Pay Per Download, DRM, Membership model

I’ve been reading and researching what business model I’d like to use on my yet-to-open paysite. It seems the monthly membership is getting a lot of flack and VOD or pay per download is becoming more popular. Surfers hate DRM but content producers like it. There are DRM removers available so what’s the point (Objectcube dot com was interesting tho.)

I have two questions. Can you comment on the above? Second, I came across phantomflicks dot com and looked at some of the sites using it. To my untrained eye and newbe status I really liked what they offered. Is anyone here using it and can you share your experience…good or bad. Are there alternatives to phantomflicks?

Thanks,
Jake

Sean Cody's lawyer threatened to sue me on stage at the GayVN retreat while I was on a panel a couple years ago for saying this..

DRM doesn't work. It never did and it never will.

Make your site worth joining and people will join it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jasun

DRM doesn't work. It never did and it never will.

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Agreed, have been saying that ever since its inception much to the dismay of many of the companies who embraced the technology early on, only to see them remove it a year or two later because it just didnt work for them how they thought it would.

DRM had so many possibilities when it came to content management and distribution but it was abused by many early on as a method to increase retention when it should have been utilized as a tool to generate new sales.

Regards,

Lee

drm costs a lot of retention - besides meaning that mac users can't watch the content. there are reasons that large gay sites stopped using DRM. of course, very very very few straight sites ever even bothered with it.

i have never made even close to as much per member with PPV as with paysites, and the guys i know who do make money with it still make more with paysites. i keep reading announcements that surfers are more and more turning to PPV, but i think that's probably just hype.

the most money made with pay per minute is based on a huge amount of content and variety. of course, you could try it both ways and see how it goes, but i doubt affiliates will flock to a single site offering pay per minute.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jasun

Sean Cody's lawyer threatened to sue me on stage at the GayVN retreat while I was on a panel a couple years ago for saying this..

DRM doesn't work. It never did and it never will.

Make your site worth joining and people will join it.

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Sorry Jasun but I have to disagree with you. DRM has not been a problem for us and we have used it for years. As well, AEBN does over $100 million a year in sales and all their content is DRM’d. Every single major VOD distributor uses some form of DRM and they generate tens of millions of dollars a year. There are many, many business that use DRM and do millions and millions of dollars of business a year….we are one of them.

Blanket statement are never a good thing, you should have said “DRM has never worked for me or the companies I‘ve worked for”. I do agree with you that DRM doesn’t always work for scene based or reality content that is often viewed by the end user as disposable content. These types of sites have taught their customers that for one monthly payment of $29.95 you get to “own” every single piece of content they have to offer. In a scenario like that, then DRM is probably not the best solution.

Saying DRM doesn’t work and never will is like saying “I don’t lock the doors to my house anymore because someone is going to break the lock anyway.”

You know I love you and think you are brilliant, we just have different businsss models that work well for each of us.

DRM, the way it was pitched to companies.. was supposed to do two things.

It was supposed to allow your paying members to see your content and stop people who didn't pay from seeing it.

It failed on both sides.

When we had DRM at Fratmen, I would have countless help emails every day about how the movies didn't work, nobody could view the content and can I have my money back?

At the same time, the torrents were full of Fratmen movies.

I told the audience that I was a paying member of Sean Cody but that I had to get the movies from LimeWire. How silly is it that someone paying for your content is reduced to stealing it?

Yes.. some companies, yourself included make money despite using DRM. Do you think you'd make less if you dropped it, or like every company I've worked for or talked to.. more?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jasun

DRM, the way it was pitched to companies.. was supposed to do two things.

It was supposed to allow your paying members to see your content and stop people who didn't pay from seeing it.

It failed on both sides.

When we had DRM at Fratmen, I would have countless help emails every day about how the movies didn't work, nobody could view the content and can I have my money back?

At the same time, the torrents were full of Fratmen movies.

I told the audience that I was a paying member of Sean Cody but that I had to get the movies from LimeWire. How silly is it that someone paying for your content is reduced to stealing it?

Yes.. some companies, yourself included make money despite using DRM. Do you think you'd make less if you dropped it, or like every company I've worked for or talked to.. more?

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If the standard is as you say "allow your paying members to see your content and stop people who didn't pay from seeing it"...then it worked for us. DRM didn’t keep people from pirating our DVDS, nor does it stop people from ripping DVDs and posting the content online.

Like any form of piracy there are always going to be a certain % of people that are going to steal. DRM, for us, helps slow down the rate of theft of our online content. It was never designed to eliminate piracy 100%, that would be ridiculous! DRM combined with our aggressive online anti-piracy has allowed us to maintain positive sales growth while other major studios are seeing decreases.

