What has happened to 5t@xus been posted

[yoyo888]

Hey Guys,

Not seen any 5t@xus videos posted recently! Has the person who gets them, are they on an extended holiday/vacation ?

Or has 5t@xus made it difficult or something. Maybe caught the person who shares them and they have a "cease and desist" against them

YOYO

 

[larryisreal]

I have seen some being posted... but only old ones. I wouldn't have noticed it myself, but now that you mention it...

 

[Ice-PS]

Maybe they've watermarked their videos?
This could be tried out but then there would be an other problem: If people who have an account would download a specific (and new) video and post their MD5 checksum (or even parts of it) here then the studio would know which member here is which of their customer.

 

[zaylor]

This is directly from their website:


"warning – each scene is autographed – if you illegally upload to other sites we will prosecute."

 

[yoyo888]

Yer I spotted that also the other day

 

[dargelos]

Someone will work out how to strip out the spyware. They always do, not for personal gain but just for the technical challenge.

 

[Ice-PS]

Spyware (executeable) in a video file? I don't think so.
And a watermark is not spyware.

 

[blizzard]

5t@xus's threat to prosecute anyone for uploading a video made me laugh. While I can understand why it may give pause to those doing so, it's a completely empty threat in the real world. The COST of pursuing such a lawsuit (assuming the persons doing the uploading are in the U.S. or one of the main EU countries) would be so prohibitive, relative to any damages 5t@xus could hope to receive, as to be a disaster financially for the company. While someone might argue it could inhibit this behavior, it would be the equivalent of trying to solve a problem costing $100 by spending $1,000 to solve it. And the more they try to "solve it" in this manner, the greater their losses.

Also, for what it's worth, I've heard through the grapevine that 5t@xus is not doing so well. For a company that may be on weak financial ground, the threat is even more empty.

And I promise that next time I post, I will mask the studio name and not force a Moderator to do it.

 

[ton]

I've heard that the xvid autopgraph technology they use is quite expensive (the licensing they have to pay). But it seems to work for them. They can quickly identify and lock the acccounts which were used. And we can see that is does work. Only a few new vids have been posted since they started to do it. I can imagine it's much harder to remove a watermark if it is hidden inside the real data. We had a similar case with photos from another studio years ago (was it €n!gm@tic b0ys?) but is was quickly revealed that only a subset of images carried a tiny qrc code. With a video that is not so easy. But still I trust in the skills of some people to make that happen. I also can imagine that it is not possible to watermark blu rays in the same way, as every copy is identical, so we might see new scenes sooner or later when blu ray rips become available.

 

[blizzard]

My apologies, Larryisreal. Thanks for correcting my mistake!

 

[dargelos]

It would be interesting to see how this would play if it were tested in court. Since xvid say that only their experts can decode their malware, in the company's secret laboratory, at midnight with a full moon and the blood of a virgin, independent verification of the only evidence is not possible. No honest judge is going to swallow that.
It's the fud principle, fear, uncertainty, doubt. They will never secure a conviction, but 'what if' is enough to make people nervous.

 

[Mardo]

If you live in the West, especially the USA, you are more likely to be legally pursued that e.g. a guy in a random town somewhere in the middle of India or Turkey. Reason being the Indian guy is less likely to be worth suing. Not a very pleasant fact, but a fact nonetheless.

 

[yoyo888]

I have noticed the lack of BøyFʊn clips for the past couple of weeks. Has BøyFʊn gone down the same line as 5t@xus, where they are "protecting" their content?

YOYO

 

[RufusMc]

This tech has been around a while. A certain 'beautiful friend' site said they used this tech when I signed up end of last year.

I suspect the big studios are suffering with pirates, but also with the OF and JFF sites must be taking customers away as well.

 

[absalom]

I too have noticed that some other studios are using this technique over the last couple of months because no scenes are appearing on file sharing websites. Maybe this technique has become cheaper to use? Until recently only the 'beautiful friend' studio used this technique.

Taking people to court for file sharing is expensive and has an uncertain outcome in many European countries. The 'beautiful friend' studio never bothered with it. In comparison using this 'watermarking technique' is cheaper and more effective.

I don't think that OF and JFF sites are real competitors for the main gay porn studios. Much of the content on OF and JFF is amateurish and doesn't have the quality of many of the well known gay porn studios. Poor lighting, scenes filmed from only one angle, horrible music from tv and radio, etc. make it difficult to watch, especially for people who like the quality of a studio like BA. Some performers on OF and JFF are very succesful but one wonders how long they can stay popular.

The big question is: are studios that are using watermarking techniques to prevent file sharing getting more subscriptions or are people downloading content from other studios/performers?

 

[Mardo]

This is directly from their website:


"warning – each scene is autographed – if you illegally upload to other sites we will prosecute."

Autographed could be another word for watermarked.

Did they give a more specific explanation?

I notice that for some months now they release fewer scenes in general. I gather they have switched a chunk of their producing power into making scenes on a sister site: myd1rt1estfanta$y.

 

[MontyBurns]

I've read on another forum that they use besides the explained autograph also a second system as DRM, means you have to activate your device with a code sent by email to view your bought videos.

 

[absalom]

I notice that for some months now they release fewer scenes in general. I gather they have switched a chunk of their producing power into making scenes on a sister site: myd1rt1estfanta$y.

For a very long time St@xus releases 2 scenes per week.

MDF is the website/studio of a British guy who lives in Spain and also does work for St@xus. MDF is a fetish studio that doesn't have a broad appeal like St@xus. It started as a personal project of that British guy but now has indeed become a sister site of St@xus.

 

[RufusMc]

They apparently use pron Gu4rd14n, this is what they say on their site:

We have two different types of Digital Fingerprints. Our first type of fingerprints comes in the form of embeddable data that we put into your content before it is downloaded. Then, when we find your content online illegally, we are able to tell you which of your users was responsible for uploading it. The second type of fingerprint gets sent to the most popular Tube Sites on the internet. If those sites find any content being uploaded that matches the fingerprint, they will automatically disallow the content and instead link to your site.

 

[blizzard]

Personally, I think studios like St@x^s are shooting themselves in the foot. When they allowed unlimited downloads, I subscribed 2x a year. When they stopped doing that and went to streaming only, I stopped subscribing at all. And now that their videos are not even being shared, I stopped caring altogether.