Wired magazine article paints harsh picture of industry

[Deepundercover]

San Jose Mercury News reporter Chris O'Brien wrote the piece for Wired magazine. He's also working on a book on the sex.com case though that project now appears dead.

This Wired article was a major pain for Chris and I bet he'd be glad to wash his hands of it.

I hear the story has been pushed back another month.

Copies of the proposed Wired cover story have circulated around the industry for about a week now.

XXX says: "The article is not glorifying about Gary. It's slanted to make the industry look bad. It makes almost everyone in the business to be a scumbag. Aly and Kevin are not happy about it. If they print what is in the draft version, Kevin Blatt says he will sue. 'It's [blowjob story from Girly] irrelevant to the story and it is such bulls---.'

"Chris O'Brian really f---ed us good. I'm really shaking my head. This has been going on for about a year and I thought the guy was really cool."

Meanwhile, last week, Gary Kremen and Charles Carreon settled their dispute over Carreon's legal fee for the sex.com battle. Gary and Charles sat in a room for eight hours until they worked everything out and the two men are best of friends again.

http://www.setgo.com/article.html?id...fc30c9212ccddf

[Matt 26z]

Originally posted by Deepundercover
It makes almost everyone in the business to be a scumbag.

Anyone actually going to deny this? Aside from the upper level webmasters, the percentage of cheats, theifs, liars and scammers outnumber the honest. Who is 100% honest to their surfers and other webmasters? Very, very few.

[mrthumbs]

Originally posted by Matt 26z


Anyone actually going to deny this? Aside from the upper level webmasters, the percentage of cheats, theifs, liars and scammers outnumber the honest. Who is 100% honest to their surfers and other webmasters? Very, very few.

This whole industry is build on silent rebills.

Obviously not because this is convenient for the customer as
stated on the join page.

So yeah.. scumbags.. ALL of you.

[Kimmykim]

Gee, I wonder who XXX is. ;)

[xanx]

Originally posted by Matt 26z


Anyone actually going to deny this? Aside from the upper level webmasters, the percentage of cheats, theifs, liars and scammers outnumber the honest. Who is 100% honest to their surfers and other webmasters? Very, very few.

And you think this is any different from the IBM's and Microsofts of the world?

[mrthumbs]

Originally posted by xanx


And you think this is any different from the IBM's and Microsofts of the world?

yes, MS doesnt charge you silently if you dont upgrade
to the next version.

[D-Money]

Who's Kevin Blatt?

[Kimmykim]

Originally posted by D-Money
Who's Kevin Blatt?

How was the bachelor party sugar?

[Aly-Python]

Yeah! Fill us on, Darren. I want all the bachelor party dirt!

[xanx]

Originally posted by mrthumbs


yes, MS doesnt charge you silently if you dont upgrade
to the next version.

Dude, you have no fucking clue.... get out of this biz while you still have some money left

[TheJimmy]

Originally posted by xanx


And you think this is any different from the IBM's and Microsofts of the world?

Amen to that!



on a similar note....

...the US congress passing some of the shit they've been doing lately is like being preached to by a 2 dollar crack-head hooka...


most 'apparently' good institutions that wield a lot of power are at it's core....rotten...it's just how deep into the fine print you have to look to find it....


insurance companies, major media, pharmaceutical giants.....are their morals or biz ethics any better than this industry?


hell no...

[TheJimmy]

Originally posted by D-Money
Who's Kevin Blatt?

Doesn't he make beer?




PS: Congrats on the recent nuptuals....

[Lensman]

Originally posted by Deepundercover


Copies of the proposed Wired cover story have circulated around the industry for about a week now.

Anyone have it?

[Mr.Fiction]

Originally posted by Lensman


Anyone have it?

Maybe someone over at AVN has a copy?

[wimpy]

Originally posted by Matt 26z
>It makes almost everyone in the business to be a scumbag.

Anyone actually going to deny this? Aside from the upper level webmasters, the percentage of cheats, theifs, liars and scammers outnumber the honest. Who is 100% honest to their surfers and other webmasters? Very, very few.

In this business you either make spam or delete spam. You can pretty well tell who is who by which side of this fence you sit on.

I delete a lot of spam. Hours wasted every day and thousands of dollars spent for spam detection shit I never imagined I'd need when I started.

