EDITORIAL – Porn inustry leads the way, again

Wish you could download movies and burn them to DVD — legally? Wish those DVDs would come… Wish you could download movies and burn them to DVD — legally? Wish those DVDs would come with scene navigation, bonus material and all of the other stuff you normally get when you purchase a DVD from the store?

Starting May 8, Internet users with $19.95 will be able to download titles from one of the media industry’s biggest players through CinemaNow, a California-based online movie service. People will then be able to burn the films to disc and watch them on any television screen, according to an article in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.

This is a pretty good idea; there’s no doubt that plenty of people will want to purchase DVDs directly from the distributors without having to drive to a store and find the titles they want.

So, which company is it that’s finally figured out how to give people what they want? Unsurprisingly, it’s Vivid Entertainment Group, the porn industry giant. Soon, people will be able to go online, download about 30 different titles, burn them to disc and watch them where they please. Talk about instant gratification.

This isn’t the first time the porn industry has led the way in film technology. Whereas mainstream movie houses fought VHS all the way to the Supreme Court, pornographers welcomed the idea of home theater with open arms. The porn industry shunned beta and laser discs and embraced DVDs — all stances that later became standard practice.

Companies like Vivid do not — and cannot — distribute their titles through large-scale corporations such as Blockbuster or Wal-Mart. Instead, they’ve always needed to pursue alternate ways to find their consumers; only the proper technology usually stands between distributors and profits. Because the industry is not chained to one format, it can experiment with things like burnable downloads.

More importantly, these consumers are ever-present; people may fall in and out of love with slasher films, comic-book remakes or period pieces, but they’ve always got an appetite for porn. Global sales of pornography last year were almost $13 billion; the industry is big enough to set some serious precedents.

This development will likely have a positive impact on the film industry as a whole. The demand for movies that are not just downloadable, but burnable, is already high, and this business model makes sense. The technology will be smoothed out and soon, hopefully, more titles will be purchasable via the Internet. Until then, at least “Bad Wives” or “Generation Sex” are available.