Quote:
Originally Posted by signupdamnit
In the very early days everyone stole content but in 2002-2003 the whole watermarking affiliate content started and it reached the point where almost everyone did it around 2006/7. And at first the watermarks were usually a brand and not an url.
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I spent the early days of TGPS as a reviewer for one of the largest TGPS of the time. I did that for several years, thousand or so galleries a day, seven days a week. I saw all those trends. Yes, at the very start people stole content and relied on the 'public domain' claim (hello, Tumblr).
Then both TGP and freesite owners started to at least say they would deny anything that was obviously stolen. I know that I denied a ton of galleries over my time for that.
A lot of us that are the old guard learned how to read contracts from buying content to make galleries and freesites. We had to read the usage allowances and often that was only a certain number from the set you bought could be used in a gallery if they were even allowed to be used in a gallery at all. I am sure there are many of us here that have drives and drives full of the content we bought in order to build galleries and freesites that would be accepted onto sites.
In those days, most TGPS didn't allow sponsor content at all or they set a limit on how many times it could be posted on the TGP. Simply because they knew that nobody came there to see the same image over and over. Some sponsors like Dogfart, Lightspeed, Bangbros, etc started to get through because their content was fresh and the sites wanted it but still it wasn't really the norm.
FHGs are really where sponsor content became widely acceptable. It is also when the TGP I worked for decided to stop taking most submissions. People stopped building with their bought content and why wouldn't the TGP just grab the FHG links and have all the revenue from galleries listed.
I'm not really arguing with you on the concept of your argument, other than I have an idea of what it costs to put out sponsor content for affiliates and also the abuse of it that takes place. Certainly not by everybody but if you want to use slim percentages then give consideration to the sponsors protecting their investments from that percentage that use their content inappropriately.