I'm not talking about email spam here. I'm talking about people who try to scam every fucking way imaginable. And when you kick them off your proggy THEY get belligerent. Jesus fucking Christ, if you're gonna make your money by ripping people off, at least go away quietly when you're caught.

[TheGoldenChild]

Lensman it's not out yet- and I prefer it doesn't ever come out,

However, gary received the first three pages of the 8 page spread and it's not too glorifying of anything.

It's slanted.

[gruffy]

Originally posted by xanx
And you think this is any different from the IBM's and Microsofts of the world?

Media will not comment on the scum that "legitimate" business is.

It however has no quams with attacking the adult business, which is by far the most tame of any industry out there.

[FillmoreSlim]

im not surprised. wired has become a political mouthpeice for right wing technology interests.

conde nast (owners of wired) must be in tight with the administration.

http://www.condenet.com/condenast/

the last street copy of wired was totally pro-war, pro military.

Wired magazine was once only prepared on macs and they refused all cigarette ads.

This magazine has gone to FACKING HELL!

if this makes you mad...dont just blab on a board. do something about it.

Send a letter to the editor.
[email protected]

[nevermind]

Originally posted by mrthumbs


This whole industry is build on silent rebills.

Obviously not because this is convenient for the customer as
stated on the join page.

Wow. I can't believe somebody actually agrees with me on this one.

Right on!

[wimpy]

The rebill thing is a good point, but it's true that the big boys do it, too.

I signed up for hotmail premium service. $20 per year, I think. Not much, but how do I unsub? I don't see any obvious unsub on the site. Will they rebill me? I think so. Like Yahoo.

[FillmoreSlim]

Originally posted by wimpy
The rebill thing is a good point, but it's true that the big boys do it, too.

I signed up for hotmail premium service. $20 per year, I think. Not much, but how do I unsub? I don't see any obvious unsub on the site. Will they rebill me? I think so. Like Yahoo.

and cable companies, and newspaper subscribers, and everyone else offering per-period billing services.

[loverboy]

this is too much... go Nets!

[nevermind]

Originally posted by FillmoreSlim


and cable companies, and newspaper subscribers, and everyone else offering per-period billing services.

Here come the so-called justifications all over again.

All I can say is that a friend of mine just lost his merchant account because of rebills.

The bank said they were getting too many chargebacks from the rebills. My friend refused to stop the rebills because he was making too much money from it.

The bank jacked up his fees. Then, finally cut him off. He lost the rebills, and everything else.

[BJ]

if you have a good site with good content people are happy you rebill them

[nevermind]

Originally posted by PureMeds
if you have a good site with good content people are happy you rebill them

If you have a good site with good content, people will be happy to come back. You won't have to rebill them.

Give them the choice. Don't try to force it on them.

[Rich]

Fucking shit like advertising a free trial on a porn site is any different than advertising a cell phone as free. All business do stuff like that, not just porn.

[BJ]

Originally posted by nevermind


Give them the choice. Don't try to force it on them.

I totally agree

[tony286]

I beg your pardon I don?t fuck anyone, speak for yourself. Customers know how to cancel rebills they do it all the time. Most Gym memberships are rebills, so is my health insurance, so is my WSJ.com membership and my elite fitness.com membership also, my swappernet membership isn?t and I wish it was because resigning up is a pain in the ass. I am friends with a Webmaster who actually is pretty big and he told in the beginning he didn?t have rebills and his members complained. My customers are gold to us, I thank god for them everyday. They know everything that is happening to the site and once when it was down for two days. We kept them posted and when it was back up we gave them 5x the normal updates as our way of saying thanks. When ibill cmi was down last week, we posted what was happening and ibill's phone number if they needed to cancel or had problems as well as our email to reach us. We had another problem where passwords weren?t being written to the server and with cmi down there was nothing we could do. I offered 5 people either you can wait till we are back up or I will refund you your money when cmi is back , 100% said I will wait thank you for letting me know what?s happening. MY wife answers most emails as fast as they come in and the sad thing most write back to us, they say "I can?t believe you wrote me back this has never happened. We are never too busy for a customer. The problem is too many think I work for myself I don?t have to answer to anyone not even the customer and then there is the short timers who dont see this as longterm so they dont care who they fuck. Maybe its because I got in this so much older I understand this a little better without the customer you are nothing.

