DRM: Affiliate opinions, please!

We are in discussions with a group that's working on a new site, such that it might become part of the Gaybucks family. It's a relatively small startup but has the potential to have good traffic and popularity, and they are currently pretty gung-ho on going DRM. They are nice folks with a potentially good product, but pretty non-savvy about anything to do with marketing, traffic, infrastructure, or administration of adult properties, which is why they're talking to us.

AJ and I have gone back and forth on going DRM for the existing Gaybucks sites, and Tom's recent comment to the effect that DRM hasn't been popular is what triggered my interest in starting this thread.

Are affiliates and/or surfers really strongly disinclined toward DRM-protected sites? Is there a noticeable difference in conversion or retention between similar sites with and without DRM? For an affiliate, are you less likely to promote a site with DRM?

I know a number of sites that are popular or have good visibility -- Corbin Fisher, Sean Cody, and Boycrush come to mind -- have DRM, so obviously it's not a complete bomb, but I also know there are serious issues... lack of support for members with Mac/Linux, funky authentication issues, etc., not to mention cost.

If we were to implement it, my idea would be to use the Corbin Fisher model... you can download and unlock the videos, and they stay unlocked indefinitely even after membership expires, but cannot be moved to another computer unless there's an active membership that will allow unlocking on the new computer. That seems like a nice compromise between providing some security for the content and giving members freedom to view the videos offline.

Opinions, please?

if you've gotta go with DRM, indefinitely is the only way to go imo. some sites also use non DRM lower quality videos and only use DRM for their top quality versions. that makes me think that some people who use DRM are more concerned with saving their bandwidth rather than protecting their content.

as i understand it, mac users cannot use DRM. if true, say goodbye to around 10% to 15% of your potential members - and also your current members...

badpuppy has developed a DRM solution for Flash and is working with Macromedia/Adobe on it, so that may be another possibility. The idea of lo-res non-DRM versions is intriguing.

flash played in some kinds of flash players is almost impossible to save for most people as it is. there are videos out there - not from paysites, but they are videos - i'd LOVE to save but am unable to and no webmasters were able to help me.

Even Microsoft has turned around and said there is no sound solution for utilizing DRM at the present time.

Not to mention, what used to be looked at as a 'good' thing is now pretty muc frowned upon by most affiliates. Just look at some of the larger review sites to see how sites with DRM get given lower scores.

Surfers also seem to have a negative opinion on DRM, dont forget a lot of surfers are porn collectors and if they cant download and view whenever they want to, you'll be putting them off ever joining your sites again.

Regards,

Lee

The thing that I hate about DRM is having to enter my login and password a second time. I know it's only a few seconds, but it's just a bother.

I'm one of those review sites that sees DRM as a negative thing, just like disabling right-click save, disabling a surfer from dragging a picture into photo image software like Photoshop. Drives me crazy, if I want to make wallpaper out of one of your models, I don't think it should become such a hassle.

But I'm one of the honest people who doesn't distribute pictures or videos.

However, as a consumer, when I see that I'm required to maintain a membership to continue watching videos that I downloaded, then I see this as a cash grab. It turns me off and I move on. Like basschick said, let them download it and play it forever. I don't have a problem with a site wanting to protect their content from illegal distribution, I do have a problem with them using DRM to lock me into a monthly membership.

Michael

a few seconds? well, yes - for each video. if you want to run through all the videos really quickly and see just the beginning of each one to get an idea of what's in the member area, you could have to type in your username and password 40 times in half an hour, wait a while, then click play each time.

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

The thing that I hate about DRM is having to enter my login and password a second time. I know it's only a few seconds, but it's just a bother.

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Originally Posted by basschick

flash played in some kinds of flash players is almost impossible to save for most people as it is. there are videos out there - not from paysites, but they are videos - i'd LOVE to save but am unable to and no webmasters were able to help me.

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Patti, if you haven't done so, check out Greasemonkey, which is a Firefox add-on. There are a ton of plug-ins for Greasemonkey, including a bunch of Flash video file-saving utilities, a thing that automatically disables all Myspace media to prevent being blasted with some nasty song or video when you open a page, and lots of other cool stuff.

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Originally Posted by basschick

flash played in some kinds of flash players is almost impossible to save for most people as it is. there are videos out there - not from paysites, but they are videos - i'd LOVE to save but am unable to and no webmasters were able to help me.

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Give me a url patti and I'll see if the program I have can save them ;)

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Originally Posted by basschick

as i understand it, mac users cannot use DRM. if true, say goodbye to around 10% to 15% of your potential members - and also your current members...

