A Hard Core Copyright Fight

It was only a matter of time before the pornography knockoffs of YouTube faced the same kind of legal challenges as the video-sharing leader.

A major porn producer, Vivid Entertainment, has sued the pornographic video-sharing site PornoTube, claiming that the site is profiting from the unauthorized posting of copyrighted material by users.

The porn industry has been severely wounded by the proliferation of free pornography sharing websites, which have caused DVD sales in the industry to tank over the past few years. While Vivid and others have done their best to harness the internet to their own advantage, competing against such readily available amateur and professional material has been difficult.

While Vivid is going to battle with PornoTube -one of a number of similar websites including YouPorn and Megarotic - over the site's failure to police the posting of copyrighted material by users, it's not just freely available professional pornography that is undercutting the sales of major producers. Amateur video has its own appeal to users, and the short-clip format is preferable for many to feature-length films.

But so far, sites like PornoTube are getting by on a precarious model. As Claire Hoffman points out in the November issue of Conde Nast Portfolio, while such porn sites have been successful in building traffic, they have yet to figure out how to monetize content with a community that is less than attractive for many advertisers.

Plus, hosting pornographic video carries with it many legal issues that could threaten to sink such sites were they to come under close scrutiny. For instance, PornoTube has to worry not only whether material posted by users violates copyright law, but whether the acts in amateur video are consensual, whether their posting is consensual, and whether both performers and users are over the age of 18.

Vivid's challenge of PornoTube over its use of copyrighted material may end up shining a brighter light on the porn sites so that they are forced to face up to such requirements.

Liz Gunnison