[nevermind]

Originally posted by Rich
Fucking shit like advertising a free trial on a porn site is any different than advertising a cell phone as free. All business do stuff like that, not just porn.

Yeah, well, we're in the adult biz. It may not be fair, but the card associations are cracking down on us.

Maybe you haven't noticed but the adult processing options are getting fewer by the day.

This industry has a lousy reputation with consumers, the banks and the card associations, and a lot of it is justified.

It doesn't really matter what other industries are doing. They can probably get away with it, but we can't.

I guess everybody will have to lose everything before they figure out they'll have to clean up their act.

You lose processing and you're out of biz. Period.

[tony286]

Originally posted by nevermind


Yeah, well, we're in the adult biz. It may not be fair, but the card associations are cracking down on us.

Maybe you haven't noticed but the adult processing options are getting fewer by the day.

This industry has a lousy reputation with consumers, the banks and the card associations, and a lot of it is justified.

It doesn't really matter what other industries are doing. They can probably get away with it, but we can't.

I guess everybody will have to lose everything before they figure out they'll have to clean up their act.

You lose processing and you're out of biz. Period.

I agree with you, I was in a site from australia that on the outside stated 700,000 pics and 500.000 videos for 29.95 a month there were maybe 240 pics and no videos. Its fraud and has to be clamped down once and for all.

[nevermind]

Originally posted by tony404

I beg your pardon I don?t fuck anyone, speak for yourself.

Tony, I almost always agree with your posts. And I'm sure you treat your customers very well.

All I'm saying is give customers both the recurring and non-recurring option.

If this was the industry standard, I'd be willing to bet we wouldn't be in as much trouble as we are today.

Let's face it, not all webmasters are as diligent as you.

Unfortunately, the bad ones (and there are a lot of them) taint us all.

[nevermind]

Originally posted by tony404


I agree with you, I was in a site from australia that on the outside stated 700,000 pics and 500.000 videos for 29.95 a month there were maybe 240 pics and no videos. Its fraud and has to be clamped down once and for all.

I'll do you one better than that. I joined a new site run by one of the big boys, because I was considering promoting them.

$29.95 for 5 videos. ONLY 5. No pics or anything else.

It was pathetic.

[Kimmykim]

Tony404, please use some sort of line breaks or paragraphs in your posts, it would make them so much more readable. I've been meaning to say this for awhile now. Thanks

Well, I see the discussion has gotten totally off target from the original topic, there's a surprise given the posters.

The article in question has NOTHING to do with rebills at all, as a matter of fact the word rebill was not even mentioned, not even alluded to, not even a part of the article.

And yes, I saw the draft of the article in full last week at Gary's house.

The article was a series of quotes and commentary on events, taken totally out of context from anything that might have actually occurred in order to sensationalize the industry itself. There is nothing that I recall being all that pertinent to anything in the industry besides domain names being in the least bit a focus.

[Cindyff]

Originally posted by tony404
I beg your pardon I don?t fuck anyone, speak for yourself. Customers know how to cancel rebills they do it all the time. Most Gym memberships are rebills, so is my health insurance, so is my WSJ.com membership and my elite fitness.com membership also, my swappernet membership isn?t and I wish it was because resigning up is a pain in the ass. I am friends with a Webmaster who actually is pretty big and he told in the beginning he didn?t have rebills and his members complained. My customers are gold to us, I thank god for them everyday. They know everything that is happening to the site and once when it was down for two days. We kept them posted and when it was back up we gave them 5x the normal updates as our way of saying thanks. When ibill cmi was down last week, we posted what was happening and ibill's phone number if they needed to cancel or had problems as well as our email to reach us. We had another problem where passwords weren?t being written to the server and with cmi down there was nothing we could do. I offered 5 people either you can wait till we are back up or I will refund you your money when cmi is back , 100% said I will wait thank you for letting me know what?s happening. MY wife answers most emails as fast as they come in and the sad thing most write back to us, they say "I can?t believe you wrote me back this has never happened. We are never too busy for a customer. The problem is too many think I work for myself I don?t have to answer to anyone not even the customer and then there is the short timers who dont see this as longterm so they dont care who they fuck. Maybe its because I got in this so much older I understand this a little better without the customer you are nothing.

