FTP

Thank you for your words of support, what a lot of people don't follow is I really am passionate about this industry but I am not blind to our problems, particularly the self inflicted ones.

I have had a lot of people suggest I run for the board some sarcastically but many more seriously. I appreciate that some of you do recognize that I have a common sense approach and that I would be an asset but the truth is that I dont believe I could fix it. Short of disbanding it and starting over with something new that has a more focused approach and a real plan complete with accountability at all levels including financial.

I absolutely disagree with any kind of forced donation because thats why the FSC is the blunder that it is. Any organization should have to earn its members, it keeps them honest and being the Libertarian I am I could never support a hike in already too high processing rates.

Lets give an example here I recently turned 50. as soon as I got the opportunity I joined the AARP. Even though I dont agree with all of their agenda I see the value of this organization. It represents me and my interests, there is full accountability, I get weekly updates on what things they are involved in. I even sent them a donation.

Same with the NRA and the ACLU I may be the only person on earth who contributes to both. But I know that the money I give is being used wisely.

Now the idea behind the FSC is a noble one and I was a member and I contributed as well as donated time in the past. Nobody turned me against the FSC, the FSC turned me against the FSC. I have seen it said here that our industry NEEDS a trade association but that statement is wrong. What our industry needs is an EFFECTIVE trade association that works for the good of the entire industry, from performers to company owners. The FSC is NOT and never has been that organization.

You mention .xxx we all know that money would have gone into a black hole called icmregistry who had no intention at all of doing anything other than getting very wealthy off of laws mandating that adult sites use that Tld.

Ask yourself this as an industry are we better off, without the FSC? then ask yourself are we better off with the FSC? Most you you probably get the picture here...its irrelevant. We would be better off with a new organization that is trustworthy, accountable and transparent.

I would say that the industry is better off WITH the FSC.... but, the industry could be BETTER with a better FSC.

Your criticisms are constructive for the most part, except for the disbanding part.

Creating a trade organization is not an easy task. FSC has a structure in place, where you and others are seeing the problem has more to do with the focus of the organization and to some degree, the people who are participating in it.

Diane Duke is awesome as the Executive Director, let me make that very clear to anyone who has not had the chance to talk to Diane and understand her commitment to FSC and to the adult industry.

As for the Rabin Group (FSC's lobbying group in DC).. Robert Rabin and his staff ( i had the chance to meet with Robert and he's very bright) are sharp and do understand FSC's needs. Not many lobbying groups would take on FSC as a client because of the adult stigma.


What FSC needs is more members and more dollars.

Money can't buy love, but it can buy a whole lot of action.

Expecting webmasters to voluntarily pay for membership dues falls on the same money drive each year as PBS (and yes, i am just as guilty in not contributing to PBS, but yet i enjoy the services, which i look to correct on the next pledge drive). many won't contribute.

What webmasters can do is to help make change and provide checks and balances through VOTING. Vote for board members who will serve your needs.

The adult industry has some many sections to it, that it makes sense to have a board director from those areas.

It is the board of directors that guides the ship. It is how the organization lives on through time, and how it determines its mission.

I feel the only way to properly fund the adult industry trade group, is to place an adult processing tax on all transactions where possible/applicable, so that business owners have to contribute to FSC.

"Herding cats" (insert other phrases to describe webmasters), won't bring in member support, nor the necessary money to handle the PR and lobbying campaigns.

Just like Obama suggesting there needs to be some fundamental changes, I too am suggesting that the adult industry needs some fundamental change to arm itself again piracy and obscenity issues.

Just because we have a democratic president, doesn't mean that federal laws won't be continued to be upheld.

mikesouth, if others have told you to run for FSC, and for people that you do respect, listen to all those voices... they, like me, are sitting back and observing what is going on. Given the list of current members and the nominated ones, you should be there.


Fight the i second the motion!

wish this concept could be applied to congress :winkwink:


Fight the taxation without representation!

why is it always the same schills defending the fsc on the boards when this sort of shit hits the fan?

the industry needs to give them more money for them to do what they need to do.... NO the FSC need to spend more than 75 grand on legal fees, they already had almost 1 million dollars and they pissed it away.

rather than giving the fsc more money why dont they just make better use of the money they are already being given!

The problem is that the industry has poured money into this hole for many years and have not gotten any results, then they always come back asking for more money, making promises they cant keep, lying and misrepresenting themselves and what they do.

When you do that the well will run dry. People have caught on and no amount of PR, at this point will be taken as anything other than more lies. Given that this organzation has had twenty years or so to get its act together and that 20 years or so later it is seen by the people it needs most as fundamentally inept at best and overtly corrupt at worst, well it's time to get rid of it.

And BTW hell will be frozen over indeed before I will give any money to the FSC, either voluntarily or by force. period. and no it's no bluff on my part, for one I have my own merchant account. For another what you are proposing to have CCBill and others do is patently illegal in this country.

uh, what law would that be?

a processor can charge what they want.. what they do with the money is their business.

so the 1% contribution to FSC could come out of their pockets.. or, its a pass-thru cost through raised rates..

