Porn business optimistic despite piracy, condom battles

CNBC reports:

The porn industry got in a lot of fights in 2014, and from the look of things, 2015 is going to be a brawler of a year as well.

Piracy and condoms continue to be the porn business' chief battlegrounds. While the push for a controversial bill that would have criminalized the production of porn without condoms anywhere in California died in committee last year, a circuit court upheld an existing, similar law in Los Angeles County (where 60 to 70 percent of U.S. porn films are shot).

And piracy, which costs the industry millions of dollars per year continues to run rampant. In 2014, Nate Glass, owner of Takedown Piracy, a copyright enforcement service, estimates he sent out 24,716 copyright law notices to sites—and expects to send more this year.


"It's hard to say exactly how much piracy costs the adult industry, since companies aren't required to make yearly revenues public," said Glass. "However, you can see the decline in production where fewer companies are shooting new content and there's less work for performers. ... I know back in 2009 when I was working for studios we saw about a 50 percent drop in DVD sales over the course of the year; that's when the slide really began."

An industry trying not to go limp.