your observations are right on target. It is true that anyone could write such a program as you described, but no one has.

It's true that you could have a volunteer army of validators, that's our plan, but no one is doing it.

as a sponsor, or webmaster, you don't have the time, energy, or interest to take on such a task.

i'll give you the point that we are using low tech, and even lower tech... it's actually in our favor. Low tech solutions have always gone the test of time, whereas high tech ideas have crashed and burned.

We are using old technology (md5) and even older technology (human beings), to solve this problem.

While we do have our own technology that i will not categorize as "high tech" given this discussion, it neverless does the job and doesn't have dust on it.

One thread that hasn't popped up yet, is whether this issue of combating CP is a problem to be solved.

Here we are saying that the sniffy service will take on huge loads of work in validating images, a process that any tgp scripter could do and an army of volunteers could implement, which no one has done, and believing that we have a solution that is proactive and solves the problem that CP does exist on websites.

The other stance in our belief is that sponsors are sensitive to the notion of supporting any CP affiliate website with their dollars, from a legal to ethical perspective.

if a sponsor sees this as an issue, then we are providing a solution. It will be up to the sponsor to sign sniffy up for the job. For the affiliate webmaster, it's all about compliance with the sponsor's requirements. If the sponsor doesn't want any CP affiliates, then part of the deal that an affiliate agrees to, is that a third party validation of the website will be done and on a continual monthly basis (in a non-intrusive way), to certify that the afiiliate is in compliance.

if a webmaster has something to hide, it will show up by what sniffy finds, or in their actions to try to thwart sniffy. We are not here to judge the affiliates, we are here to serve the interests of the sponsors.

The sponsors will have the discussions with the affiliate webmaster as to why sniffy has red flagged them.

On a prior post about having a false-positive on an affiliate and turning them in to the sponsor, that situation could not happen unless CP material was on the site.

if an image is in question where it might be 18+, and deemed by the reviewer as potential CP, there are other layers above the reviewer that will further qualify. We are in no way, resting a webmaster's reputation on what 1 person thought was CP images. There will be many checks and balances to ensure that.

-dj

My bad .... "High tech" was a subjective word to use. Was trying to draw the parallel that our efforts are a combination of "code" [scrubs 3600 sites and hour] and a human element for image verification.

Great this thread is being analyzed, and I will chose my words more carefully :-)

Everyone thought it was great when LightSpeed starting scrubbing URL's, you can look the thread up in history here.

Week later Lens from adult.com announced he was proactive and was doing something against his affiliate program.

Are they the only sponsors pro active?

In response to FarleyHiggins:



You are right in your statement that you have the right to monitor who comes to your site, and you can and should, block those that abuse your site and ban their IP.



As far as the big brother comment about using the info gleamed from your website and presenting it to a sponsor to determine what sponsors you are using, your traffic , etc... our sponsors don't get any of that information. The output of the use of sniffy is simply a red flag that points to one of their affiliates that has CP material. Nothing more. Now the broad analysis of data that you mentioned is very much like what banner companies like double click, gator, etc use to their advantage... we don't mine that kind of data. our db schema is looking at files and files only, we aren't into spying data analysis. if someone else is, then they will write their little scripts and do their own spidering of your websites.

Sniffy is indeed a commercial venture, but it's existance is not to create unfair competitive practices for sponsors, or to spy on a webmaster. It's purpose is to ensure compliance to a no-CP tolerance policy that a sponsor has put in place.

When you asked about what's going to keep us from being abusive with our data, in relying on our good name.. yes indeed, Lee Noga has a solid reputation in the industry and her own personal drive to remove CP. Yes, it is her integrity that is combined with technology (our low, low technology) that is a service that is meant to serve and to deter, not cause paranoia or division.


To your point about hackers wanting to steal our data, as with any computer that is connected to the internet, there is always that risk. our solution is what we deem necessary to protect the data (ie. database isn't internet connected). The images are deleted once they are validated, so on one hand, we could be the world's largest collection of adult content that some adult=content loving hacker would want to set his targets on us, but nothing here to see after it has been seen.