(if you are thinking money-laundering.. it has the appearance of that, but its not the case.)

what is "illegal" by visa/mc rules, is where a business tacks on money to the bill to cover the CC charge (ie. passthru) ... so its a higher price if you pay with plastic than with cash.

i admit, its a radical idea , but out of the box thinking is going to be needed to properly fund the adult industry trade organization.

abolishing FSC is not the answer..

FSC does need to address some issues as you have pointed out, to gain the confidence back from those why are now on the fence in contributing.

Your bashing of FSC doesn't directly hurt FSC as michael posted earlier, it does contribute to the pause that one has in reaching for the wallet, but your assertions would need to be countered by FSC statements to prove the contrary.

If that is not done, then your arguments are left hanging, and taken for fact.. much like if i let you make your statement that its "illegal" what i am proposing without calling you on it, it hangs out there as some assumed fact.


Fight the i think, therefore it is!

and what is your solution to replace it with?

I'll offer some suggestions:

You could talk to Larry Walters who had the idea of creating an FSC like organization.
You can talk to Cambria who probably has his own ideas of what an organization should be.

Combine the two, and you have a new legal foundation much like with Reed and Jeffery at the FSC.

But then, you face the same problem that FSC and every organization has, getting funded.

You think with "truth", and "transparency" , good ideas and visions, and alot of pom-pom waving will get webmasters who are traditionally apathetic about these kinds of issues, to part with money, especially in this recession?

You think $2-3M can be voluntarily contributed towards an organization to properly fight the fires, where the members want?

For every 2 reasons you are putting out that FSC is so bad, can you contribute 1 idea to either make it better, or how to make a new org be the servant to the adult industry constituents that you envision?


Fight the challenge!

Cliff notes??

If this thing you call the FSC is fighting piracy can someone tell me one site they have had shut down or maybe one they are working on? I would NEVER join a paysite when the big tubes give far more away than ANY Program out there and im even talking about more content than Bangbros and the other big boys. Its a joke and I feel there is NOONE working on it, whatever title they have.

how about taking the 1% from the current rates? gas for the private jets has just become cheaper again so it would be compensated :winkwink:

Heh... he probably didn't bother to refute the points because this thread is just another GFY mob. The "facts" in this thread are SOOOO far from reality that it's laughable. Most of you have your pitch forks and torches out, and you're not going to listen to reason.

Mike South... by now most of you who know this guy HAVE to know this is what he does for a living. He stirs shit up. And he's made a little niche for himself by spreading hate towards the FSC. And it's not hard to find haters. What he's doing is a disservice to the entire industry, but not only does he NOT seem to care, so many of you are going along with it. And you should all really stop, take a breath, and re-evaluate.

I could sit here all day and explain why Mike is wrong, but not only would it just be one guy on a message board against another, it would be a waste of another day, so it's pointless and I have other things to do. So I'm out of this thread. But I will extend this offer. If Mike South wants to give me a call, I'll be more than happy to talk to him by phone and tell him what I'm saying here... that he's causing harm to the industry, and I'll tell him why.

FTP - Ok I see how you intend to do it, it isnt an official donation it comes out of CCBills take but it still doesn't mitigate the point that what it really does is rewards the FSC for nothing and it gives them no reason to be accountable or otherwise improve. It's throwing money at them hoping they improve which history shows us they wont.

Conner - I can respect the idea that you think I am wrong for the simple reason that I think you are wrong. Just because I am not a myrmidon who will blindly follow whatever the FSC says is its mantra o the day, doesn't mean I am harming the industry. What I am trying to do is make it better. Constructive criticism. Everytime I have been confronted with deflection (the well what would YOU do thing) I answer honestly, without deflecting.

In my heart I know that we as an industry can do a lot better than this organization. We are driven, independent and very innovative. If we spent half the effort to come up with a better trade organization that we do into trying to screw the customer and each other we would have the most effective trade organization in history.

Do my commentaries hurt the FSC? Yes, in a word I know that they do, but that alone wouldn't be enough if the FSC wasn't proving my points over and over.

If I were ED of the FSC the first thing I would do is call me and see if there was something, anything that could be done to reverse this perception that they are worthless. The second thing I would do is shut the fuck up defending myself and listen for the facts that may come out of that and acknowledge that just maybe Mike South is simply trying to tell us what everyone already knows but nobody will acknowledge.

Im not saying that I speak for anyone but myself but the evidence bears out that a whole lot of people seem to agree with me, nopt because I am saying it but from their own experiences with the FSC. Telling them that they are all wrong as well, isn't going to solve your problems.

Wow that was a lot to read...

I really feel at Heart the FTC is doing what they can, but I'm not stupid enough to think that people haven't taken advantage of the situation either.

