Should thumb cropping to imply underage girls be illegal?

100 Questionable Thumbs

This thread made me think of the Bill Murray movie Broken Flowers

They screen that in mall theaters, and Lightspeed doesn't go nearly that far.

*splutter* *cough*

Checked the site and related - that's called the "pedo entertainment industry"

how the hell does that picture imply underage??

does anyon ehere have evidence to prove that any of these girls in question ACTUALLY are dressed up to look younger? Or is this an image they put on themselves? like I said, there are quite a few chicks out there doing the littlegirl pigtail look all on their own...

You asking from a legal perspective or a marketing one?

Sorry.. I only started in the biz last week.

Totally agree with that thought, as well.

an interesting note...

while american freedom of speech laws seem to protect the portrayal of legal girls as underage, canadian law doesn't seem to be quite as lenient on the subject. stating that the following concerning the illegallity of said content..

"a visual representation that shows a person who is [b]or is depicted as being under the age of eighteen years[b] and is engaged in or is depicted as engaged in explicit sexual activity, or the dominant characteristic of which is the depiction of a sexual organ or the anal region of a person under the age of eighteen years, or depicted as under eighteen years of age."

that could potentially cause troubles for anyone pushing content in that manner in canada if one were to take it that far...

exactly my thoughts on this!

the whole 'teen' niche is looking to attract the same type of ppl

No evidence on these specific girls. What would be fair to say is that out of... 100 models on the lower age group - it would be hard to find one that actually looked like that.

Sure, most of them can stuff that facade on, but it would be intentional. The same girls can also look almost mature with a stylist around - they can be anything you want them to be - so suspect that is intentional.

To answer the original question, as long as the girls are of legal age, my answer is no. We don't need more laws to regulate everything. However, my personal opinion is that it's of very bad taste.

I don't have teen sites, I have a few teen banners here and there but that's it. I sure as hell wouldn't pick teens who look much younger to attract the "wrong" kind of surfers. I don't "deal" in teen porn for personal reasons, but the main one is this:

1) the daughters of two of my girlfriends were sexually assaulted when they were both 8 years old by the same man. You wouldn't believe how many children were involved in this case (some were younger, some were older), it was sickening! I went to court with them, and to hear all these girls AND boys testifying, the stories they told, it was horrible!!!! One of my girlfriends jumped out of her seat and wanted to attack the accused, she had to be restrained and taken out of the courtroom. I saw first hand what it does to a child, the emotional trauma it caused the whole family, the fear of any man getting close to them, trouble in school, the counseling, etc. It took years for these girls to have something that resembled a normal life again. Not something I would wish on anyone who has kids. Today the girls are both in their 20's and they will never forget what happened to them and what they went through. Neither will I.

2) I seem to be older than many, if not most, people on this board. To me, a 20 or 25 year old girl (or guy) are still kids. I've always liked men very close to my age and preferably a little older, even when I was in my early 20's, and even today. Teens don't do a thing for me. That's personal, that's MY choice. I don't judge others who choose to date younger guys or girls, whether I agree or not, even if I think they look ridiculous. It's none of my business.

Those who have said that when a surfer clicks a thumb of a girl that looks 13or 14 and chats with her or watches her in sex acts, he fantasizes about the 13 or 14 year old he first clicked, not the actual legal teen he sees. I agree with that. And THAT makes me sick for obvious reasons.

I've been reading, although not every single post, what's been happening to Slick. I went to some of his sites, and a few of these girls looked awfully young and it brought back some pretty nasty memories. I'm sorry it happened to him, but on the other hand I can also see why. For whatever it's worth, I hope all the girls really are legal and he walks away from this with no further trouble, and a lesson well learned.

And like many others have posted, we all think like webmasters because that's what we do. These teens are legal, so where's the problem, right? The girl IS 18 or even older but her pic makes her look like she's 13. So who cares what people think? But if you put yourself in the surfer's shoes, who do you think clicks on those thumbs when the girls look like they're barely hitting their teens? What man in his right mind would want to watch a 13 year old girl having sex? He doesn't give a shit how old she REALLY is, she LOOKS 13 and that's all that matters to him!

At the end of the day, it all comes down to what we can live with and what doesn't keep us awake at night. If you know the girl is 18 and you don't have a problem if she looks 13 in some of her pics and what type of surfer it attracts, it's your choice, but definitely not mine.

It may not be illegal but I definitely find it immoral. Again, personal opinion. Without having new laws against this, sponsors might simply opt to not allow altering thumbs to make the girls look younger in their respective programs to avoid future problems.

Missie

It's called virtual CP. It was originally outlawed by congress, and then the FSC got it shot down in the supreme court back in 2002. Their findings were that since no actual children were being harmed, that it can't be CP.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-795.ZO.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcrof...eech_Coalition

Haha, don't confuse the issue with FACTS!!!

nah. nevermind.