We have never had the issues you are describing about people not being able to view our content and complaining about DRM. Maybe our customers have different expectations, but it is not a huge problem for us.

Why did you have to “steal” Sean Cody films from Limewire?

Jasun- we are in different business…you make content based on a website-centric membership based business model. We make content based on “films” that can be sold on DVD, cable, satellite, pay-per-minute, On-demand and also on a subscription basis. We make content that is designed for multiple revenue streams, and those streams all add up to much, much more then website/membership could alone.

Our “films” have a long shelf life and earn money for years and years, and everytime a new format comes along. The first film we made 15 years ago still sells every single day on DVD and now on digital formats. Just as we put CSS on DVDs or AES Blu-ray encryption on our Blu-ray to help dampen down casual piracy, we do the same thing for our digital products. DRM on Windows Media content and RTMPE encrypted streaming for Flash. No anti-piracy is meant to stop all piracy, its meant as a deterrent to help slow it down…that’s all.

What works for you may not work for us, and vice versa. I’m trying to give a balanced opinion to counter yours..that’s all. I want people to know that there are companies that use DRM and use it successfully. As I have pointed out the examples of AEBN and ALL the major VOD distributors. They all use DRM and make a lot of money.

I just want people to have both sides of the issue. ;-)

We have xxxdto.com, the videos are downloaded in DRM. Yes, we have had problems where we've found downloads cracked and the video uploaded on a blog.
The videos also have a watermark throughout the videos entirety in the bottom right hand corner that shows "XXXDTO.COM."

So when someone does steal the video, we can track it right where it came from. And then find out what user(s) cracked that video by researching the download activity in our logs. And then we ban the customer from ever being able to download again. And of course, we fight to get the video removed from where ever it was placed.

But so far, out of 300 customers who bought token packages with us, only 1 video has ever been found. But still, I would rather see a 0:300 ratio instead of 1:300 ratio.

If in any event that our videos are stolen, does it become theft, or is it marketing? Obviously the person liked it enough to crack it, then share it.
When that happens yes we do fight it. But we also look at it in a second light... it's also advertising.

DRM is good, it is bad. I think it really comes down to how you are using DRM. If your controlling the video to only be viewed so many times, or if your running a PPM program, then DRM could be better. But as far as protection of the video its-self, it's never 100% secure. We use the DRM to primarily control where the video is viewed (ex. one PC to another, PC Sharing, blog uploading, etc.).

Just my thoughts, it's late here and I seen this, so I thought I would comment.

Continuance to last post....

Example of our most frequent customers download activity.
As you see, he downloaded a video, it shows the IP Address, it shows he paid for it, it shows the "tokens" were deducted."

The free tries are:
In the event that a download should stop or doesn't work, the customer has 3 more tries within a certain period to re-download the video. If the first try didn't work, the second try didn't work, then the third will. But everything works really well.

______________________________________________

'Bareback Bath House Sluts': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Video One': 1 paid download completed. 1 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Rican Sizzle Gang Bang 2': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Frat House Bash Scene 1': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Those Fucking Memories Scene 4': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Taggers Scene 1': 1 paid download completed. 1 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Dude I Dare You Part Two': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Blindfold Fuck Party': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Bareback Orgy': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Twisted Twister 2': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Bareback Lovers': 1 paid download completed. 1 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Jeff Palmer Raw Scene 4': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'NYC Bareback Scene 4': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Popular Mechanics Gang Bang': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Anything Goes Bareback': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..
'Pigs Players and Navy Feet Scene 4': 1 paid download completed. 2 "free tries" remaining. To give customer more "free tries", click here..


