nice post...

:thumbsup

What a crock of shit this is. Why even temporary deactivate an account?? You are fucking with peoples money here. Fuck you and APIC. ""When the webmasters makes an effort"":321GFY
""We give webmasters the opportunity"":321GFY

No, it doesn't work that way. If you accuse someone of something, YOU provide the proof. Unless I woke up in Cuba this morning I am missing something here.

I don't think I will be dealing with anybody who promotes Porncash for some time to come.

Well the APIC should be going to the ISP directly and not to the sponsor. Sponsor's don't have the time to be going back and forth between APIC, the webmaster, and wherever the webmaster purchased/stole the content from to decide what to do.

Choker- In this industry as we all know, we are all responsible for providing the proof ourselves that the images are legal and are licensed. AOL, ISP's, Feds or whoever can make claims and take action against you for images that look under 18 and YOU are the one who has to provide proof they are over 18 not them.

~Alli

Agreed that APIC should be going to the host after all attempts to contact the webmaster directly from APIC has been exhausted. Then and only then should APIC go to the host and the host can contact the webmaster.

As far as any sponsor siding with APIC and doing ANYTHING to a webmasters account without any proof crosses lines myself as a webmaster sees as shady and after a chat with my attorney tonight ILLEGAL.

I guess I will sign up for topbucks and then get ahold of some "borrowed" content. I have an attorney drooling over this one. And yes he has read all the TOS's involved.

Allison up till now everybody has spoken highly of you and your program. And 95% or more of the webmasters on this board believe in keeping everything legal. But I must say you did your program a great diservice today by publicly announcing that this is your company's position. I strongly suggest you go back to the board of directors and fix this policy or I have a feeling you will see a sharp slowdown in reputable webmasters dealing with your company.

:2 cents: + :2 cents: = 4cents but it was needed


JFPDude

How does your attorney feel about you "borrowing content" and attempting to make $ off of it when you don't have a license for it and there for also don't have access to the 2257?

TopBucks' actions don't affect webmasters payments and have nothing to do with accusing webmasters of anything. Rather its passing the word to the webmaster that APIC has an issue with them and needs it to be resolved. If sponsors do support webmasters who use stolent content then there are even Bigger legal issues.

~Alli

Apics a fucking joke!

I am seeing more, and more of these screwups. It's becoming an epidemic!

Ok Guys... GOOD NEWS... TopBucks has made a compromise and would like to announce our <b>new policy towards APIC situations.</b>

We will be contacting the webmaster first asking the webmaster to remove the pictures or provide license info to APIC within 2 days. If we do not get a response within 2 days the account may be temporarily deactivated from log in (again all sales/click stats continue to be logged).

I think this is a very fair compromise and I apologize to anyone who felt our previous policy was too harsh. Thank you for all the webmaster suggestions.

~Alli

BY FAR the funniest thing about this post is how many cease and desists TopBucks used to get back in the day for swiping content.

Alli,
Good move. I know that if I was falsely accused and had to prove myself first to get my account reactivated, I'd move all my traffic that day!!

Bad idea Alli, you should have stuck to your guns, the damage is done and your policy was fair as hell.

To change it now means you are admitting that it wasn't fair, when it was and by doing it spur of the moment after one complaint you're really telling webmasters that despite what you said the policy wasn't very well thought out at all.

I am under the impression that APIC took action agaisnt me because I didn't have a link to the license on the page.
Should I put a link on every site and gallery I make going to a copy of the license agreement?

It's more of us listening to webmaster suggestions. I understand what the webmasters are saying and also understand that APIC is attempting to provide a good service. The compromise still meets everyone's needs

~Alli

WTF< of course it affects webmaster's payments. You might want to stop posting in this thread before you completely swallow that shoe sticking out of your mouth. I just lost all respect for you and your sites. Porncash should do better than this. Why don't they send someone here to explain their position that does not contradict theirself so much. When you deactivate their stats, you just ACCUSED them of cheating. You can hind behind "It's in our interest" crap all you want. Bottom line is you accused them. Not very smart thing to do imo.

Naw...you caved. It looks like you caved, so that's the way it is.

I'm not telling you anything someone with your public relations background doesn't know.

We don't deactivate their stats. We were blocking them from logging in until matters are resolved. <b>We changed the policy to a fair compromise as mentioned earlier.</b> APIC is the one doing the accusing- as a sponsor we really are unable to tell what content is stolen or not

~Alli

That's a good question.

Here's a better question. Will kenny be gettin' the dvd player?

Trying to crack a joke after being under fire? Clever.