From Lightspeedcash current TOS:
6.3 Except as expressly authorized by Lightspeed in writing, Affiliate shall not copy, reproduce, alter, modify, change, broadcast, distribute, transmit or disseminate any banners or other promotional or advertising materials provided by Lightspeed pursuant to this Agreement in whole or in part, in any form or manner, at any time or anywhere in the World.

6.4 Affiliate shall ONLY use Promotional Pictures and Images provided by Lightspeed to promote sites that are included in the Program. For purposes of this Agreement Promotional Pictures and Images means any of the images and/or videos provided on LightspeedCash.com.

6.5 Affiliate shall disseminate, transmit, broadcast or distribute the material provided through the Program only to consenting adults over the age of eighteen (18) years, twenty-one (21) years in those locations where that is the age of majority.

I've said it before and I'll say it here. Personal views on how old a model "Looks" are subjective and not valid except for making personal opinions. The only thing that should be relevant is the Law (U.S. for this argument). If the model is over the age of 18, that is the only thing that matters.

Nothing else.

Are you saying ANY sense of morality is irrelevant?

Morality is subjective as well. As a business owner you set the core values of your business, and policies of what you allow and do not allow. Some for legal resons, while others are for personal (moral) reasons. But legally there is nothing wrong with altering an image (provided you have permission) and making a girl appear "smaller." Smaller does not universally means they are younger. There is a big demand for 'petite' girls, and in the states there is a bit of a taboo element because most of the girls and women are large. Petite girls per capita are difficult to find in the states. The customers for this legal products should not be classified as 'pedos' just because they like a certain body type. They simply like petite girls/women.

Come to Asia. Most all the girls are small

Think you just hit reality Missie and cut thru one load of "opinion" and diatribe. What you describe is not exactly uncommon - and appears to be getting more common (tho that *may* be because of more reporting options).

Can only give what may be described as a "qualified opinion" (not mine - a person who deals with this stuff 24/7). There is strong opposition to the 'selling' of what she sees as kids in the adult biz - ie for sexual purposes - irrespective of "just 18" blah. It's the sales concept which is the problem. It even goes as far as avoiding sending emails of family pics (in this case new baby shots) - she does not want anyone getting access - simply because this is the stuff trash get off on and passed around "filesharing" services.

You are correct - the damage this causes is awesome, and can be kinda disturbing to witness the "after effects" which can last... well, a lifetime. Won't talk detail, but know one lady in mid 30's - nobody knows when she was first assaulted, but possibly around six months old and up to age eight. She is scarred for life. Another girl, think early 20's now - same story, but she developed MPD as a defense and sometimes wanders off as another "personality" (tho seems to "know" underneath). It's very hard to junk personalities which children develop as defensive mechanisms against trauma - it stays for years - if not for a lifetime.

Have to say I'm of the same opinion as you after having learned from friends in victim support and LE what it actually means - even worse when you meet victims - the significance hits home on a personal basis (Ya want to find a pedo and punch him in the face - just because )

Tho we may be in the adult industry - opinions from the adult biz are really irrelevant and pale into total insignficance in comparison to the damage by adults in assaults on children - sadly, these same adults are being pandered to by an element of this industry (and not just by pedo sites).

Sure images should be "legal" blah - but it's also a matter of what you do with these images overall. If they end up with an overall impression of selling kids (even tho the models are "legal") - the best you can say is it's "legal pedophelia". That's a moral decision - got no problem not being a child content purveyor - it's an easy choice.

My opinion is that if the girl is 18+ then it matters little if she looks 16. I'd much rather have a gf who was 18 and looked 16 that one who was 18 and looked 30. Who really likes those 25yo teens with pussys that look like a turkey neck?

That is what I am not figuring out in all these threads that have been started this week.

You can argue until the cows come home over whether promoting her would be moral or not. But I still don't see how you can take a legal picture, and make a thumb that implies illegal. I looked all over Slick's Major Pervert site, and I didn't see any thumbs where it looked as if the cropping had been done to emphasize something that didn't already exist on the full sized image.

~goes back to sitting in the dense corner~

Wouldn't it just be easier, instead of making it illegal, have the sponsors (like yourself) put it in the terms of service that you have the right to monitor how they use your content, and strictly forbid portraying the girls are younger than they are with thumb manipulation? If all sponsors that have teen sites would do this, sure it wouldn't completely stop the problem, however it WOULD give them some degree of control over the situation.

Cutting thumbs to make the girls look younger puts the content of the sponsor under scrutiny as WELL as the people who run the websites, and anyone who thinks differently will likely have an unfortunate surprise. These things always happen in stages, and the best defense is a good offense.

