Quote Originally Posted by Jasun View Post
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?
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. ;-)