My dad used to work in the porno industry back when printing porn was profitable. He had a relatively short job helping with distribution in the late 70s - mid 80s.
Worked in China helping with Japanese magazines, which were illegal to import but legal to sell once they were there (funny how laws work) and as I understand it, they were legal only if the buyer bought them by mail.
Because China has always been a weird market. Anyway, these mags featured Japanese teens (in provocative poses and sometimes naked but never performing sexual acts) but also advertised VHS tapes and books. Those tapes and books had younger, nakeder models.
I'm pretty sure those were for the Japanese market only, so the Chinese readers must have had the bluest balls, since they saw the ads but couldn't buy the good stuff.
My dad says he found those mags trashy, and the videos trashier. He never worked with film (some of his friends did) and he prefers European porn to this day.
(I've seen the mags he worked for. I don't find them less trashy, but that's just me)
Anyway, he was in the country earlier this year and of course he lived in my place, we catched up and that was cool, and I decided to ask a thing or two about the business. He has a lot of stories, and I asked about TOR and general internet stuff, because he knows almost nothing about computers.
I told him porn nowadays is pretty much free and he said "I know, that killed the real industry, blah blah", and I said something like "yeah, and the stuff you used to publish in Europe and distribute in China can't be found so easily, because it's not on the regular web"
Because I wanted to troll him some and maybe scare him with stories about the Deep Web.
But he said something weird: apparently, for a while it was on the regular web. I'm talking about the hard stuff, on VHS. A guy he worked with in the 80s contacted him like 10 years ago and he had an idea for a business and needed someone to work with the distribution, but this time the business was web-based.
He told me the name of the guy but I forgot. Some Japanese name.
Anyway, my dad is kinda autistic and organized like a maniac, and said something like "I still have the card of that business. When I get back home I can find it" and I said "dad, if the business wasn't successful that website is down, and also nowadays that would be an illegal site even in Japan"
My dad apparently thinks every website stays up forever.
But he sent me the info anyway. The failed business was called Peach Pie. It was simply this: that guy and a partner got CP collections god knows where from, made transfers to VHS and DVD, added no additional material and then sold the crude, guerrilla-style, early P2P quality videos through a regular website. The cards and other promotional material were supposed to be posted on porno shops and other weird establishments in Japan but I don't think they went that far.
What I know is, these guys had an interesting and large catalogue (which is no surprise given that their material was free for them)
My dad says the VHS tapes they sent him for reviewing purposes were amateur and contained one video each. If the video was 20 minutes long, then the tape was blanc for an hour, the video itself was in the middle, and after the that the tape was blanc for another 40 minutes.
So yeah, that sucked. Below my dad's standards.
So he said no to that (also, who needs prison) and that's the end of that story.
Only, he gave me the URL of the now defunct website.
Since I'm a curious guy I used Wayback Machine and holy shit, parts of the website are archived.
[spoiler]You think the "salty milk" video never had commercial distribution?
It did in Japan![/spoiler]
So, if anyone knows Japanese, or can at least save what remains of the website, I could give the URL. Only of there's interest, I mean. I'd like to see this shit translated because I wanna read how the fuck they tried to justify selling this material.