To be perfectly honest, that does take it into another realm. The "intention" of CP can be conveyed just as much in the situation or how an image is presented just as much as it can from having an actual child in the photo. If you dress a 35 year old woman up in pigtails, give her a teddy bear and put her in a childlike setting, it can STILL be prosecuted as child porn in some states (and various countries like Canada) because the IMPLICATION is there. It's a fine line.

Lightspeed would never go that far, he's awesome with regards to the way he presents his girls. Does not mean that some affiliate couldn't cut a thumb from his content and make the girl in the image seem younger. It's not that hard to do. I think sposnors should be just as worried about this kind of thing as affiliates should be, because as I've already said, it puts THEIR content under scrutiny too.

If the model is 18 or over and you can prove it if need be, case closed as far as I see it.

Dumbest thing I have heard on GFY in a while

Should it be illegal to name single girl sites "Taylor Little" or "Little Troublemaker"? Implieing they are LITTLE?

It's either CP or it's not. There is nothing in between

I don't think that promoting a legal 18+ model site with thumbs cut to look underage should be illegal because the basic intent is to promote the legal 18+ model. It's just stupid.

I run over 100 teen sites and my opinion on this seems like common sense to me. If you are making thumbs to promote a paysite then the thumb should accurately represent the sample content of the gallery first and the gallery should accurately represent the content of the paysite. If it doesn't then you are shooting yourself in the foot because the customer won't find what he/she is looking for at the paysite so why the fuck would they join?

The basic issue behind this whole thing is traffic generation. There are LOTS of fucking perverts out there and you can get lots of traffic to your site by catering to these sick fucks... In the case of a cj2 (skimming tgp), you can really increase your overall traffic numbers by sending more traffic to trades and in return your sites grow much larger. The basic problem with this method is that it's the easy way out and it would seem to me that your are simply wasting bandwidth and catering to free porn surfers. As an affiliate, your conversion rates will be very high as a rule. However, your overall traffic numbers will be alot greater... so basic math says you will make more sales because there will be more buyers. In my opinion, the "easy" mentality is killing the tgp/free porn affiliate business. Basic statistics should be able to prove this... conversion rates are way higher then they used to be in the tgp game.

I work for the owners adultreviews.net and I know for a fact that the biggest tgp networks can't touch their conversion rates for a very simple reason. They accurately describe the paysites they promote and the surfer doesn't have to guess what they are buying and they bookmark adultreviews.net because they know it's accurate. Just because someone is buying porn doesn't make them an idiot but affiliates that misrepresent the paysites they promote are treating them as idiots.

I run quality sites. What do I mean by that? I mean that I don't trade with sites that misrepresent the content (or blatantly promote cp), I don't send any shitty chinese, russian or korean traffic to my trades or sponsors (except passwordbyphone.com) and I accurately crop my thumbnails and review my galleries for content that I think doesn't match the tour/paysite. I have tried to trade with sites like Slicks sites... and his traffic didn't click for shit on my sites... why? Because they are looking for underage girls and my sites have teens/babes 18+.

Police your sites yourselves and present some quality... I get less traffic but my conversion rates on a tgp are typically 1:400 aned I don't burn through bandwidth like you do. Over time, you will gain bookmarkers and search engine results. I have never seen most of these cj2 sites listed anywhere near the top 10 for the keywords I get results for.

why look for trouble?

Look, here is the bottom line about porn and fantasy.

This is all I will say: See sig.

SteveLightspeed, i fully understand you when even knowing all that you do is 100% legal, you feel bad because you could be seen the opposite. You said you are starting new sites outside the teen niche as it's exactly my idea too, this is why:

I had a problem with one of my sites a year ago. The Swedish police made all the Swedish ISP's to ban my site and to show a "this site has CP" page instead. As i'm not Swedish, the site loaded fine for me and never noticed it. One day, a Swedish webmaster told me, and i contacted the Swedish police.

They told me that some anonymous surfer reported my site as being CP so they reviewed it and ordered the ban over it. WTF? I answered, who has reviewed it? who has asked me for age proofs? How could you be 100% sure that those girls are underage?

I threatened them with a lawsuit for damaging my reputation and for making me guilty without any lawsuit, as at least in Europe, you are innocent until proved wrong.

They put me in contact with the person who reviewed the site. He told me that some girls looked questionable. All them were from big known sponsors including LS ( i just name LS here as Steve is who started the thread but you can imagine who are all the other big teen sponsors, all them legit). I explained him a a bit about the business, showed him the sponsors URLs, how they provide the content etc and he realized he was wrong. He immediately contacted the ISP's to remove the ban and 24 hours later the nightmare was over without even a lawsuit.

I was lucky the Swedish police wanted to talk with me, but i could have ended having big problems if instead of letting me explain, they would have just reported me to the interpol.

Even being proven innocent at the end, I learned a lesson with it. No matter what we discuss here, the Teen niche is seen as CP by most of authorities as most of them are old farts who compare the girls in our sites with their old women and all them look CP to them.