I understand your issues about using "hacker" tactics to access images. The only tactic so far, is to use the referer, but that's what all web browsers do anyways when retrieving images so it is legitimate.

I can certainly agree that any guerilla-vigilante style approaches will not justify the means. We already have the RIAA and MPAA trying to get congress to allow them to hack back at people, which in my opionin is riciculous to think that one illegal activity deserves another.


If a webmaster makes their content available for viewing via the web, then it is fair game for sniffy to retrieve, afterall, he acts just like a surfer, so it isn't fair to put up a discriminating stance. now if sniffy were causing you harm, and downloading your images every second and causing you to have server slow down, denial of service, etc... then i could certainly understand trying to proactive in shutting sniffy out. If that ever were to happen, then i would be the first one to deal with this out of control spider, but the way it is built, there is containment and not a viral spreading approach of jumping to each and every link....

If you feel that because you know a "non-surfer" is visiting your site, and indexing your images, and you feel some kind of invasion of property, then of course you are entitled to do what you think is right. But sniffy isn't intended nor designed nor implemented to cause damage.

i don't have any rebuttal for a webmaster's moral issue of wanting to block sniffy, not because they may be hiding something, but because of the principal... that would be your issue.

there are far more other websites to index, then worth a few hand full of paranoid webmasters to try to find hacking methods to get to their data.


i think the posts here have been great points, and i hope that Lee and i have answered them, afterall, this was the reason for the public forum to discuss our solution to a problem.

Given no chatter on the position about the problem, then maybe the problem is real and does exist, so now the analysis is on what solution or solutions will solve the problem.

There will be many solutions, all useful in their common goals. Sniffy is not the only way to do things, But if each of these efforts do their part, then the collective goal is achieved.


I believe there is little to be loss other than a few webmaster's moral ground issues, and a tremendous amount to be gained.


-dj

Excuse people for being a little skeptical (and rude) but there are some loose ends you have to tidy up. Kudos to coming in here and answering these questions....and I have lots more.

In seeking to eliminate the threat of cp, you are creating a powerful data analysis and surveillance tool capable of alot more than just keeping things "legal". Youre asking for 100% access to webmaster sites and servers. You need a little bit more than "I've been in business since 1995" to prove the validity of your product.

Will you be signing non-disclosure agreements with those webmasters you do business with? You'd also have to COVER YOUR ASS by signing non-compete agreements in case you are involved with any other adult online firms. Are you now involved with any adult site, etc? Because I smell conflict-of-interest.

Will you be selling or renting the information you compile to anyone? You've mentioned you are forming relationships with representatives of law enforcement - will the nature of that relationship be limited to the exchange of cp information only? Will you contract out your data analysis service to anyone else?

Sorry if i missed this in the details - lots to read :)

But who decides what is inappropriate? For example some people feel that the words "young teen" would be innapropriate, however its a very widely used phrase to market legal teen sites. Also while the nudism sites or the fully clothed real underage sites are certainly not my cup of tea they are protected by free speech.

In otherwords who sets the line in the grey sand? who ultimatly makes the rules? Do you go by the strict letter of the law or by personal taste and oppinion?

Thanks! Also wasnt there an actuall image scanning technology that someone was pitching to the content producers that actually did scan and recoginze the images? Forgot the name but he was big a couple years ago. Had some good CP detection properties as well i believe.....

Just my
:2 cents:

And i do commend you for trying something to combat the problem...just giving some food for thought......

The software sounds interesting, particularly the part about searching out stolen images, but since the main point is to stop people from profiting off of CP in what you called a noble pursuit, why not offer it at cost to webmasters? Maybe I sound a bit cynical, but at this point too many people make too much money off the negative side of porn. It's become a billion dollar industry all to itself.

