YNOT – During his two years in the adult video industry, award-winning producer-director Dominic Ford has learned more than he cared to know about the baser nature of consumers. In addition to pioneering new 3D techniques on the gay side of the biz, Ford said he has spent a considerable amount of time protecting his content from content thieves.“As we became more and more well known, I noticed our content popping up in alarming numbers all over the internet,” Ford said. “While our membership base [at DominicFord.com has been growing for the last two years, piracy is a problem that is plaguing us as much as it is plaguing the rest of the industry.”
Last year, Ford hit on a piracy solution that seemed to work for him. He teamed up with industry veteran Peter Phinney to make the mechanics available to other content owners facing similar issues.
Porn Guardian was born.
“We couldn’t find a solution we thought worked well, nor could we find a company whose staff was attuned specifically to the adult space,” Ford explained. “While we had developed a quite robust set of tools for our in-house use, we evolved it to become even better and bigger and developed unique features that would help not only us, but the industry at large.”
Based in New York City and Los Angeles, Porn Guardian staff members patrol blogs, file-sharing sites, torrent indices, newsgroups and other shadowy recesses of the web known for harboring illicit material. As soon as new files are discovered, Porn Guardian works with the offending websites to ensure the material is removed immediately. The company follows up with clients, providing detailed reports.
Porn Guardian boasts a 98-percent takedown rate, Ford said. The company will provide “substantial evidence” in cases where takedown negotiations fail and court action is the only remaining alternative, he added.
The service is decidedly low-tech in some respects, but pricing is affordable for content owners of all sizes, especially when compared to the piracy losses producers suffer annually, Ford said.
For more information, visit PornGuardian.com.
