'Tube' Sites a Nightmare for Porn Industry

The supposedly recession-proof porn industry is hemorrhaging money, as pay websites and DVD producers lose business to free "tube" sites. Porn knock-offs of YouTube, the tubes provide free snippets of adult videos—much of which is pirated from the major studios—and run ads to make money. The number of tube sites has doubled in the last year alone to 1,000 as consumers increasingly discover they can get their adult fix for free, reports USA Today.

"We're dealing with the perfect storm: declining DVD sales, rampant piracy, free content and a weak economy," says Steven Hirsch, founder of Vivid Entertainment. "This is the worst I've seen in this industry in 25 years." Tube sites must remove content if the porn studios complain, but the burden is on the studios to send notices, and the sheer number of tube sites makes the process costly.

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