I have heard of some image comparision software from the Univ of Berkley that can achieve a high success rate even after an image has had a gausian blur applied, with cropping and resizing being much simpler.

The task is herculean either way. I would suggest waiting til the proper tools are available. The internet has 8-10 billion pages.
There are plenty of places to hide.

I would imagine that labour costs would be through the roof, even with Eastern bloc reviewers.


Good luck none the less.

this sounds like a huge task and has as a primary effect to fight against the ones using your sponsors and content in illegal sites right? I do not know how often does this happen. I do understand though that everyone would like give an end to it.......BUT

If you spend the same time and money going after the CP sites and the processors behind them I'm sure you'll achive more. This sites take VISA and mastercard credit cards you know. Honestly I never understood why nobody ever managed to give a final end to CP sites. Stop their various billing procedures and you are done. There's lack of common, organized attempts on this and the problem will remain unsolved.

I can't speak about the techonology you prepare since I don't know the technical details, but I can guess it will be more than easy for the criminals to trick it. Brightmail was developing some 6 years anti spam filters with close to 40 people perm. stuff working on it. They released their techonology few months ago in an effort to save hotmail and msn from spam.... Within a week the inboxes were full again.

Ok I'm confused here, and I'm not much for tech...

But if there are a whole bunch of images out there named pic1, pic2, pic3 and they are all the same size for instance, then how would your system discern between all the pic1s to know what was what?
For every person that renames the same picture differently you are going to have to review the same picture again and again in order to continue to catalog it?
And this is before they are resized, recompressed etc?

Be simple in the response here, I'm a technical dunce...

in response to MrPopup




On your point about us building up a potential powerful data analysis tool, yes that could be one possibility. how we handle the data is a sensitivity and privacy issue.

You wrote that we were asking webmasters for open access to their content... we aren't asking the webmasters anything. we are actually asking the sponsors to hire us to monitor their affiliates. whether the affiliate consented to the monitoring by the sponsor, or was a term of condition, it's not our issue. i don't mean to sound crass here when i say we don't need the webmaster's permission to visit their site. Web surfers don't ask permission of the website to view it. you don't ask permission from Billboards to view their signs on the side of the road. As webmasters, you open your property for visitors to come in. If the visitor is being bad, you ban them. If sniffy is being bad, you block him. But since sniffy is to be a good guest, it shouldn't be that much of an issue.


Since our business involves the sponsors, we aren't working or conversing to each individual webmaster, nor needing to make any arrangements with them.




>Will you be selling or renting the information you compile to anyone?


the data gathered from the sniffy operations goes first to serving the sponsor in only relaying to them of a red flag occurence of CP material, nothing more. secondly, the data can and will be used for whatever directions we feel the data serves. could it be used for evil? no. are we going to spy on webmasters, no. are we going to figure out what we can do with the data besides monitoring for CP, yes.


>You've mentioned you are forming relationships with representatives of law enforcement - will the nature of that relationship be limited to the exchange of cp information only?


yes, but that relationship is better served through ASACP. ASACP is spearing the effort to unite webmasters against CP, and already have the working connections to law enforcement. we look to be a service solution that is a commercial venture, but also directly supports ASACP efforts.

ASACP receives thousands of leads every month in people who report CP sites. Sniffy is to be one of those group of people.



>Will you contract out your data analysis service to anyone else?

no, our data is used for internal purposes.


in much like how open source software is scrutinized, i personally appreciate you and others responses. while we are not opening our source code for review, we are trying to explain and discuss our solution to the problem.

there are so many issues and challenges that we will face, and you have certainly presented some great questions for us to think about. it is with this debate and discussion that helps us to understand the bigger picture.

on one hand we are saying, "trust us, Lee Noga has been around for a long time, and she has always held her integrity". we are not saying we are some outside, mainstream dot-com, looking to come into this space and throw alot of buzz words. we are saying we are from within the industry, have a possible solution, and also, looking to be a for-profit venture.


the more that this industry self-monitors, the less invitation it offers for congress to legislate. we have already seen their attempts at trying to ban the industry... we should look more towards their intent, rather than the methods.. they are trying to protect children and minors, but maybe their methods are heavy handed (shout out to the ACLU and EFF). Lee and I do believe that sniffy does provide one type of self-monitoring that will first protect the sponsor, but in the bigger picture, help to promote to congress and to mainstream that the adult industry shares same bedfellow values of protecting minors from CP.


