"APIC going after the top thousand TGPs makes sense though. No TGPs = no reason to build galleries."
You are wrong bro... in case you didn't notice -- it's easier to build a TGP than it is to build a gallery... like you said there are thousands of TGP's out there -- people submit them to my site every day...
"The top 1000 TGP owners and all their hosting companies will be immediately buried under a barrage of shrill, hysterical, threatening hate mail which will intimidate TGP owners who aren't bright enough to have their own attorney (most)."
This will never happen -- because there's no problem pushing legal galleries... But think about it -- when illegal gallery sites started getting shut down years ago -- people started spreading out -- they moved to freehosts... If you shut down TGP's -- the traffic will just move elsewhere... Maybe you will see more anonymous TGP's on freehosts. A TGP can be just as elusive as a gallery...
This is the fucking internet... you can hide anything in the internet and still be totally anonymous -- information wants to be free... Of course you can always follow the money -- but you can't necessarily follow the traffic... Maybe call it "laundered traffic" -- I'm pretty sure this APIC stuff won't change much of anything. I'm against stealing images -- because I lose money... but you can't stop it. There will always be free unlicensed stolen pics -- period. Look at the warez industry... There's no way to pin it down -- it's been elusive since the early 80's...
Anyway traffic isn't *created* by TGP's -- surfers create traffic.
There's TONS of traffic out there that is not from the big TGP's... Also many sites that aren't TGP's post galleries...
"TGP" and "Gallery" -- this is just terminology... the lines of which are blurred by more creative webmasters on a daily basis.
I've got thumbs to pics on my site -- gallery listings, link listings... Am I a TGP? Am I a link list? Am I a gallery? Am I a pic post? No... but I still have traffic ;)
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