In a followup to our previous discussion on why the MPAA, RIAA, record companies, movie theaters etc., don't just follow porn's lead but instead attack their own consumers, I point everyone to this article on the economics of porn. (via fark.

Pornography is now globally worth $57 billion, with the United States - porn's spiritual home - accounting for $12 billion (by comparison, Hollywood is worth a mere $10 billion). In the United States, a conservative estimate of new pornographic movie production is 50 new movies a day, and more than 500 million porno films are rented every year. The latter figure of course excludes telephone sex - 250,000 Americans pay for this daily - and Internet porn, which is estimated to be worth at least $1 billion globally and generates an astonishing 70 percent of all revenues earned by online content providers.

The rest of the article is totally idiotic and suggests porn is responsible for rape, violence against women, and the fall of society, the end of sex, blah blah blah, but ignore that crap and just think about the economics of this. The porn industry in this country makes more money than Hollywood, and all without suing their consumers, and they've built it up from nothing in about 30 years. What could the RIAA and Hollywood learn from this industry (other than boobies sell)? Maybe, like the porn industry, they should focus on maximally utilizing technology to sell their product, rather than restricting it with digital rights management and other crippleware that keeps our mp3 players and computers from maximizing their potential. Maybe they should stop punishing their own consumers, treating us all like thieves, and give us the options they we want. Just a thought.