A paysite or pay site, in the
adult entertainment industry
The sex industry (also called the sex trade) consists of businesses that either directly or indirectly provide sex-related products and services or adult entertainment. The industry includes activities involving direct provision of sex-related ...
, is a
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...
that charges money to become a member and view its content,
and often produces original adult content. They can be contrasted with "free-sites", which do not charge a membership fee. Most paysites offer "free tours" which allow non-members to view a limited number of short trailers. The vast majority of paysite memberships are bought by men. Some of the earliest paysites began by scanning images from
pornographic magazines
Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult, sex or top-shelf magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is ...
.
[Williams, p. 100] The number of sites then grew until the market was saturated, and now many thousands of sites cater to every legal pornographic niche.
[
Because there is free porn available on the Internet (e.g. in the form of ]thumbnail gallery post
A thumbnail gallery post (TGP) is a website that provides links to free Internet pornography. TGP sites consist of categorized lists (more often tables) of small pictures (called " thumbnails") linked to full-size images or redirected to another ...
(TGP) and streaming video
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
sites, as well as piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...
), and some individuals cannot afford to or do not wish to purchase paysite memberships or to give their personal and credit card
A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...
information to such sites, some consumers of pornography view only free pornography. However, paysites are often one of the main originators of new content; they are one way an administrator can pay for the bandwidth costs and they are one of the most conspicuous ways in the industry to try to turn a profit. Theoretically, the more revenue a site takes in, the higher quality content it can produce.
Payment methods include credit card or checking account
A transaction account, also called a checking account, chequing account, current account, demand deposit
Demand deposits or checkbook money are funds held in demand accounts in commercial banks. These account balances are usually considered m ...
bill
Bill(s) may refer to:
Common meanings
* Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States)
* Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature
* Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer
* Bill, a bird or animal's beak
Plac ...
ing. Bills routinely appear on statements as transactions under the name of a billing entity with a neutral-sounding company name (ostensibly for discretionary reasons) and may not be readily recognized as paysite billing transactions upon casual perusal of bank statements.
Most paysites prevent unauthorized access to their members area by means of a username
A user is a person who utilizes a computer or Computer network, network Service (systems architecture), service.
A user often has a user account and is identified to the system by a username (or user name). Other terms for username includ ...
and password
A password, sometimes called a passcode (for example in Apple devices), is secret data, typically a string of characters, usually used to confirm a user's identity. Traditionally, passwords were expected to be memorized, but the large number of ...
.[
A problem that paysites have is ]copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, education ...
protection, even with well-secured sites: there are cases of so-called "site rips", i.e. sites are either hacked, or subscriber
The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...
s redistributed content from a members' area without authorization; there have thus been sightings of original content on other TGP sites or entire site rip archives on file sharing
File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Common methods of storage, transmission and dispersion include r ...
networks. Some sites sell site rips of paysites. Administrators may try to counter these problems by employing digital rights management
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...
technologies.
Because members must confirm some details of their identity when they make their payment, a touted advantage of paysites is the potential to keep minors from viewing their content, which, in several jurisdictions, including the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, is illegal
Illegal, or unlawful, typically describes something that is explicitly prohibited by law, or is otherwise forbidden by a state or other governing body.
Illegal may also refer to:
Law
* Violation of law
* Crime, the practice of breaking the ...
. The issue of how to protect these Internet audiences from pornographic material
Pornography (often shortened to porn or porno) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the exclusive purpose of sexual arousal. Primarily intended for adults, deemed harmful to them has been widely debated in the U.S. in light of the 1998 federal Child Online Protection Act
The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) was a law in the United States of America, passed in 1998 with the declared purpose of restricting access by minors to any material defined as harmful to such minors on the Internet. The law, however, never ...
, although websites hosted in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
are required by law to publish contact information for the custodian of records.
Many paysites attract potential paying customers by providing a portion of their content for free via free hosted galleries (FHGs), and use an affiliate program to drive new traffic to those FHGs.[Williams, p. 65] The percentage of unique visitors to FHGs who become paying members is known as the '' conversion ratio''.
With so many paysites and so much free porn being readily available the pricing of many paysites has dropped in recent years to increase subscriptions. This has seen the rise of discount sites that offer reduced price memberships to a variety of paysites. Paysites have also increased the quality of their content to attract memberships, with many now offering 4K videos to their members.
See also
* Paywall
A paywall is a method of restricting access to content, with a purchase or a paid subscription, especially news. Beginning in the mid-2010s, newspapers started implementing paywalls on their websites as a way to increase revenue after years of ...
* TV Everywhere
TV Everywhere (also known as authenticated streaming or authenticated video on-demand) refers to a type of subscription business model wherein access to streaming video content from a television channel requires users to "authenticate" themselv ...
* Video on demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...
Notes
References
*
*
{{Sexual slang
*
Pornography terminology