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Stats on my domains show Mac users as 5-6% of my visitors... not insignificant. But I think it would be a fair trade-off for a paysite that is determined to protect their videos. Personally, I despise DRM and won't use it unless it becomes absolutely necessary.

The logic behind it to me is flawed. Those surfers that "steal" content were never going to buy memberships in the first place. So exactly who are you protecting the content from ?

I'm going to market my site as DRM FREE !

We never had more than 1.5% to 2% of our membership (or visitors, for that matter) being Mac users.

Sacrificing that small percentage in favor of the percentage picked up by requiring some people join rather than too easily find the stuff for free was a more than wortwhile tradeoff, we found.

Also, we found the manner in which we implemented DRM worked in our favor and actually endeared surfers towards us. They saw big sites going with DRM and accepted that our prominence and popularity made it inevitable, but were grateful we offered permanent licenses and were considerably less "strict" with our DRM implementation than our competitors. Our permanent licenses became quite the selling point and something people often referenced as something we were doing that made us a more attractive buy than other options out there.

When it came to how our members viewed our DRM, it has been almost entirely in relation to what our competitors (or who they view as our competiors) have, as opposed to in relation to paysites on the whole.

All that being said, we're not committed to DRM for life and circumstances are always changing and evolving.

DRM does add a whole new level of technical/support issues that may pop up. DRM isn't foolproof, either, and there's no doubt our videos are out there being pirated to a great degree. Sadly, that's a side effect of popularity. The bigger you get, the more people want to steal your stuff.

We're entirely ready and willing to drop DRM completely if we see that it's not working out for us. In fact, we're in the midst of conducting a thorough review of our use or DRM (taking surveys of members and their experiences with it, studying availability of our pirated video files on the web, analyzing trends re: Mac visitors to the site, studying tech support issues traced to DRM, and a whole host of other factors, its role as we offer a broader range of content delivery options) to determine if we'll be keeping it in 2007, ditching it entirely and indefinitely, or suspending it for awhile until and in case the technology is more efficient and effective down the line.

As a VOD site, the producers/studios require the DRM on all videos. I think all similar services use DRM - like Naked Sword and MaleFlixx. Does the DRM issue affect the decision to promote these types of VOD services? If a VOD company removed the DRM from a portion of their titles do you think that would be enticing to surfers?

absolutely! if a guy could pay by the minute and be able to download the entire movie if he watched the entire movie, he'd have incentive to pay for the entire movie rather than a few minutes.

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Originally Posted by EnticeTV_Susan

As a VOD site, the producers/studios require the DRM on all videos. I think all similar services use DRM - like Naked Sword and MaleFlixx. Does the DRM issue affect the decision to promote these types of VOD services? If a VOD company removed the DRM from a portion of their titles do you think that would be enticing to surfers?

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So if a guy has a choice between paying by the minute with DRM and buying the whole movie without DRM, they would choose the whole movie to download to own at a higher cost? I have a few studios that will let me offer their content without DRM, so I suppose I should set those up as a different option for people, right? Just don't want to make things even more confusing by offering too many options.

Thanks a bunch basschick for your response.

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Originally Posted by Huskyhunks

The logic behind it to me is flawed. Those surfers that "steal" content were never going to buy memberships in the first place. So exactly who are you protecting the content from ?

I'm going to market my site as DRM FREE !

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sadly, in my experience, this is not true.. depending on the niche and the avalibility of quality movies in the niche people will share them with their friends or make them available on torrent sites etc.. And its not just people who access your site using a stolen password that will do this, regular members will do so.. perhaps not right away but when their membership has been expired for some time etc they will..

DRM has helped increase retention for some big sites in some of the fetish niches, i have been going over the numbers with a friend of mine who works for a big fetish site, and their retention is way way better since they introduced DRM.. their movies are locked after membership expires..

There are ofcourse tech issued, the loss of mac users and general hate towards DRM from the surfers side, but their numbers shows me that the extra retention outweighs the lose they suffer from the hate and tech issues etc..

I am not saying that DRM is the way to go as its a bitch to get to work on some computer etc but if you have a small niche and have quality movies, its worth thinking about and testing the waters for sure..

If anyone needs a good DRM provider let me know and i can "spam" on in this thread..

As a DVD studio who has our content with VOD providers, I absolutely want our content DRM protected. Otherwise, a customer can pay $1.50 (15 min clip at 10 cents/minute) to download and keep one of our scenes, which is not what we want... if we are going to give them the right to keep the scene, we definitely want a larger amount of cash from the customer, such as a $25 membership or whatever.

If you had some old content that no one cares about (I'm thinking one of the defunct 70s studios that somebody bought the rights up cheap) then sure, make that un-DRM protected, but otherwise, I'd say leave everything DRM protected in the VOD model.