from newteevee.com – The Free Speech Coalition, a trade association representing members of the adult film industry, will be introducing its new anti-piracy program this week in an effort to weed out the number of sites that re-distribute porn content without paying its producers.
The porn industry trade association’s new Anti-Piracy Action Program (APAP) initiative will track content with spidering and fingerprinting software and send DMCA takedown notices to infringing websites. The program will also offer FSC members legal services and will aid in negotiations with third parties to include trailers on their websites for users to purchase full copies of the videos they’re watching, expanding the opportunity for monetization.
The program is going live after a year of testing, and will be powered by fingerprinting and tracking technology from Vobile, the same technology being used to keep infringing content from appearing on Justin.tv. Vobile has been popular in Hollywood, striking partnerships with six studios and three TV networks, all of which feed their content into its comparison database. But a deal with the Free Speech Coalition will add adult videos to the mix, which it will track across numerous third-party sites that re-distribute porn clips without compensating rights holders.
The program is open to all active FSC members, and fees are based on the amount of content that is tracked. As a result, the trade association says even small production companies should be able to participate for a “few hundred dollars a month,” according to the press release. The FSC will introduce the program at this week’s XBIZ trade show in Los Angeles at the Sofitel Hotel in West Hollywood.
It’s not clear how many members will sign up, however, based on the results of an informal survey on the FSC website. The poll found that about 31 percent of respondents believe “nothing can be done” about online piracy. In response to a question about what should be done, 21.5 percent of respondents said legal action should be taken against pirates, 12.7 percent said technology should be developed to combat online theft, and 11.3 percent said that the industry should educate consumers that watching pirated content is wrong. About 23.6 percent of respondents said that the industry should try all three efforts.