-dj

Ah good old Brightmail.

Within a week some people had better thruput on their spam mail than they'd had in 6 years ;)

Here lies one possible problem. Suddenly you aren't looking for illegal conent, now you're looking for people that you think might be trying to trick people into thinking they are promoting underage content.

Are you looking to solve the probelm of child porn, or are you trying to be the moral police?

Someone with the word "young" on their page is not breaking the law or harming children. Someone with a picture of child sex is. Which one are you going after?

If you are strictly going after child porn, that's one thing. If you are going to use your Big Brother machine to try to be the moral police, then you're no better than the Christian Coalition or any other group like that.

In simple terms, "Yes". If the image is cropped or is resized it will be given a different MD5 string [MD5 strings are 32 characters], if Sniffy does not recognize the MD5, it treats the image as a new image and it needs validated.

Our database is not of the images, but instead the hash strings.

So the image is not really a duplicate at the bit and byte level, just to humans who reason the similiarities :-)

Side note: If image is renamed, the md5 is still the same. Only by changing the bits of the file, not the filename, will the md5 value be different

When Senator McCain used the word "obscene", it caused such a debate as you just said. what is "cp", what is "adult" and obsene?


We have our own guidelines, and absorbing other ideas for determing what is CP, but it's like this, the average person knows when they see p*rn. People who make the arguement about art being seen as porn, etc... is valid, but it comes down to what is the intent of the imagery.. using Sexual Harassment guidelines, if it is of sexual intent, or creates an uncomfortable environment, then it is objectionable or obscene.

corporate america has gotten to the point where pics of women in bikini's and victoria secret catalogs are not allowed and possible grounds for sexual harassment lawsuits for women who feel those pcitures make men look at them in a sexual way, etc.

For sniffy, the issue is about CP, and determing if an image is CP, where the image shows a person that is young but really 18, is the place where guidelines are to be followed. we could say that if someone is exhibiting or promoting images that makes one believe they are underage, then that could be flagged as CP. Our guidelines are basically the ones that ASACP uses, so we look to them for guidance.



-dj

We are targetting sponsors as the people who would pay for this service. The webmaster doesn't gain anything about being "certified" to not have CP, since most are clean anyways, and if there was CP, they were the ones that put it on there.

As someone wrote before, that couldn't some tgp scripters do the same as we are proposing? yes, they could, but no one has done it, and the answer is most likely, not worth their time. it is a huge undertaking as many have commented on, but we feel we want to tackle the mt. everest of images, so it is with our folly that we chase the wind mills, but.. being rational and logical people, we do feel it is possible to do our task, but such a task is expensive and has a cost.

if there was grant money from the governement, then such a service could be for free, much like how gov't gives money to the arts endowment so we can see exhibits of the cross in urine.

not sure what you mean by people making billions off of porn and being negative. consumers want to see pictures, webmasters provide it to them and make money. sponsors provide affiliate dollars, and make money. our service is targetted towards the sponsors, who wish to look after their legal and moral issues of supporting potential CP. the stigma of negativity comes with the CP related stuff that dirties up the image of the adult industry.

So for sponsors, they could decide that spending X amount of dollars to ensure non-CP compliance will get them Y. There is no Y, you can't put a value on it...all a sponsor can choose to decide with their dollar, is to say they feel that spending X will go towards a bigger good that is good for everyone from A to Z.


For those that just hate the idea of what sniffy is doing, you could rally up and protest with your sponsors and boycott them should they elect to use the service. One spin could be that trying to boycott a sponsor because of sniffy, means support for CP, but let's not go there.

