a long long time. The VOD can actually cost more than the original DVD version, so how does that work?

When the adult industry does as the music and gaming business have and embraces the sharing systems, they will too start to make money, so long as its a one time DRM license (preferably DivX DRM as thats so far uncrackable (trust me, I know what can be hacked and what cannot) or maybe using HD WMV DRM which is still unutilised on the net but offers awesome quality).

For the record, I have downloaded games where I have bought them from the original creator and then downloaded the software via a torrent. Once downloaded you unlock it. Its fast, effective and rarely get the same errors that you get from the likes of EA Downloader or Direct 2 Drive.

Fight fire with fire and you will succeed. Its just who has the guts to be the first and on the same note, who has the sense to see survival.

However, I condemn in the strongest possible words the practice of site rips. NO one should ever subject a single model website or a website with a limit budgeted to a site rip because that point blank ends that site dead. I am sure its horrific for larger more mainstream sites too, but they can survive it with the amount of new content they produce but a single model site... you just end her ambitions and give me motives!

[sbando]

I said something similar in another thread, unfortunately it's easier said than done and many companies will be belly up before alternative means of distribution become the norm. And that won't stop thieves anyway.

The most popular adult pay sites already provide high speed downloads for a small fee, but the idea of getting it all "for free" is to alluring.

[Brkase]

...if I can add my small bit of POV...

The author rights issue in porn is no different to any other form of entertainment/culture. Music/film companies have found their way to survive (albeit maybe not grow at the moment) even in the wake of everything being available as direct download (without the torrent mess). So I feel no disaster is coming our way.

The great great Grateful Dead have made (staring from the late sixties) all of their concerts free to be recorded, they reserved space for the guys to bring their apparratus, mikes and even connect to the mix. All for free, just a ticket - 1-2$ at that time. They started their own music label and sold their records relatively cheap too.

Every music company loser now would say this is a suicide, everything circulates for free. But hey, they managed to make money and quite a few! The community grew so fast, they could run a couple of hundreds huge concerts each year and even feel like ambassadors of free enterprise.

I believe the analogy to porn is that producers have to create a mix of products/services (establish different revenue streams) - same as legacy PC companies (HP, IBM) are doing - not just to sell the product itself (e.g. DVD, streaming video) but service too (yes, I'm pointing at zuzana.com/superglam.com and these kind of ventures). This is a true interactive porn, not the lousy 3 items int. menu on a DVD, at a single click have the actor come to your home and do some acting

They can even view the product as a tool to only leverage their target business (companion/escorting) as HP and IBM does with HW (and even more SUSE with Linux which is totally free).

All companies nowadays are proclaiming a turn to a "service company" - let's see how the porn mastodonts will manage this - if they have enough brains, which (IMHO) majority of them does not have.