We have a database of hash strings, not content. We are not out to validate where the content came from. Once we validate an image, it gets deleted and the hash string is all thats left.

nothing..people will do these kind of deceptive practices, much like singing people up for spam email.

we don't do any of these things.

people today send ASACP leads of suspected Cp sites. it is possible that some people could put one of their competitors in as a lead.

ASACP investigates these leads, then then make some determination as to whether the lead was accurate or not.

Sniffy searches websites based on the URL that the sponsor gave to us...so it's not quite the same thing as you are talking about.


-dj

There are already things you cannot control that burns your bandwidth.

Look at the bandwidth has your contribution towards the fight of CP.

Unless you have some other idea how we can monitor 10 billion pages of websites, I am all ears.

We are not exactly getting paid to join the fight either and we are standing front and center...developing and building ain't free ya know :-)

dj and/or Lee.... Could you drop me an email real quick...

I have a couple of ideas I would like to throw at you NOT for public consumption. Could be very worth your while.


sarettah at hatterasdesigns.com

thanx

:)

Do ASACP and the FBI know you are selling this software to adult webmasters?

I fully understand your point and i certainly understand that if you wish to put measures in place so that sniffy can't spider your site, you have that right.

If one of your sponsor asks us to validate your site, then we will try to validate it. If we can't because you were clever enough to block sniffy, then we just tell the sponsor we couldn't spider the site, and let them figure out what they want to do.

In this whole thread, understand that yes, sniffy downloads images from your website,and analyzes the images, and the only return that we give to the sponsor is if the site is CP, or can't be accessed.


As far as the "leeching"/ download issue, i am sure that if you check your logs, you will find web surfers going through every page of your site, and by the hundreds and thousands depending on your traffic. some may be linking to your images, bypassing your pages, etc... those are the kind of ppl i would think are more of a concern than sniffy.

-dj

Hmm, you are still avoiding some answers here Lee. You said that the product would be following ASACP guidelines, but now you are saying they are two separate products.

You talk about legal issues like CP, and now you introduce words like unethical, which has nothing to do with legal in any sense of the word.

Then you talk about pressure on Andy (and remember, I was in that room in New Orleans putting the pressure on Andy in person, along with our brouhaha on topniche) and now you've gone beyond the scope of legal again.



Last but not least, what do you with sponsors from countries outside the US? Sponsors who live under a different legal system. Should sponsors in Canada be told about affiliates who have sites that show bondage and penetration in promoting another sponsor because thats against the law in Canada?

After all, you keep talking about the relationships here, surely if you can categorize photos, you aren't just doing it with a yes or a no?

thanks for the compliment...

one point that i need to bring up, since it is a key point to this thread, is that plagiarism.org uses keyword searching to find copycats of other people's textual work.

sniffy does not use keyword searching.

thanks for the compliment on sniffy.

-dj

more like a huge collection of data, since images are deleted once they have been validated.

if you are referring to the downloading of images for processing as being "stolen", then you should turn your attention to the millions of web surfers who visit websites and have the website images stored in their cache.

all of that p*rn, stored distributedly across millions of desktops... boggles the mind.

-dj

I do not take your point of views as any form of attack babee :-) its all good.

Quote:

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 can see where there are inconsistencies, but Sniffy Jr. is being loaned to the ASACP, and we step back, so I am not in the know how Joan Irvine and company are going to handle findings.

Quote:

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...

In all honesty, ASACP is our starting point and we hope as a result of Sniffy Jr. within their agency [ASACP] some of these holes can be closed. We hope law enforcement opts to use our tools as well, and further define some guidelines.

But there has to be something universal several agencies can use and we hope to be that solution. This evolution we hope corrects alot of the "grey"....especially with alot more agencies using the tools..

What we are offering sponsors [Sniffy Senior] AKA "Sniffy", is information and flags based on several criteria, what the sponsor does with this information will not be known to us.

We of course understand we need to have this reviewed by counsel.

The techy stuff is always done before guidelines and internal checks, and we have not entered the finite stages yet.

But as we do, we will start a new thread :-)

Thanks KimmyKim for all your input.

We are determined to take this on, or at least start and let time evolve this into a greater welfare for all.

We went to ASACP first and have been in constant communication since we are looking to provide them with our Sniffy Jr. technology to assist them in their current efforts of finding CP websites.

ASACP has the relationship to the FBI. It is through the relationship of the FBI that sniffy looks to associate with.

We don't sell software, we are providing a service that utilizes our suite of tools to analyze images.

-dj

Lee, I think what Kimmykim is referring to are some of the quotes above. How does someone qualify as a "human reviewer"? The technology sounds great but as soon as you introduce the puny human brain to the issue, "errors" in judgement may arise.

