Wired debunks the current perception that free pornography on the internet is threatening the adult entertainment industry:
The internet, once hailed for augmenting pornographers' profits, is now blamed for reducing them.
An article in last weekend's New York Times asserts that giving the milk away for free is no longer enticing consumers to buy the cow, and that the adult industry needs to come up with a better strategy.
The reporter notes that a $3.4 million rise in internet-related revenue from 2005 to 2006 does not balance the $6.6 million drop in DVD sales and rental revenue for the same period, according to numbers compiled by the AVN Media Network. His sources bemoan the glut of amateur content online and express the hope that consumers will soon tire of it and shell out for higher quality material.
I'm not convinced.
On the surface, I can see how one might conclude that too much of a free thing is bad for business. But one might also note that no industry has a god-given right to exist, whether porn or music or journalism or television, all of which feel threatened by consumers taking content into our own hands and setting it free online.
Yet I can still give you 10 better reasons than "free porn" for why adult DVD revenue is dropping faster than internet revenue is rising. Whether that's a bad thing for "the adult industry" is open to debate.
Read the ten reasons here.