Our capital marketplace will determine if sniffy is to be a successful venture. Your opinions certainly do matter, and you have ability to support or boycott your sponsor should they elect to use sniffy. This kind of thing goes on everyday, so it's no different in internet-space.

we do stand by our integrity and purpose, and we look to the sponsors to support the efforts, otherwise, there is no sniffy.

if that happens, then, we will always say that we tried, but the problem wasn't worthing paying to solve.



-dj

Sniffy has the capability of reporting back to the Sponsor information they deem important. If a sponsor wants to know who is promoting certain trigger words, we can tell them. We are not going to base the flags on the findings of one or two images. There are other checks and balances. If the webmaster is wanting to promote underage content, there will be more than images on that site to sugget this, and we will be able to key in on those areas as well.

If this is what the sponsor has asked us to Sniff, than its the sponsors that want to know this, not us passing moral judgement.

We are a suite of tools, that can give a sponsor, SE or linklist specific feedback. We believe Sniffy can be part of a multi-part solution to CP. If a sponsor wants to know who is using underage marketing promotions, we will report that info back.

The sponsors decide what they want and they decide what they will do when Sniffy gives it to them.

We are not going after anyone. Some sponsors may decide not to have affiliates who use certain trigger words on their site or in their URL's. If we come across CP images, we will be acting under the guidance of the ASACP on how to handle this finding. We report data to our clients, we do not take action against any webmaster.

Our mission is to combat CP, report back to sponsors data based on set criteria they choose. If the sponsor wants a deep scrub and review of their affiliates, are you not going to do business with this sponsor who has some potential liability?

If a webmaster gets pinched, challenged etc, the site becomes a snapshot to the enforcers, no sponsor wants their banners on a high risk site because the beer may spill out of the glass onto their shirt.

All the features and potential of Sniffy will be a direct response to the needs of the sponsors and our clients.

How can this be a bad thing and have a negative impact on our industry?

Well, not to throw another wrench in the works here, but who's definition of CP are you going to be using in this process?

There is the legal definition and of course then there are varying degress of moral definitions... as discussed in this thread the other day...

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...ighlight=asacp

Call me a cynic, but do you think sponsors really care about their traffic sources?

Enforcing t&c is great for retaining revenue that you dont pay the 'cheating webmasters', but a sale is a sale.

If an entity gets pissed off with a sponsor, and has some clout, the sponsor turns around and says "it wasn't me, it was an affiliate, i will cancel his account without pay".

I don't know a sponsor that assumes liability for the activity of its affiliates.

:1orglaugh

Why would anyone go there when you just did?

Maybe someone will invent a script to track down spammers and then all sponsors will ban them. :1orglaugh

Holy shit, that's a good point you make Richard.

Quite frankly if a sponsor takes it upon themselves to assume any liability for anything their affiliates are doing, then does that not open the door for them to be liable for the rest of their affiliates and their marketing?

For instance, had the CEN vs AOL case regarding email spam not been settled, and had it actually gone to court with a win for AOL, I always said you would see the demise of the system as we know it -- courts would then have precedence to hold sponsors and processors that made affiliate payouts responsible for actions that their non-employees had made supposedly on their behalf -- knowingly or unknowingly.

Boy wouldn't that have been the end of the affiliate system.

Pedo develops website. The cops bust the site. The media throws it up on the front page of their website and makes it their headline on the 6pm news. The public becomes outraged and sends in more money to organizations to combat CP. Someone develops more software to hunt it down. It's a giant circle. Yes..it sounds cynical, but people make money off of CP without ever selling it.

The other side of it is that every day I have to verify new webmasters websites to make sure they don't have any crap on it and god forbid someday I come across one that has CP. The sponsor gets stuck in a situation of either checking each webmasters referring URLS and taking the chance there might be CP on there that is then is then cached on their computer, or just ignoring it altogether. For me I guess I would be a lot more comfortable in using the software if you just came out and said something like...