Well said more people mshould be like you


Cindy xx

[tony286]

Originally posted by Kimmykim
Tony404, please use some sort of line breaks or paragraphs in your posts, it would make them so much more readable. I've been meaning to say this for awhile now. Thanks

Well, I see the discussion has gotten totally off target from the original topic, there's a surprise given the posters.

The article in question has NOTHING to do with rebills at all, as a matter of fact the word rebill was not even mentioned, not even alluded to, not even a part of the article.

And yes, I saw the draft of the article in full last week at Gary's house.

The article was a series of quotes and commentary on events, taken totally out of context from anything that might have actually occurred in order to sensationalize the industry itself. There is nothing that I recall being all that pertinent to anything in the industry besides domain names being in the least bit a focus.

I will try, I have the worse sentence stucture in the world. Just ask my wife lol I should have her edit my posts like she does with everything else I write.

[Theo]

one more satisfied elitefitness member

[wimpy]

Originally posted by tony404
I have the worse sentence stucture in the world. Just ask my wife lol I should have her edit my posts like she does with everything else I write.

It's good to know your limits.

[tony286]

Originally posted by wimpy


It's good to know your limits.

I am too old to pretend I do everything well. lol I am a powerful speaker but poor writer go figure .

[Interlude]

I don't think the average person out there had a high opinion of porn webmasters to begin with... at best, we're considered no better than pornographers.

[nevermind]

Originally posted by Interlude
I don't think the average person out there had a high opinion of porn webmasters to begin with... at best, we're considered no better than pornographers.

Yeah, it's pretty funny when adult webmasters justify their rebills by using examples like ATT, AOL and DirectTV.

Somehow I think the public has a little more trust in those companies, and rightfully so. Those companies usually deliver.

You can't always say that about the porn industry, as the above mentioned examples demonstrate.

Too many webmasters don't deliver and are downright scammers.

[iroc409]

Originally posted by nevermind


Yeah, it's pretty funny when adult webmasters justify their rebills by using examples like ATT, AOL and DirectTV.

Somehow I think the public has a little more trust in those companies, and rightfully so. Those companies usually deliver.

You can't always say that about the porn industry, as the above mentioned examples demonstrate.

Too many webmasters don't deliver and are downright scammers.

while i don't think it is right to justify one's actions based on the perhaps poor actions of others, ever try and get out of an aol dial-up account? i've known too many friends that were charged for months, even after several attempts to get them to stop service/billing. they even started one guy's account back up after he stopped using it. total bs. i remember another friend had to get different account #'s so the would discontinue charges. that's pathetic and happens all too often.

customer service will always get you a lot further in any business.

[clickpimp]

internet porn has it's share of scumbag cheaters like any other rebill based (especially online) industry.

difference is that gyms, insurance companies, and wsj.com subscriptions are not also stigmatized with cp, rape, torture, beast_lity - and extreme jealousy from those not making bank on human sexuality.

face it, porn has a huge target on it's back, especially with the conservative wave that is on the upswing in the US. the bad is very magnified and the (relative) good is simply overlooked.

[DTK]

Anyones else remember Mondo2000? Debuted around the same time as Wired. They made Wired look like a children's magazine.

[AmeliaG]

Originally posted by DTK
Anyones else remember Mondo2000? Debuted around the same time as Wired. They made Wired look like a children's magazine.

Yes I think Wired was a lot cooler too around the time they had stuff like Mondo2000 and 2600 and Reality Hackers and boing boing etc to be compared to.

[kevinl]

The only real answer is for the credit card companies to require all adult sites have their own merchant accounts and put up a big deposit to get that. That will cut down scammers tramatically. If you require a $10,000 deposit you aren't likely to make much over that scamming. If the feds start locking up spammers who send porn to eight year olds mailboxes and blocking overseas ips for the ones they can't get. And lastly shut down peer to peer file sharing systems that are nothing but "burglar" tools in cyberspace. Shutting down the abiltiy of webmasters to rip off surfers and shutting surfers ability to rip off webmasters is the only way. Then those of us who want a fair price for a good product will be able to enjoy being in business on the net.