Interesting so far though. Work on the marketing a bit more I think....

Here's another thing that might make some webmasters a tad nervous. You are asking a lot of webmasters to put a lot of trust in you and your software, and I am not saying that trust in you isn't justified. But the idea that someone would be databasing or attempting to database every single adult website on the internet for the purposes of legal reasons, lends one to the idea that this could be used for other prosecutions (obscenity?) besides CP if the current administration decided to approach you with such an idea.

-joe

it's the same guidelines as ASACP uses for their own internal site reviewers.

Sniffy Jr. will be on loan to law enforced approved reviewers of some sort, dunno the certification they go thru. Thats a question for ASACP.

Sniffy Sr. the one DJ and I are offering as fee based for the "nice to know" info for our clients, will be trained under our direction.

My background is content. Sniffy sets off flags not weapons :-) This is not an industry WMD :-)

I cannot believe this would make any webmasters nervous.

In an earlier post the gent that watermarked images and/or embedded a string in each image [I think thats what he did] was:

Mark Ishikawa, BayTSP

It was a costly service in the thousands if memory serves me right.

dj thanks for the reply

since our relationship is with the sponsor, we aren't asking webmasters for anything, therefore not asking for any trust type offering.

should be choose to go down some kind of conspiracy-theory idea, then lee and i will approach that when it comes.

there are countless number of spiders that crawl through websites. robot.txt is not the way to stop them. you can't complain to them about not visiting your site and indexing your site, and doing who knows what with the data gleemed.

in this forum, we have identified ourselves as being another spider that visits the site.

if one is paranoid at what we or other people may do with data gathered from visiting a website, then my suggestion is this:

-don't rent videos from blockbuster, they know you rented Glitter.

-don't use tivo, they know you record Hard Ball

=don't use digital cable, they know you channel surf to Cartoon Network and watch PowerPuff Girls

-don't use a grocery shopping card that gives you instant savings, they are tracking your consumption of pudding

-don't use a credit card, they know about the blow-up doll you purchased with the lifelike hair and the school girl outfit.

-don't turn on cookies in your web browser, they know you visited DrSpock.com and you don't even have a kid.

-don't answer the phone, the homeland security has all calls bugged, running them through a monster of a sniffy program that analyzes audio and will know you like to talk dirty on the phone.

-don't open your door, people will see that you hadn't showered in 5 days.




-dj

Anything new or different will do that.

I think people just want answers....there are going to be issues with any service like this....simply because it is new and relatively untested. I hope it does well.

When will you have more information, i.e. a site, or expected launch date, etc, etc.?

I find that entire post quite rude...

If the attitude through this venture is that webmasters must give up their rights for the good of the sponsor so YOU can make your money... Then good riddance...

There are many reasons, other than illegal ones or cheating ones that webmasters choose to control traffic through their sites...

First of all this is a commercial venture... You can go on all day about the Righteousness of it and all that but bottom line is it something to make YOU money... Not the webmaster, not the Sponsor, Not ASACP... YOU...

If you were in this for the morality of it then you would give the technology to ASACP, not be trying to market it...

So, if you want to get some webmaster buy in on it I would suggest you stop dismissing the privacy and rights concerns of the people in this thread as being unimportant because we can trust you guys etc....

I think this is good.

One more spider going through my sites once a week isn't going to break the bank, and at least it's for a good cause this time.

I am a sponsor. But many of the people who promote my sites are also sponsors. The affiliates I speak of aren't my enemy, but people who, in partnership with me, move my and their business ahead..so there is already trust there between us. Yes, many spiders crawl through websites databasing...but you are asking webmasters to hand over their affiliates to you, many of them being sponsors themselves.

These are genuine questions that need to be asked given the current administration, not paranoia. Couldn't your software be re-tooled to hunt down any type of porn the administration wanted to go after?

Are you signing a non-disclosure agreement with sponsors who may use the service?

Would your service never move in the direction of helping the current administration hunt down obscenity and would that be written into the agreement?

Sorry, anyone who isn't paranoid given the current administration is smoking too much weed.

-joe

I agree with what Joe just posted, but in addition...

If you do not get webmaster buy in, it will not work either.

Across the past year or so we have seen the linklists and tgps bring in lots stricter rules.. As ite builders we have to decide whether we want to deal with new rules or cross those sites off of our submit lists.

If webmasters do not like your product, they will avoid sponsors using it, not because they have something to hide, not because they are paranoid, just because that is their right. And of course there will always be sponsors that decide not to go with you on it.