Ally, I don't know you and very rarely post here about anything that does not directly effect me. But I hate schoolyard bullies. And APIC is the biggest bully on the playground. Just the fact that after this debacle, you are still using APIC says a lot about you. Do a search on this board about APIC. They are a joke. And you just made yourself a joke by aligning yourself with them. You think the service APIC provides your company is worth the respect and revenues you just lost??? Webmasters have memories like elephants. Well, some of them do anyway. I for one will make it a point not to promote any sponsor that uses APIC.

I'll help.

Don't worry there are 20 newbies willing to take your place.

If the email from Topbucks was more detailed and included a phone number of some other means of contact information rather then being so blunt and harsh, this thread would have never been posted.
Topbucks did however resolve this matter for me.
I still think APIC should have a different means of action besides involving outside parties such as a sponsor.
I am sure that that sponsors would rather not worry about where webmasters get their content from as well.

So fucking what ?? Who the fuck are they, self appointed internet police?? Fuck them and anyone who uses them. You think I am going to defend myself everytime someone complains about me?? Fuck that and fuck APIC. If APIC has proof, then let them show it , else they can go smoke a pole. Just because some dumbass accuses someone of something, does not mean webmasters should have to worry about getting their accounts canned.

BTW, I do respect you staying here and defending Porncash and making things happen. You do have big balls.

:thumbsup

I think it's great that Topbucks still track your clicks and sales during this deactivation period. That's certainly a step up from the way i thought it was. But the lack of good faith for their webmasters is still an issue i feel.

Yea,it kept track of the hits while deactivated, again the email should have been more detailed

Your not getting it Allison... I think a few of your customers and maybe potential customers are trying to tell you... just maybe Topbucks should look at changing there policy.... Myself I do think it is harsh... And it look likes you ar just looking for away to not pay a webmaster... :2 cents:

I have not read all the post yet in this thread yet, but I agree with you 100%... I stopped using Topbucks some time ago.... I know my traffic... I do not send alot of hits to my sponsors...but I do send unigue traffic from search engines... That's all am going to say... about it..

I don't think Allison caved at all. The webmasters spoke and she made a compromise on the policy. Also... it seams some people are confused and think Top Bucks is "using" APIC. From what I understand (with the new policy) they are just taking a tip from someone that they might be dealing with a cheater, checking it out, and then deciding what, if anything should be done about it. Sounds fair to me.

What if someone were to tell you that your sponsor was shaving 50% of your signups? Chances are you wouldn't even give them the chance to explain themselves or prove themselves in the right. You would most likely just cut off their traffic. Top Bucks new policy on this seams about as fair as anyone could ask for in my opinion.

P.S.
I don't personally know Allison or anyone else at Top Bucks. Just calling it as I see.

The point i was making was this. It seems like the webmaster is assumed guilty. I much prefer the way Lensman handled APIC's emails than the way topbucks have.

Hmm, if my conversions weren't doing too well, that would probably be an incentive to stop using them. If i was happy with the conversions, i wouldn't really give a damn. :winkwink:

Choker,

Ummm...it's TOPBUCKS, not PORNCASH... Just thought I'd point that out :Graucho

Hi,

I think there are a couple of problems concerning with APIC and copyright infringements issues in general:

1. Technical tracing issues
Lets say APIC finds a violating image on a freehost. How do they know that the person there does have a license or not?
You cannot tell that by just visiting the site. You would have to contact the freehost owner, email the owner of the freehost account and then request some sort of proof.
Watermarked images won't help, unless they are watermarked exclusively for each URL there are on...
Of course if you are dealing with exclusive pics than the process becomes easier.

2. Legal tracing issues
Lets say a photographer sells his content to a couple of content brokers which sell the content to end users or other brokers.
Does everbody know in this chain what was sold to whom?
Which person to contact in order of copyright infringements?

From my personal experience, I can tell you that I contacted a couple of content providers as I wanted to establish a service specialising in image copyright protection.
The service would crawl the adult web and do image matching with copyrighted images submitted by members.

No one was interested.
Probably the loss through copyright infringements is already included in the price. Or the hassle to find out a sites owner and trace it is too time consuming.

Ha ha! Did you?

2 words: fuck APIC

Technically, it's 8 words. But yes, fuck APIC indeed.

Those fuckers really piss me off!

I have received an APIC violation for content I HAVE purchased. The host missed it to forward me that message. I got it delayed after 4-5 days APIC complained.

So I have proven my license to those pictures to my host and what can I see right now?

Those bastards have cut off my connection through Cogent networks. All of my other domains work, only the affected domain was cut off.

I am really angry right now :feels-hot

You guys should probably send him one to make up for that shit.