"The software works like a dream and yes we want to make a shit load of money too."


-joe

In last months issue of AVN in the legal column it talked about the pill pushing prescriptions websites, and that some states like Nevada will prosecute affiliates. This particluar case was in CA., and CA, does not believe in contributory prosecutions. The article went on to infer there are other states like Nevada but did not mention them. Case of if sponsor gets pinched, so do the affiliates.

I know this is not the same thing..

But why did Lightspeed and Lens take a stance with their affililates sceening for certain triggers? Everyone applauded this.

Mr. Popup,

i can't believe you just fell for the old trick of throwing out the bait and waiting for someone to pounce.

well since you brought it up..... *getting up on the soap box*


just kidding!

-dj

in order to not plagerize joe:


The service works like an ethereal trance and yes we want to make some kind of living from it.


-dj

I understand your point, there was a prior AOL case where AOL said they don't monitor email, so therefore they can;t be liable for email contents.

I agree that a laissez-faire attitude is what most are going, but it doesn't seem reasonble to say just because you have your head in the sand, that a problem doesn't exist.

Being proactive does not mean condoning the CP acitivity, or placing one in liability, but then again, i don't have a law degree.

Yours and Richard;s points are very valid points, ones that the sponsor's attorneys will be able to answer.

Attention attorneys for sponsors, the question is:

By subscribing to a service that looks to scan the sponsor's affiliate websites, does that put the sponsor in any liability for being proactive?

I think that as you pointed out, there is a disconnect between the activities of the affiliate and the sponsor. the feds will bust the the CP violator, and may not have a case to mess with the sponsor...

but ignorance of their activity may not be excusable in the eyes of the law.

so sniffy proposes to be on one side a potential proactive deterrant to federal sniffing by the feds by showing an attempt to not support CP, and then on the onther side, a moral issue of just not wanting to know that the sponsors $$ are supporting CP.

A previous post wrote that why would sponsors care if an affiliate was supporting CP and sending them traffic?

Great question for the sponsors seeing how our entire proposal is based on this very question and belief that sponsors would care.

Sponsors? your feedback?

-dj

it's an effort trying to reduce a problem and if it's done properly i'm sure it will be more than welcome by everyone.

There are too many concerns though.

"We are not going after anyone. Some sponsors may decide not to have affiliates who use certain trigger words on their site or in their URL's."

I'll raise some questions to consider.

We have a sponsor X submitting you a request to report all affiliates you trace that use the keyword "young sex" in their sites. Ok? Your scripts find let's say 15 violators which you report in detailed back to the sponsor.

Do you share with the rest members of your service the specific violators of the TOS of the sponsor X or not?

Policing the industry is risky and has more than one side.

"Young sex" keyword might be against the TOS of some sponsors (i dont know), but it is considered a legal and ucceptable keyword under all major pay per click search engines like overture and adwords, under yahoo directory and so on. On the other hand you see MOST major per signup sponsors hiting the surfers with exit and entrance consoles advertising escort sites and animal-girl-farm sites. These major traffic sources in case you submit a paysite having such consoles decline your submission and if you further speak to them about such cases they tell you that the sponsor people should pay few more hours with their legal representative before adding such type of advertising in order to make few extra bucks.

Now pay attention on the difference:

These reputable traffic sources decline your keyword or your sponsor, but do not discontinue any business activity with you. On the other hand, the affiliate program will cancel your account and probably share your info with other sponsors.

How fair is it to have a sponsor program that might cancel your account for a such keyword violation (im not reffering to CECASH,it's a hypothetical case) while in the past the SAME sponsor decided to add "girls fucking animals"?

The "girls fucking animals" is a real case that happened few months ago and made me look like a fool towards the SE representative when I told him none major adult sponsor is stupid enough to do such thing. Of course I was wrong.

