Russian Software Developers To Help Porn Industry Survive the Recession

Of course everyone knows that almost all the industries have been hit by the current recession to a certain extent at least. And while there are industries that will manage to stay relatively healthy, it is obvious that there will hardly be any company that will not be damaged at all. Unlike I somehow thought, even the porn industry seems to be hurt - even despite of the fact that everyone thought people will be looking for some additional distractions from their work-related problems, porn and games being such obvious distractions.

But it now looks like even the porn industry is suffering with some enthusiasts trying to help it survive the recession. The enthusiasts I am talking about is Elecard Devices, a Russian company developing software for digital video industry and the solution they are now offering to the porn industry is dead-simple and pretty appealing: free use of their tools for a few months to all the companies producing adult content.

The software made available for free to eligible adult video content producers includes video encoding servers, video compression and analysis tools and also content preparation tools. This extravagant bailout plan for porn industry will allow such companies (and even existing customers) to use software worth $1.7 to $10 thousand absolutely for free.

Of course the major question here is why the guys have chosen to offer the lifebuoy to porn producers of all the other video content producers that could benefit from using their services. The guys actually offer an explanation that sounds pretty good: this idea is something of a reaction to Hustler publisher Larry Flynt speaking about his idea of asking congress for $5 billion bailout for porn industry “to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America”.

But my guess here is that in addition to offering this as a joke they wanted to get some free PR (you can see the results here already) because of this interesting move and also wanted to bind porn companies to their software in hopes to eventually manage to share some of the huge revenues the porn industry is famous for. This reason looks to be particularly likely to me given that right now the share of porn producers among the Elecard Devices customers is tiny - only 1%. I wonder how many more companies will use the recession as a reason for extraordinary marketing actions but at least some use it as a source of inspiration.

Via (in Russian)