Bootleggers, pirates, hackers: different words, different industries, but same motive. For as long as entertainment has existed, there’ve been people who made a profit coveting other’s earnings by hijacking content distribution. For instance, Your compilations: Best of Chris Brown hawked in traffic, 15-in-one DVDs, season 1–50 shows spread across several disks, etc., are all evidence of content piracy. Even in today’s digital era, content piracy still exists -- only much harder to tackle. 

Today, two years after Nigeria’s adult content industry got its big boom, the scene still finds itself facing the same piracy problem. What was once copied onto discs and sold in traffic now moves through covert Telegram groups and X (formerly known as Twitter) feeds.

“These creators are now demotivated to post their contents because 30 minutes after uploading, they worked their asses off and spent thousands of naira to shoot, someone would buy the video and resell it or leak it,” said Ife Omai, co-founder of All-Access, an OnlyFans-styled platform where these creators sell their content.

“It is a serious problem, " Arike Snow said. “Someone used my nudes on a TikTok  challenge without my consent. I was so shocked”

This, however, isn’t a problem isolated to Nigeria and, if anything, it is one of the weightiest problems plaguing the global adult content industry. Boasting a multi-billion-dollar empire  -- with digital platforms like Onlyfans, among others, raking in at least $109 billion annually --  the major reason that makes X-rated content so profitable is also the reason it moves quickly on digital black markets: shame.

Meanwhile, a prominent Adult content streaming platform, All Access, is trying to give its users more control over content security by introducing Digital Rights Management technology. Similar to the blank screen you’d see with Netflix and Prime Video content when you try to screen-record or take a screenshot, paying for the content gives you access to it, but as a user on its app, the content is never really yours. You pay to view it, not to possess or redistribute.

“As the Wet 3 (a term used to describe creators making money selling adult content) beckons and grows locally, we have found the need to protect our investors, the creators, and show that we care about safeguarding them,” Omai told Deeds.

Compared to other countries leading in the adult industry, Nigeria is relatively new to the digital side of things and, for the most part, underrepresented and undocumented. Culturally and religiously, it’s a broader risk for several Adult content creators whose content can be taken and shared with family members against their consent.

“I don’t even talk to my older brothers and sisters, and that is because of the job I chose to do,” Snow said contently. She added that her mum still doesn’t know, despite her content being posted on the family group chat, because of health concerns. “If any of them tell her, I will have them arrested,” Omai said. “From the creators’ perspective, they hate it and can’t stand it. We [All Access] have drastically lost consistency and vim from them towards using the website, which is why the All Access app, together with this privacy feature, is crucial.”

Technology, of course, has never put an end to piracy. Every new wall eventually meets someone trying to find a way to scale it. But for women whose income depends on keeping some control over where their content goes, the point is to make that theft harder, slower and less rewarding.

Because unlike the Best of Chris Brown CDs or the 15-in-one DVDs that once moved through Lagos traffic, what is being stolen here is attached to an actual person. A face. A body. A woman who may still have to explain herself to family, employers or strangers long after the person who leaked the video has moved on.

For All Access, then, DRM is less about pretending piracy can disappear completely and more about changing the terms under which these women work. “They’ll find a way around it, but this would disrupt it drastically,” Omai added. If the internet has made adult content easier to sell, it has also made it easier to steal. The question now is whether the people creating it can hold on to enough control to make the work worth doing.

Cover Credit: All Access

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