So, if you want acceptance on this, you will either:

1. have to have it legislated down our throat.
2. deal with inadequate coverage because of less than industry wide acceptance
or
3. deal with the privacy and rights concerns of the webmasters

FYI - CECASH has nothing to do with sniffy - just want to make that clear.

Yes, it is commercial and that money goes back into development. The only other strategy is to raise investment dollars, and I am not desiring to go down that road. To date, this project and all resources have been out of pocket.

If you have followed my career over the years, I have been very passionate about ethics and our industry. I do not think my career has entailed a history of profiting from righteousness.

Yes, this is a grassroots beginning, but one has to have a beginning so evolution and collective resource can refine the concept. As it stands we have NOTHING out there.

But don't damn me or our ideas on a narrow mindness I do not possess.

We are giving it to the ASACP, Sniffy Jr which is CP targetted only. The fee based service for the sponsors, link list owners etc. does other "sniffing" that is determined by our clients criteria and this criteria would not necessarily be on interest to the ASACP.

We are not looking at webmasters buying into it, we are simply stating we have developed some tools that various fawcets of our industry may find useful.

You question Sniffy violating your rights? Do the sponsors have the right to know what kind of webmaster they are doing business with?

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Not asking you to trust us per se', we have to prove out.

But if your gonna damn us, damn us for not having come to the table with a beginning point years ago.

Damn those that leave these issues to others to solve.

Either you support this "Beginning" or you do not, thats your choice.

Don't make the mistake of making this thread about you.

hi FM, yes it was a hypothetical question, I hope nobody misunderstood it.

djsniffy or LeeNoga, i have 2 possible technical situations in mind you need to consider. Send me an email to and I'll explain.

Without webmaster support which is the level that controls the traffic, No idea such as this will work.

The sponsors have every right to know who they are dealing with and conversely the webmaster has every right to know about the sponsors they are delaing with. This does not give the Sponsor ultimate rights over the webmaster or vice versa.

I do not damn the idea or you. But for a product like this, which could be positioned in a way to gain my and other webmaster support (ref the request for you guys to email me earlier) to work, it will take industry support, not just sponsor and not just webmaster support.

I dont damn anyone... I happen to have source code that I have written and can pass on at this very moment that does deep searching like this and keys on various words, catalogues images etc.. It is on a windows platform and has not been ported to php as of yet and will not be for a long while. I fully support the concept of self policing.

And the thread is far from about me. And if I read a condescending tone in that that is not intended please forgive me.

I understand the problem, I understand your solution. I understand that the industry can be policed effectively and someone can make money in that effort and all can play nicely together. Once again, that will take industry buy in, not just the sponsor level.

the technology certainly has leap frogged the policy and marketing aspects, as all new tech does.. this is why lee started this thread to get some input.

the comments have been helpful and we are working forward to our launch. still have much work to do, more about policy, etc.

-dj

Few questions after reading all of this tech talk.

If your program is making copies of content, even if said content will be deleted after review, and your company is a profit venture, are you not then profiting off of said content and thus infringing on ones copyright of said content?

Will it stop at the free areas or will it also sniff inside of a pay area? You did mention AVS etc.

You are making a road map of each webmasters entire network of sites. Listing which ones should be reviewed, had flags, etc. You are also dealing with CP and the now underfire adult internet, specially with the upgraded 2257 rules. What is to stop the Government from subpoenaing your database and thus putting many of us in even more risk? We are in an age of proactive politics, i.e. attack before attacked, porn causes cp, etc. So why would they not just love to get their hands on this database, the FBI will know about it afterall?

Privacy laws will be violated unless each sponsor sends out a hardcopy letter to each affiliate informing them of the information that would be, could be, or may be shared with your company etc. There has been a whole slew of new privacy data sharing laws that went into effect, you are aware of them I presume, well are you?

Sniffy visits affiliate site A. Affiliate site A has blocked the hell out of sniffy. Sniffy then reports to sponsor that they could not sniff such site. Sponsor terms affiliate because sniffy could not sniff site A, affiliate looses all traffic income from sponsor. Since sponsor is busy and does not have time to check the hundred or possibly thousands of possible flags that sniffy reports. Maybe sponsor or sniffy have tired and or overworked employees, or maybe sponsor does not wish to hire more people to check flags. Well then did sniffy just cause affiliate finacal harm because affiliate was protecting bandwidth?

Sniffy hits a TGP, TGP has trade script. Sniffy is checking every single link. Gets TGP banned from other trades because of bots. Sniffy just cost TGP money did it not?

Sniffy hits another TGP. TGP has banners for sponsor. Submitter fucked with TGP and altered an image or something. Will TGP get flagged? Then if so, say the reviewer goes to TGP but its been a few days. The images or text is no longer there since it was rotated out or fixed. Does sniffy report to the sponsor but say image and or text has been removed since crawl?