Let's switch roles now and get the case that PPC engines decides to cancel accounts that violate their TOS. Exactly same cases with sponsors. Do you have an idea in what position can you bring someone when he will have his mainstream and adult accounts canned because one of you decided to put up again some escort or fake beastiality site?

As far the content cases there will have a lot of fun. Two major content providers cannot decide a whole week here if they have the right to resell or not part of their content, although they have in hands the legal papers. We have sponsors buying content, building paysites and taking them down because they find out later that the content provider was illegal reselling the content.

Decisions on the fly in similar cases will cause more problems than you can imagine.

Without having read the whole thread, this seems like an impossible project. Here's why:

Your bot will "sniff" for words like underage, child porn, etc.

Something you will find on many, many sites (if not most):

<i>This site and it's owners strongly condemn child porn. None of the images used on this site contain any underage models.</i>

or maybe:

<i>If you are underage you are not allowed to enter this site.</i>

Now, ofcourse you are using human reviewers as well. The problem with that is that you will get way too many false positives to even consider reviewing them all, unless you are planning to use a huge army of reviewers.
Ofcourse, there's also the problem of those reviewers having to be able to watch cp legally (otherwise, you will end up with a huge army of imprisoned reviewers), so, now you need an extremely large amount of reviewers who are able to watch cp legally. Fat chance of that happening.


One thing you *could* do is use md5 hashing on known cp images, and just search for those. Ofcourse, it would require the support of law enforcement, but it seems like the only viable option.

Nope, this is not the same thing. For starters you are talking about someone selling a purported medical product without a license and while making false claims for that product. That falls under about 5 different federal statutes and agency acronyms.

Website subscriptions are a very different animal, Lee, so let's just pretend that you didn't compare the two.

CP is enforced technically by one office at the federal level, US Customs, though the FBI can and does take a proactive approach in attempting to wrest control of the situation from them, as they do with anything else they dip a finger into.

The question still remains unanswered regarding just what definition you are using as a baseline for your 'flagging' and 'reporting' with your 'watchdog' -- are you truly using the legal basis for this? Keep in mind I am not making a moral instance out of the whole thing, since my personal opinions are just that -- I am talking about a direct correlation with the law as it is written and enforced at the federal level?

Why did Lightspeed and Lensman make changes to their programs TOS? Well, my guess would be because they own those programs and have the right to do so in their very own terms. Beyond that I will not speculate on why they make their decisions, my name isn't Mrs Lightspeed or Mrs Lensman, and its not any of my business.

the only weapon todays webmaster needs.

http://www.cybernetic.demon.co.uk/images/ED209.jpg

State of the art ED-209.

I deleted part of your text, but do agree with all of your points.

One major factor for which sniffy differentiates itself from other solutions, is that it is not based on KEYWORDS. Your post was referring to using keywords to segment and tag websites, and potentially leading to problems.

There are plenty of scripts that scan for keywords and will give these kinds of false-positive results are pointing out.

in sniffy's case, the website will be judged by many levels of testing, the most important being the actual validation of the image. I think that using keyword searches is a good first level check, but that just helps to focus your attention and priorities, rather than as THE solution to use.

So if sniffy finds CP images, and the reviewers deem the image is CP (ASACP guidelines, etc), then it's CP on the site! There are no false-positives in this approach. I do see there is a potential gray area about what is "CP", but as long as the guidelines are followed, then that keeps things atleast predictable.

Sniffy would simply tell the sponsor that a URL in their program has CP. The sponsor will check it out for themselves, using the facts that sniffy created, then make their judgement whether to warn the webmaster, or turn them into ASACP.

That's all that sniffy gives to the sponsor. So if the sponsor wants to rail a webmaster for having CP, it's not because of sniffy, it's because when the sponsor went to take a look, they saw the CP themselves, and took whatever course of action they deemed necessary.

so, sniffy isn't a cop, it's not policing, policing means enforcement, sniffy doesn't enforce, it informs.