Just a note though, the FTC getting someone outside our industry to lobby for us at that price is just stupid. We are "only" a 12 billion total industry that only scraped together $1 million. Hello people.. wake up, we aren't that big when our biggest companies are only in the 500m range.

I really don't think someone ran it wrong, or people stole anything, or whatever.... but I do think it's ran by a majority group of people that really have no expereince.

And online porn didn't kill mainstream porn.. It was dieing before Online came around, pfft. and it's bigger than mainstream ever has been or will be. Same bullshit has been said for 35 years, as one medium replaces another..

Connor I have alot of respect for you. But Mike makes his living doing this? You dont know Mike. I also joined fsc they were going to protect us and my level of protection was no different than people that werent a member. The only case that had any success with 2257 fsc had nothing to do with. After a while besides playing with piracy they have given me nothing to say it pays to be a member.
I watch pundits deep fry us and have never seen a face from fsc on tv defending our industry.
Also as far as giving 1 percent to them I dont think so. They get money for free then there is no effort to work harder. I also dont think we are a 12 billion dollar industry.

ya what tony404 said Im not makin any money bashing the fsc...not one of you fuckers has sent me a paypal, but on the other hand you prolly didnt send any to the FSC either.

Well, that settles it then.

Case closed.

I was shocked how quiet the FSC was during Max's trial. I thought it was their time to shine..to fight. Did they do anything?(serious question)

They laid low

I agree with the post earlier that said that porn was dying prior to online.
I can tell you that when AVN comes out and cites grandiose numbers that we as an industry are doing $12B in sales it wasn't anywhere near the actual number in revenue.
I'd like for AVN to tell the industry how they came to that conclusion.

Second, AVN's Paul Fishbein would respond to every media request asking about the porn biz- and he'd say " the biz is thriving more than ever, and that there were over 15,000 movies made last year!"

I believe that was quoted in Newsweek.
Let's think about this for a minute.

15,000 movies made in one year- just the video companies here in Chatsworth alone!

Did you guys really think that 15,000 movies a year wasn't enough?

How do people think that they can corral 15,000 movies with over millions of hours of footage and it wouldn't end up in the hands of bad people?

If there were 15,000 guns sold here in Chatsworth last year- I'd think we'd be expecting a HUGE problem with gun related crime wouldn't you?

Yet while the industry standard would crow about these sensational numbers they reported, who was minding the store here in the Valley?

No one.
Now the internet companies are raping and pillaging the studios for the last bit of content they can gobble up and the studios one by one will all be closing up shop here or moving offshore.

AVN should be more responsible along with the FSC IMHO

100 reasons bot to send money to the FSC

more funding won't solve the problems.... but it would certainly help to hire more staff that could handle the PR issues, and the communications to members, etc.

The Max Hardcore case is truly disturbing on so many levels, the most obvious being that he has gone to jail because a consumer (ie. the DA) ordered his product (ie. they wanted to see the extreme sex) to be viewed in the privacy of their own home (or in this case, in the conference room of a DA office and courtroom -which the jurors did not choose to watch the video, they had to watch the video- ) and goes to jail for it (including forfeitures).

Many people didn't pay attention to the case. I was posting up news items from Mark Kernes (excellent) write-ups of the case. If more people paid attention to Max's case, they should have gotten a chilled effect on their spine, that should have straightened it up, to then think about how to protect their business.

I think that the next FSC board meeting, they should have you there, and give you the floor to be as critical and as piercing as you have been, to pull off the kid gloves, to remove the vail, to release the volcano of frustration that you have observed, along with others.. with the goal that it doesn't fall on deaf ears, that change will be shared by other board members who feel the same, but having your voice and words starting the process.

During that discussion, any inaccuracies in your beliefs of FSC could certainly be dispelled or corrected, but once they flag away the smoke, what is left is the fire underneath, which is the true problems, the real criticisms that are the current weakness, but can be made into the roadmap for strengthening the organization.

Much like the mythical Phoenix, there is an opportunity to rise.

BUT, talk around the table, and understanding of the issues, still won't be enough to get the money to do the kind of work that FSC is being asked to do.

And so, it comes back to money......



Fight the lack of money is the root of all evil!

i wouldnt hold my breath bro....

I'm down with the FSC in theory--an EFF for the porn biz. Fantastic. There are plenty of threats to free speech, and there will continue to be in the next administration. Problem is, I didn't "Free Speech" on the agenda at the last FSC conference. The entire show was a rant about tube sites, with panel titles like "Who to sue and how," with moderators and panelists who were ALL LAWYERS hawking their services.

I'm well aware that tube sites are a business problem, but the FSC should be addressing other issues. It was, instead, acting like a trade association. There was even a panel about forming a trade association. All good issues, but off-topic. If I'm giving money to a not-for-profit to defend my first amendment rights, that's where I'd liek to see the money go. For the moment, that money will be going to www.eff.org.