Originally Posted by jayeff

This thread is almost surreal. Someone who runs a sponsor program and a big traffic source, the latter (at least) targeted by scumware, isn't sufficiently concerned by that to get up speed on the issue. But weeks after it first aired - and (out of his own mouth) based solely on the personalities involved - he starts a thread in which he takes sides and dishes out personal insults.

Over the past couple of days, there have been a few attempts to reduce an industry-wide problem to the level of a Will vs Lars drama. I sincerely hope they are unsuccessful.

I'm not fan of Will's. I sent someone over to join "Team Clickcash" in summer 2005 and it was a harmless (since it didn't cost anything) but disappointing experience for the person concerned. Two weeks into the "Zango" issue, I made a couple of fruitless appeals to try to put some direction into the opposition to scumware and get away from the repetitive mud-slinging. But Will could be an alcoholic wife-beater (or whatever it takes to make you contemptuous of someone) and it wouldn't make the slightest difference to the issue at hand.

On the day this issue surfaced, I made a note that Lars would respond the following Saturday. I was wrong, he actually replied at 11:45pm (by the board-time I see) on Friday. The content of his response was as predictable as its timing, because his company had been caught fair and square playing in the dirt and based on his handling of previous issues, spin was all we could expect. And spin we got. There was barely an attempt to provide justification, let alone credible justification.

I have written that I couldn't care less about Lars or about Zango, because both will be gone in a few years. Their importance right now is solely that they are symptoms of an immature industry which still has a lot of growing up to do.

Huge amounts of time and therefore money are wasted when an industry preys on itself and everyone in it is forced to be constantly looking over their shoulders instead of getting on with the job of expanding their market. That is what online porn has primarily been doing for the past 5 years. That is why a single company like Zango can generate turnover equivalent to 40% of what the whole of online porn produces. That is why online porn, after a decade, is still estimated at a mere 5% of the "adult entertainment" industry.

I retired into this business because of ill-health. I hadn't so much as looked at a copy of Playb*y since the barber who cut my hair as a teenager, left them out for his customers. I built my first website while reading "HTML in 21 Days". And I was earning 6 figures within 18 months. That's how easy it was to make money between 1996 and 2000.

Competition has increased dramatically since then and unfortunately the most prevalent response has been to start feeding off each other: the symptoms are everything from selling worthless traffic through to the use of scumware. Somewhere along the line the majority seem to have forgotten we are selling a product second only to sex itself in its appeal and that we have as close to a global reach as our payment processors will allow.

Charles Darwin wrote about the survival of the fittest. As is often the case with complex ideas, they become simplified and distorted when they enter the public arena. Darwin actually judged the ability to cooperate as a more powerful force for survival than individual strength and he credited the success of the human race to that ability. Business is the same: true professionals understand the difference between competition and activities which ultimately damage everyone. They will cooperate to rid their industry of the latter.

The scumware issue isn't a battle, much less a war. It's just part of an industry going through growing pains and that is a process which will take another 5-10 years to complete. The outcome is inevitable: the cowboys of the industry, however they qualify for that sobriquet, will end up as insignificant figures on the sidelines.

Unless you believe that online porn will be the first industry ever to resist that transition, there are two things to think about. The first is that those who focus on building their businesses will emerge in a much stronger position than those who try to make time stand still, grabbing an extra dollar for themselves here, a few cents there, from their existing sales.

The second thing is that the people who matter in the long-term tend to have long memories. Only a fool would try to claim that scumware is not ultimately damaging to us all or that the use of it doesn't go far beyond anything which could reasonably be defined as competition. Before taking a public position, it might be wise to think about whether that position is something you will want people remembering in a few years time.