-dj

there is certainly alot of text to read, alot of my very verbose responses, so i can understand not being able to read the entire thread.

what you missed was that sniffy searches based on human validation of images... we don't use keyword searches.

your idea about taking a known collection of CP material and using those hashes to help validate is a great idea. it does require convincing the FBI, the largest collector of CP images, to allow us to index their images.... this is already a consideration point for us to track down.


-dj

True. If sponsors had the ability to be informed via our offerings would they change their TOS?

We have no idea, but if they want to we have a suite of tools. We provide information, they do what they want and its NONE of our business :-)

Your answer to the CP standards in in DJ's post, the guidelines are the guidelines of the ASACP.

You have the blessing of Omni Consumer Products to undertake this mission.

Perhaps with something as emotional as CP, sponsors may feel as though it is their duty to be proactive (or at least block traffic from such sites). However, extracting a domain from an HTTP_REFERER header is not exactly rocket science, why weren't sponsors doing this X years ago?

(and in that vein, spidering an http_referer is equally trivial).

Ask me no questions, and i'll tell you no lies.

Another technical point - what stops me framing someone, by faking hits from 'lolita.com' into his sponsors account? Or conversely, that same person claiming that he is being framed?

we as webmasters have to right to do anything and everything we can, to block programs like yours from downloading the contents of our servers...

it was just a few days ago i came across a thread where someone made a program that goes in and downloads images/videos off websites, and then people with this program get free access to it... everyone was outraged at this program, and I dont see much difference in yours....

I am against CP, but im also against anyone or anything that is going to download my site and burn my bandwidth, like your program will do.

Don't take my questions as an attack Lee, they are not. I am simply looking at points that I find to be very flammable, so to speak, down the road.

If we go back and refer to the thread above that I linked to, if I recall correctly, that ASACP did not like the site that was mentioned, and had reported it multiple times to Customs but were told it was not illegal. Therefore it stands to reason that possibly the guidelines on ASACP's site are not in perfect alignment with those of the law?

I want YOU to tell me what YOUR guidelines are, unless ASACP owns this product and will be the ones assuming liability for any damage done to either webmasters or sponsors from its use...

Based on Lee Noga's description it seems that this technology is similar to the tech developed by www.plagiarism.org (for a different purpose altogether)

Good job on the innovations and keep pushing the limits of tech

So you guys are going to have a HUGE database full of stolen content?

Hold that thought Richard, Dj will want to respond to your post.

I think we are getting 2 products mixed up here.

Sniffy Jr. will be a tool on loan to the ASACP, they are already under the umbrella of the FBI, which keeps us out of prison stripes.

Sniffy who I guess is the senior is a suite of tools to scrub a sponsors affiliate program for triggers they request from us. We look under their hood with the capability of reviewing images.

It would be great if eventually the ASACP umbrella would protect Sniffy Senior in the event we accidently find an unethical site.

Not all sponsors have any clue or the time to crunch the data to determine where all their banners are etc. We are suited for sponsors, Search Engines, Link lists etc.

I would love to sniff Sextracker.

In 1999 my old resource site put some heat on AVS, and alot of good came of it. They removed the search words, "lolita" and others. I also put some heat on Sextracker to stop the ability to search on unethical search terms, they complied under pressure.

That was a start back then, 4 years have gone by and we still had no monitoring tools. Its a cumbersome job, its mammoth and who wants to do it?

But if a third party can do it for you, does it have value?

If nothing else, we have at least developed Sniffy Jr. for ASACP use, the rest of the tools are a start [Sniffy, fee based service] as well. Don't get ASACAP Sniffy Junior mixed up with what we are offering sponsors etc.

Does it matter to some webmasters whether a sponsor has opted for a compliance check by Sniffy. Would that compliance build a better relationship between a sponsor and affiliate?

Personally speaking, if I had an affiliate program I would use every tool available. It would be my moral fabric that dictated how my program operated.

But thats me, and you are you :-)