Affiliate runs toplist. Pain in the ass webmasters change text on toplist to something not allowed on wed.. Affiliate updates toplist and checks for rule violations every tuesday. Sniffy visits toplist on thur. it gets reviewed on friday. Sponsor is sent a violation letter, and affiliate is screwed even though affiliate would have removed it on tuesday. How does sniffy handle such instances?

Webmaster has some enemies. Enemies hack webmasters site and place some not so kosher content and keywords on webmasters server. Webmaster is now in heap of trouble thanks to sniffy, webmaster looses all sponsors, and now has no income. Latter prooves it was a hack after long legal battle etc. Would not sniffy be open to a civil suit?

Damn could go on and on.. Lets end there.

Some good points. It's almost like going behind the back of your business associates and turning over personal information on them to a private investigator you've hired to try to find them doing something wrong.

Whether or not you find anything, you may be fucking your business relationships.

Lee, part of your message that I replied to did not come into my quote so I am replying to it here. Please realize that I am doing this with a big smile on my face...

Btw, you probably know me from Oprano as sarettah, just so you are aware who you are conversing with.


"If you have followed my career over the years, I have been very passionate about ethics and our industry. I do not think my career has entailed a history of profiting from righteousness."

I know your career, I have been around in this biz for the past 4 years or so and it is hard to avoid you (we also share a common Navy background). Your career has always been to profit from righteousness :) Everything you do carries with it your righteousness. Without your righteousness you would not be Lee Noga. So, if you have made a profit in this industry on the boards etc. You have profited from your righteousness and rightly so.

:)

And hopefully you take that as a compliment.

A post that i can't easily answer since we are now diving into legal issues.

Excellent points..the very ones that we are now contending with, which is why we started the public forum, rather come blazing in saying we have the grand-poo-baa of ideas and this is the way it is going to be.

It is with our intention not to harm the industry, but rather than help, but all to true that good intentions could cause harm.

Your concerns are duly noted and will be studied further so that we can establish those answers not just for this board, but for ourselves as well.



-dj

Personally I want the views of the Sniffy owners, not what your legal team tells you to say. This is America and I can find as many lawyers as you can that will say the opposite of what yours do. Legalities are like a 12 round boxing match with both fighters promoted by Don King, and 3 of his friends for judges. Unless you get Don Kings opinion you have no idea who may win.

Just to clarify a touch.. The code I have was written while working on a tgp/linklist project that I have shelved for the time being...

But, it was written to do basically the same thing you are attempting at a smaller level to address several list owners concerns about these same problems.

So other people are concerned, other people have been working on it.

Not all of us posess the industry clout or the wherewithall to attract the attention that you do or the marketing skills to make it all happen.

:)

LeeNoga
dj_sniffy

you have ICQ contact info / email addys?

Sarah Darling, nice to know who I am talking too. I wish my righteousness was profitable. I have to cross political lines often and there is no pill for that kind of motion sickness. My crashing seminars at CyberNetExpo was an ugly thing, a high political risk suicide. My holding AVS companies accountable for giving the surfers the ability to surf on un-ethical words was a political nightmare.

Thank-you for the compliment but I want to believe my "passion" for issues is what drives me.

I have no problem going where others have not gone before, there is something about being a moving target that thrills me. Pulling shrapnel out of my ass is still a favorite past time of mine but without question entering the fires for the overall good of the industry is my sincerity and not love of money to line my wallet.

As you can see there are alot of issues we have to deal with.

But it is all pointless if the concept is not built upon.

We are guilty of having taken on an "entry point" in this matter.

So much has to be weighed out, the benefits have to outweigh the risks.

The industry will determine the fate of Sniffy, ultimately. Thank-you for the chance to develop this convo with you on the side.

This thread has been wonderful, some great points raised.

lolol.... sarettah is a guy :) but thats ok, I get it all the time (ass backwards version of hatteras..last duty station)

Anyway... I wanted you to know that I do appreciate the idea.. I just think there are some kinks in the plan..

If you ever want some ideas that I think might make this more palatable and more profitable just drop me an email :)

sarettah at hatterasdesigns dot com

Take care... I think I am out of here for the night...

Fuck Lee.
Fuck Sniffy.
Fuck Sniffy Jr.
Fuck the dj.
Fuck any sponsors who use it.
Fuck badboy records.
and FUCK YOU TOO.

Self-righteous pretentious assholes whose only real goal is to profit by paranoia.

Sniff this.
:321GFY

Brujah, what took you so long to get here? Now run off and finger another thread, so many threads and only one Brujah.

Sorry. Spongebob Squarepants was on.

got it thanks.