Porn is popular and profitable, especially on the Internet where the thirst for it is insatiable and where every need is catered for. But can a peer-to-peer BitTorrent company monetize porn to the extent it becomes a business in its own right – especially when free, pirated porn is readily available?
The Internet Is For Porn
There’s no way to get around the fact that one of the most popular aspects of the Internet is for porn. The Avenue Q song, The Internet Is For Porn, rather says it all. Not only is it hugely popular but it’s also one of the most profitable slices of the Internet, whether your morals tell you that is right or wrong.
BitTorrent companies, on the other hand, may provide a service which many of us use on a regular basis but making money is a little trickier. As the four founders of The Pirate Bay will attest, the money made doesn’t cover the cost of the fines meted out when your company is taken to court for copyright infringements.
Vuze Offers StudioHD
However, according to NewTeeVee, Vuze (formerly Azureus), a BitTorrent client feeling the pinch from increasingly popular competitors such as uTorrent, may have found a solution. The company is offering an adult video download service called StudioHD, which offers all the porn you could handle for a set monthly fee. And all in high-definition too.
StudioHD is listed alongside the ‘Sexy’ video category, is accessible to anyone running Vuze who verifies they are over 18-years-of-age, and is willing to pay the asking price of $25 a month. For that, they will gain unlimited access to around 300 high-def porn videos,not lumbered with DRM and available on up to three computers at once.
The Problem – Free Alternatives
are literally infested with pornography of all kinds so offering a premium, paid for service would seem to be a logical step for a company such as Vuze. Torrents are notoriously hard to monetize and so setting up more legitimate businesses around the technology and charging for them is sensible.
However, the big problem may be how popular porn is in the first place. It’s estimated that 60 percent of video content downloaded via peer-to-peer is of an adult nature, and most of that is obviously pirated and therefore free to obtain. When you consider that the section dedicated to HD porn on The Pirate Bay runs to 600 clips, the problem becomes obvious.
Conclusions
The reasons for Vuze doing this are obvious – it’s struggling to make any serious revenue and failing to obtain any more mainstream offerings from media companies. When in doubt, target people where they’re weakest, which for most men is the libido. Whether these men (and women) will want to pay for something they can get for free elsewhere remains to be seen.