mfz****@yahoo.com (Detailed Activity Log) Close Window
08/29 01:51:20 pm Account added by Customer-CCBill. Token Amount: 20
08/29 01:56:10 pm First download approved: 'Video One'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 10 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
08/29 01:58:11 pm Additional download approved: 'Video One'. UserIp: 216.164.4.181
08/29 01:58:19 pm Results: FileSize: 516259, Delivered: 516259, Time: 6.73, Ip: 216.164.4.181
09/23 06:46:13 pm Account Updated by Customer-CCBill. Token balance: 150+150+150+50
09/23 06:57:34 pm First download approved: 'Rican Sizzle Gang Bang 2'. 15.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 485 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
09/24 07:23:02 am AuthorizeDownload() login failed: customer != arno2 || arno1 != arno1
09/24 07:23:24 am First download approved: 'Frat House Bash Scene 1'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 475 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
09/24 04:36:39 pm First download approved: 'Those Fucking Memories Scene 4'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 465 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
09/25 08:51:01 am First download approved: 'Taggers Scene 1'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 455 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
09/27 07:18:31 pm Additional download approved: 'Taggers Scene 1'. UserIp: 216.164.4.181
09/28 11:02:18 am First download approved: 'Dude I Dare You Part Two'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 445 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
09/29 07:35:00 pm First download approved: 'Blindfold Fuck Party'. 15.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 430 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/03 06:43:23 pm First download approved: 'Bareback Bath House Sluts'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 420 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/06 03:36:27 pm First download approved: 'Bareback Orgy'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 410 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/09 09:12:21 am First download approved: 'Twisted Twister 2'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 400 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/11 06:57:14 pm First download approved: 'Bareback Lovers'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 390 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/11 06:57:39 pm Additional download approved: 'Bareback Lovers'. UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/19 08:27:47 pm First download approved: 'Jeff Palmer Raw Scene 4'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 380 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/21 07:17:22 am First download approved: 'NYC Bareback Scene 4'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 370 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/22 01:58:39 pm First download approved: 'Popular Mechanics Gang Bang'. 15.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 355 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/25 04:35:29 pm First download approved: 'Anything Goes Bareback'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance: 345 UserIp: 216.164.4.181
10/31 01:53:38 pm First download approved: 'Pigs Players and Navy Feet Scene 4'. 10.0 tokens deducted. Balance:135 UserIp: 216.164.4.181

Wow! Thanks for everyone sharing their thoughts/experiences. It's so much easier when it's a black and white decision tho.

Our original thoughts were the monthly payment of $xx for everything on the site. Believe it or not, I'm not a consumer. I had no movies or pictures on my computer for a long time (well at least before our business plan was hatched a year ago.) I've purchased a member ship maybe three times in my life. All three were with the same website. Did I stay up very very late for a few nights in a row to grab everything...you bet I did...do I still have the payed for movies...nope. The reason I went back was because they put up more content of exactly what I liked. Paying the $29.95 one month and the same again 3 or 4 months later was worth it in my opinion.

The idea of pay per download...I'm not convinced because of my above statement. I'm open minded enough though and listen when many many people are saying the monthly membership is a dying business model. Another reason I'm open to pay per download is we think it's a pretty good bet that people purchase memberships because they see one model/scene that really turns their crank. The rest of the site is a bonus.

derek, can you please elaborate on a few things. You said...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by derekt

the videos are downloaded in DRM.

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does this mean your are using both Phantom Flicks AND some form of DRM? I thought Phantom Flicks was purely a method for pay per download. Or does it also come with some form of DRM included. If it doesn't and you're using your own DRM'd files...what is it...Object Cube? Also, how can you tell by the logs who cracked one of your videos and uploaded it somewhere? The watermark just tells you it was yours...how do you know who purchased it or uploaded it? I'm sure you've sold the same video hundreds/thousands of times. What differentiates one file from the next (of the same download?)

Thanks again to everyone sharing!

Jake

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jake

Also, how can you tell by the logs who cracked one of your videos and uploaded it somewhere? The watermark just tells you it was yours...how do you know who purchased it or uploaded it?

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You cant.

Once DRM is cracked (read as removed) the data that follows it is gone also.

The ONLY way you could track through access logs who downloaded a certain movie is if you dont have 1000's of movies being downloaded every day/week/month otherwise you could literally spend days matching up who accessed a site and downloaded a specific clip.

Even then, once you have checked that, you are going to have hundreds of other downloads of the same file so you are no better off in knowing who the culprit was.

Regards,

Lee

Phantom Flicks is the software that acts between CCBill and the system on our server.
When the customer signs up with CCBill and buys his tokens, CCBill does the writing to the Phantom Flicks software. Once that happens the customer logs in into our system for the downloads. And Phantom Flicks deducts the token. Phantom Flicks only offers this portion.

The videos inside our "Content DIR" are DRM'd.

The Phantom Flicks software does not provide DRM.

The DRM is through a third party.

I hope that helps. Please feel free to email me at: derekt@sebastiansstudios.com and I'll be happy to answer. I won't be in the office this week, I'm out traveling. So it will be easier for me to help you.

Oh....
The logs help us narrow the search down to those customers who may have cracked the DRM. The system our programmer created tells us stats by day.
We have came to the thought that if someone is going to upload the video to a blog, wherever. They are going to crack it either the same day they downloaded it or within a couple days after. So with the system, we can pull up the date the video was downloaded and then narrow it within the range it was found. And usually, with blogs it will show the date or you can search for the date the video was added.

But like I said, we've only had 1 case out of 300 users. So what we're doing is making it harder for them to get to the video.

That's what we're thinking, not completely assuming.
We are still doing research and things to make the videos harder to crack and steal.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by basschick

besides meaning that mac users can't watch the content.

