Originally Posted by StarkReality

Ok, let's me tell you a little story:

We released a totally free adult only hardlink exchange script about a year ago, the first one that was on the market. No skimming, no own links added, only webmaster referral banners on the submit page and after submission. So, not a single surfer lost. We thought we'd be nice and didn't encrypt it since many hosts offer php without zend.

What happened:
About 70% of the webmasters using it removed our banners or replaced our affiliate IDs. 20% Changed the whole script in one way or another. It was republished 5 times under different names, 1 guy tried to sell it. That's the result after going through about 200 copies we found running, probably there are alot more. At the end, some spammers found the script and spammed all sites they found using it with daily auto submissions.

What we learned:
- Most webmaster don't accept any ads, even if they get something for free, they prefer fucking you and violate copyrights, as you see above, 90%.
- 21 webmaster signups via our ID, one "active" who made us about 20$ total, great, enough for two happymeals and an extra drink !

The end:
We closed down the download and trade database and are working on a paid version, since we got alot of other projects going and it's not first priority, it will take a few more months. We spend 80% of the work on making it cheat proof, it will re-check backlinks every day, it will have a blacklist feature, it will detect autosubmitters, it will verify PR and backlink via multiple methods, it will stop wroking as soon as any code is modified, every copy has a unique hidden ID and we have a lawyer ready to sue everybody trying to fuck with us again.

It's a shame, we are sorry for all the honest users. It was our idea to give webmaster something to save time, make more money and make us a bit from referrals, a win-win situation...but reality showed it was a terrible mistake to assume that most other webmasters have any business ethics.

Yes, still angry when thinking about it, we are no newbies in this industry, but you'll never run out of bad surprises in adult.