Like all Apple products, iTunes’ value is in its ease of use and presentation. It has often been noted that pornography is similarly easy to use. Now some adult industry players and their Silicon Valley partners have relaunched iPorn.com to create a porn portal within the historically porn-avoidant iTunes interface.
“Anyone can bring their own movies and play them in iTunes,” says Jim Crawford of SoCal Licensing and Adult Source Media. “What we’ve done is present adult movies in iTunes like any Hollywood film.”
He’s right. At a recent demonstration at iPorn’s offices in Canoga Park, Crawford pulled up the Rockstar Entertainment movie “Trashy” in an iPorn-generated “XXX” folder in iTunes. He then searched by chapter, called up plot, summary, and other metadata, and froze-frame on Blu-Ray quality images.
“Trashy” producer Joshua happens to be Crawford’s iPorn teammate. Crawford handles licensing of content from adult companies through his SoCal Licensing firm. Then the material is encoded for the iPorn platform as if it were “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
This means that any device running iTunes can run iPorn, and iPorn’s HTML5 encoding will recognize the device and display the movie appropriately.
Crawford and company took over the dormant iPorn domain two years ago and slowly began developing it.
“We had about a hundred phone calls between here and Vegas, where Josh is, and our partners up in Northern California,” Crawford says, “in addition to face-to-face meetings.”
iPorn features a 3-tier pricing system based on perceived value and delivery method. For example, a content provider like Rockstar Entertainment might choose Tier 1 for “Trashy,” in which a customer can download the entire movie for $19.95, rent or stream it for $6.99, or stream individual scenes for $3.99. Tier 3 is a $9.99/$3.99/.99 model.
“Of course,” says Crawford, “if a company chooses to sell its movie in Tier 1 and it’s not selling there, we may encourage them to bump down to Tier 2 or Tier 3.”
Customers who buy movies on the road and who do not want to download them to their low-storage iPhones or iPads can get a free 24-hour stream to furtively view on the bus. Crawford adds that there will be age verification and parental controls built into iPorn.
For its part in offering the movie on its platform and encoding it, iPorn takes a percentage of the purchases.
It’s a sticky question, but it has to be asked. Will Apple be mad?
“Apple is not involved with us,” Crawford says. “But we are not tricking iTunes in any way. We are fully compliant with Apple’s rules. Remember that you can watch your own home movies in iTunes—we just make movies look like they belong there.”
Crawford says he has “about 15” companies lined up for iPorn’s imminent launch, and stresses that iPorn could be a game-changer.
“Just like iTunes did with the music industry,” Crawford says, “iPorn’s quality and interface gives consumers a reason to download legally.”
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: I Like It When They’re “Trashy”; California Adventure—”Oasis”;
See also: iPorn
Leave a Reply