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This is flat out not true. There are different types of DRM, while this wasn't the case a year or so ago, this is not the case now.

As a generalized statement, I think it truly depends on the content you have and are distributing. Most of you are looking at it from an end-user/support point of view, where Titanmen is looking at it from a business point of view. DRM is not going to stop EVERYONE, EVERYTIME. It is going to stop the majority, the majority of the time.

In this instance if you can save a couple grand by the video not being distributed freely across the internet, it is most likely an advantage for you. It greatly depends on the content, if you have unique, top-notch content DRM serves a great advantage. If your content is similar to 90% of the sites out there, DRM sucks.

It depends on what type of DRM your using (I don't know much about it.) But I am using a mac, I am able to download the videos fine as well as play them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by AcidMaX

...There are different types of DRM....

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I think that is the source of some confusion in this thread. The acronym DRM applies to more than Windows Media/Silverlight - for which Bec is right - Windows Media DRM doesn't work with Mac OS.
But DRM is on many formats: QuickTime and iTunes have their own DRM, Flash now has some forms of DRM - even we offer digital rights management for software.

Obviously, the effectiveness of any DRM is in how it impacts the user experience vs. preventing piracy.

Who else is using rtmpe to deliver Flash streaming? What has been the user feedback?

Who else is using rtmpe to deliver Flash streaming? What has been the user feedback?[/QUOTE]


We are using Flash streaming with RTMPE with very good results. The users love the newer and better encoding (H.264) of the content and we have not really had any issues. There have been a few users that had some CPU issues with older machines, but overall it's been successful for us.

That's cool - I think that is really the next wave in video.

I don't want you to divulge any trade secrets here, but do you folks recommend a specific player? We have seen the FlowPlayer work very well with our CDN, but I am sure there are many others out there.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ccjax

That's cool - I think that is really the next wave in video.

I don't want you to divulge any trade secrets here, but do you folks recommend a specific player? We have seen the FlowPlayer work very well with our CDN, but I am sure there are many others out there.

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We use Limelight for our CDN and use the Flowplayer for our player. The base Adobe Flash player is good as well. You just have to decide whether you want to write code in Javascript or in Actionscript.

If you are using Limelight as your CDN, make sure you get the "Media Vault" option. This is their version of "swf verification" which is how you keep people from deeplinking into your files. This allows you to verify the SWF calls are coming from your website before they will play. Without this others can link directly into your files and play them at will. Kind of defeats the whole RTMPE process if people can deeplink your files!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Titanmen

We use Limelight for our CDN and use the Flowplayer for our player. The base Adobe Flash player is good as well.
If you are using Limelight as your CDN, make sure you get the "Media Vault" option. !

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I know it very well - it's a smart choice. (I used to work at Limelight!) But they didn't used to allow adult content on their network.
We use Level 3 for our CDN services which are very similar - with the MD5/hash-based authentication.

Thanks for the insight.

I've heard very good things about DRM-enabled Flash; basically that it's free of all of the crappy problems associated with Windows Media DRM, is cross-platform (Linux too) and seems to work really well. But I don't know the specifics of what form or format; been looking for some articles to bone up on it but haven't found any yet.

I'm also surprised and pleased to hear there's a serviceable DRM for Quicktime. The last I looked (which was almost 2 years ago) there were several promising technologies but I couldn't find anybody with a reliable, easy-to-deploy product.

I think that DRM has gotten an incredibly bad rap because of how abysmally badly Windows DRM worked. Of course, practically *any* Microsoft technology is a piece of shit, but Windows DRM seems like an incredible turkey. Hopefully it just goes away entirely and is replaced by something offered by somebody else that actually works :)

Great discussion! I’m very impressed with Adobe’s Flash Media Server 3 and Flash Media Rights Management server. I am confused what Limelight and FlowPlayer are and why you night need Media Vault? Having never been a member at a site using this technology, is the flash player embedded right in the webpage or is it a stand alone player? Can you download the flash video and play it when ever you want? I read on the Adobe website you can put time limits/expiry dates and other restraints on the video. Has anyone tried using a high resolution 29.97 fps screen capture with the Adobe Media Server? Seems this would be an easy hack but again, I’ve never used the system. How difficult is it installing FMS? I’m okay with general computer stuff but I’m a little concerned.

After all the reading I’m leaning towards offering both FMS and Phamtom Flicks. Seems like a good combination and gives the viewer options.

I know when I read a newbe talking about something they don’t understand in the video/television industry it stands out like dog’s balls (that’s a favourite saying of a co-worker) I hope if I sound like that, I will be corrected and pointed in the right direction.

Thanks!
Jake