It's all about perception and i must admit that your mind changes with time. For example, pick a 10 years of kid, show him a 18 years old girl and ask him about his age. He will say she is so old. Take a 60 years old man, ask him about a 21 years old girl and he will say she is a baby.

At the end, is us adult webmaster who have the problem as we are who must prove we are right and they are wrong, that the girls are over 18, etc and it's not always that easy unless you are the content producer. Even worse, most of the times, the authorities won't even give you the rights to prove yourself, they just take actions and you can even end in Jail. Of course you can then hire a great lawyer and get out of prison and even get money from the government, but your life and reputation could be destroyed by then.

I keep having teen TGP's, but slowly i'm moving to other niches and creating new sites. I also try to clean my database of FHG from time to time to remove all the thumbs that look questionable, but it's so hard, as everybody has it's own opinion and point of view. As in the example i wrote before ,a 18 girl could look 20 to me and 17 to you.

I really wish i haven't ever touched the teen niche but my business is based on it and after years of huge work and money invested, i have some big teen traffic sites with teen domains names that can't be switched to any other niche without loosing most of the traffic and my revenue. And this is not a hobby i can leave anytime, this is my way of life and who is giving me and my family a good living.

That doesn't mean i feel myself guilty, but that i'm tired of the problems of running teen sites and to be seen as a depravate by the authorities. Who knows, maybe some day another stupid could think that my sites are CP and report me again, or just another webmaster to fuck my business or reputation, or an overreacting registrar like Directnic could steal all my domains, or who knows what could be next. I must admit i would feel more comfortable working on another niche.

Ok, i wrote too much above so here is the resume:

On the thread subject, if the girl is over 18, she is over 18 no matter what you crop. The main problem is not what is the true, but what is seen as true by the authorities or the people with enough power to ruin your business and life without even letting you to explain yourself.

For that reason, i'm reviewing my sites from time to time to remove all the thumbs that look questionable. In fact i'¡m just doing it this weekend as i'm switching tgp scripts and i found in my sites some thumbs i prefer to not to have there even being from 100% legit and big known sponsors. I know the girls are legal, but some could say they don't look so.

If the girls are 18 or older, of course not.

However.......they would be wise to anticipate a visit from the 2257 police sooner rather than later.

Here goes my very simple opinion:

You can crop thumbs any way you want. You can make them all show only belly buttons is that is your thrill. Models are over 18, so it isn't illegal.

Cropping thumbs and selecting thumbs to make the models appear younger or appear to be in distress creates the potential for misunderstandings. It creates potential that someone from the public will report your site as CP through a reporting tool online, or worse, pick up the phone and contact the FBI or your local police directly.

So while the thumbs are all legal, you put yourself on the hotseat for no reason.

In this current situation, combining those thumbs with links to sites much closer to true CP (ones that got shut down, example) can only make it worse. While I understand the idea of six degrees of seperation, I don't want CP to be one step away from my sites.

The thumbs, taken individually in a vaccuum may be acceptable, but used in large numbers to support the links to very, very bad sites don't work.

I am a little surprised that the sponsors images that were used in the CJ site weren't a little more upset about the misuse of their images.

are you saying someone took two independent pictures are combined them to produce a new image which appears to be something different

or are you saying you shot a picture which in it original format appears to be cp but that you cropped to look more "innocent" and someone re cropped the master image to be more representative of its original context.

If it is the first than it is already illegal

it is a copywrite violation.

if it is the second then your the person responsible since you produced the original image AND released for use.

No its not, some girls being just young is very different like Taylor Little there is no question she is a hot young woman not a child. Putting a flat chested model no makeup, pig tails , holding stuffed animals in a set that looks like a room a child would sleep in. They are two different things. I can see where FSC doesnt go on news shows representing our industry, I wouldn't. I can imagine giving a "we are responsible and want to protect kids line" then they show some girl with a flat chested model in a set to look like she is maybe 14 and ask this isnt encouraging pedophiles? or they quote GFY -people defending someone who had very questionable material on their tgp and when responsible action was taken.The whole industry turned on that company. I wouldnt want to be on that hot seat.
The industry better get over the we can do whatever the fuck we want to do or its going to be like that line in casino" we had it all and we fucked it all up.

Tony, even that type of picture... take by itself might raise some eyebrows, on a page called "Sweet 20 year old hotties" might not. CONTEXT... it is an amazing thing.

EightTEEN is still teen, NineTEEN is still teen, both are legal. You could make it 20 year old hotties if you want, but 20 is not a teen and the teen surfers know that. They don't care that the girl who they are being told is 18 is actually 25 (how old is Tawnee now? , they are there for the FANTASY of it. That's part of the problem with this whole mess. We are presenting these people a fantasy, but where do we draw the line? It might be legal, but is it right? And by who's standards? It's a messy sort of thing all around.