It seems like every week a post is made on webmaster boards about how bad Xtube is to the gay adult industry. The latest one I read was “xtube shit has hit new levels” on the popular gay webmaster board GayMainStreet. The poster claims that the average video has risen from 1-2 min to 10 minutes and that 90% of the content uploaded is illegal copies. He further felt that this with all the other stuff out there and falling sales that maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe for him it is time to move on.

Are those claims true? For one, my sales are not dropping this year or this month for that matter. One of my biggest sponsors raised payouts 40% this month and I am seeing very positive results from it. So, I paid a visit to Xtube to see if these claims were true. Of the eight “channels” I visited I looked at the most recent videos on the front page. Few, if any, were 10 minutes in length. In fact, I would say that the average run time was around 3 min. As far as “stolen” videos, the vast majority appeared to be sponsor videos that were taken from free hosted galleries that the sponsor gives out and either combined into one or broken into clips. Most had the sponsor link as a user suggested link. I did find a few that I suspect were in a copyright violation.

I personally can’t see how any videos on Xtube would replace the real experience that one obtains in a members area. In fact, I would say that Xtube in general has converted more non paying surfers into paying members than I will do in a lifetime.

We all need to realize one thing when we look at any delivery medium - there will be flaws. While it is easy for us to point out any flaws that we may find and feel it is killing the industry, that is just not true. Take YouTube as an example, one could find many violations of copyright on that site, but is there proof that those violations are killing the industry? I would argue otherwise as one opponent of YouTube recently had all their videos of a popular comedy series removed, only later to put every single episode on their own website for free. User created and uploaded video is here to stay folks. We can like it or not. Xtube is one of the few, if not only, mediums where any guy with a video camera can film himself, upload, and make a few bucks. No waiting for a year to get in a que with a VOD company (if the VOD company will even accept his video). Is that a bad thing? Is the amount of non paying surfers that Xtube converts into paying customers on a daily basis a bad thing? You decide.

There are copyright violations in every medium. Look for a moment at the popular BlogSpot platform. It has given anyone with a desire to write a chance to express themselves on the web. That is a very positive thing, yet BlogSpot has a dark side. One can find blogs that get 25k views a day and link to stolen content on Rapid Share. Is shutting down BlogSpot the answer? You decide. One could goto a TGP and see an image as a thumbnail that they are the copyright holder and have never given anyone permission to use and click the image expecting to be able to see what gallery is using the image, only to goto another TGP site. Repeated clicks yield no better results, just different TGP sites. Should we shut down TGP galleries? Shouldn’t an image that I own a copyright on at least goto a gallery that contains my images and links to my site? Why does my image lead to another TGP? Think about it. Think about link lists loaded with links to sites with “public domain” images. Should we shut them down? You decide.

Each progression of technology has brought it’s own challenges starting in the earliest days with newsgroups. Remember those? They were suppose to kill the industry as there were just so many free pictures given away. Now we are in a “social net” era. Surfers love to interact. They want to comment on a picture, on a video, on anything for that matter. They want to upload. They want to create. It’s just the way the whole internet is going. It’s called Web 2.0. If we can’t make Web 2.0 work for us now, then what’s going to happen when we hit Web 3.0? You decide. I just don’t know.

Please Note: I have been accused of “defending thieves” by the original thread starter. This is just not true. It is my belief that one should contact the original copyright holder about copyright violations and let them decide how to proceed. I stand by that belief.