[Paul Markham]

Originally posted by clickpimp
internet porn has it's share of scumbag cheaters like any other rebill based (especially online) industry.

difference is that gyms, insurance companies, and wsj.com subscriptions are not also stigmatized with cp, rape, torture, beast_lity - and extreme jealousy from those not making bank on human sexuality.

face it, porn has a huge target on it's back, especially with the conservative wave that is on the upswing in the US. the bad is very magnified and the (relative) good is simply overlooked.

Exactly what I was thinking about saying.

This is the porn industry, do not expect a good press. The adult internet is one of the worse sides of the industry. Because of all the guys out there who treat it like a game.

Drive as many people onto a site as possible, then promise them the earth in the tour and deliver as little as possible. This seems to be the business model of many. Then a URL listing that is fictitious and no means of contact makes it all worse. If the CC processors insisted that we put in an email and contact phone number inside all site taking money it might be better. Also a clearly marked cancellation button might help.

There are many good webmasters out there delivering great value for money, but it?s easier and more sensational to write about the few scum bags.

The harder you make it for the scammers the better for all of us. Because kicking them out will just help the business. It will not lose any surfers it will help us keep them.

But look at some companies attitude to scammers. "So long as you do not scam me I don't care". Companies that refuse to take down content pirates, AC is just one of many, however them ending up in court did serve as a warning to others.

What about the hosts and sponsors that just say "Nothing we can do about it" Which is wrong it should be "So long as the guy makes us money why should we bother GFY"

[Kimmykim]

Dont bother reading the article when it does come out since the majority of you cannot seem to grasp that there is nothing at all about billing practices, rebills, subscriptions, or anything relevant to those topics.

This article is about sensationalistic journalism at its worst. It has very little to do with the industry either, imo.

[nazgul]

I have seen a lot go back and forth about how people are treated in this industry and how the industry looks to outsides.

Now I would like to give you my point of view, since I am an outsider looking in.

I believe the adult industry can teach a lot to corprate america about how to successfully integrate and impliment new technologies. The adult industry has been the catalist for the majority of the technologies that are driving this digital age. The adult industry always uses new and marketing techniques and adapts more quickly to the tech markets in general.

To be honest I spend time on the boards so I can see where the mainstream market will be a few months from now.

That being said, I think that the industry is over looked because of the light the industry like to shine on itself. There is not a week that goes by where there isn't something on the board that is posted about someone stealing someones' webdesign, someone getting called out for not paying bills on time, some new affilate program or credit card processor who is shaving, or some new scandal in general. The biggest problem is that the people in this industry are doing to eachother, and to their partners. There are simply too many fly by nights who come in and scourch the industry for the sake of making a dollar. They don't give a shit about the business, and so the industry suffers.

The simple fact of the matter is that if the adult industry wants to start being looked at for the immense value that it can bring to the digital media, and online market place, and not potrayed as a side show the industry is going to have to clean up its act. Everyone knows the outside world is looking hard at the industry anyway, so it almost has to be run more ethically, if it ever wants to be taken seriously.

My suggestion, stop giving attention to the webmasters who propetuate (god i can't spell) the negative sterotype, and give attention to the webmasters, who help make advances.

To put it bluntly, clean up the bullshit, and the world will start listening and paying attention to the ideas.


Just my 1/50th of a dollar not sure it means much



naz

[AlienQ - BANNED FOR LIFE]

Sounds like a marketing ploy. This is bound to pump magazine sales. I do not know how often an "Article" slips through the cracks before a publishing.
Guess I will buy this edition.

Wired Mag lost its teeth about 5 years ago.

[andi_germany]

Originally posted by kevinl
The only real answer is for the credit card companies to require all adult sites have their own merchant accounts and put up a big deposit to get that. That will cut down scammers tramatically. If you require a $10,000 deposit you aren't likely to make much over that scamming. If the feds start locking up spammers who send porn to eight year olds mailboxes and blocking overseas ips for the ones they can't get. And lastly shut down peer to peer file sharing systems that are nothing but "burglar" tools in cyberspace. Shutting down the abiltiy of webmasters to rip off surfers and shutting surfers ability to rip off webmasters is the only way. Then those of us who want a fair price for a good product will be able to enjoy being in business on the net.

This is totally wrong. People like XPics hurt the business and not Joe Smuck who decides to run a pornsite. The big players that want to earn money in a year and bail are the problem. They would not get discuraged by a 10k deposit but you would kill all real amateurs and many other small niche sites that really make for interesting surfing.