If you want to point to a single thing that lead to the demise of this business, I'd point to Cogent.

Once they got into the bandwidth market prices started dropping like a rock and never came back.
The people who gave away free porn in the past didn't give away less because they had business sense or any shit like that, they only gave away what they could afford to because bandwidth costs were so high. Free hosts had file size limits, etc.
The amount of free porn available was constrained by the cost of bandwidth.

At <$4/mbps you can give away full free DVD's and make a small profit. At $40/mbps you can only give away about 15 pictures and still make a profit, forget about movies.

:2 cents:

Very good point.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

i thought i won't post here, but that's my point

so quote: 'This industry has turned into a bunch of parisitic, mooching, thieving, ratbastards'
and my quesiton: How that occash and lordsofporn which you own run shady x-sells (completely misleading your surfers and trying to 'hide' x-sell charges) for a long long time already?

i'm just saying that the level of hypocrisy in your posts is way too much

More immorality: selling customers' email to spammers!
 

I signed up for a couple of sites myself, to test them out.

Result: I got spam which can only be from these sites. I never used this combination of name and email for anything else.

Now spamming the customers, this is pretty bad!

I thinkt the payment processors maybe did not do it, in at least one occasion I needed to contact customer service, maybe someone picked up the email there.

One of them, I pursued them relentlessly writing to all their sponsors, until they got kicked out and the spam ceased.

Interestingly, nobody spams their affiliate webmasters. Probably they know that it would have consequences.

Nowadays, I found a setup for my email server (qmail?) to create an infinity of email addresses, I just use these email addresses now. But I feel bad enticing customers to sign up, knowing that their email address might get spoiled forever.

I'd just like to point out that this industry has ALWAYS been a bunch of parasitic, mooching, thieving, ratbastards. (With notable exceptions that you don't need all of your fingers and toes to count)

It was just easier to live with them and not notice them when you were making assloads of cash. :2 cents:

Greed and ignorance has always been around, but today it looks like desperation.

dialers, no cancell links, $1 charges on shitloads of cards, card banging in general, crossales, hidden crossales, cc list sharing, spamming, popups, zango, Ibill, paymonde, exit chains, cancell crossales, etc etc etc All going on since the early days.

Fuck like it has ever been diffrent :2 cents:

you sold your network to the same people who funded yours and ours demise. thanks fuckhead.

but lula is right. other business are much much worse. this is an industry of angels compared to others.

always been scum in this industry.

Very true... we need the days when BW was expensive and a domain cost 70 bucks to register!!!

I was able to procure Jake Steeds cell # and Lexington Steele's cell # in 2000. I called both of them asking if they would like to do a website with us or would sell us exclusive content. Neither was open to even discussing it. No wonder Dogfart ripped off all their shit, they were bad at business!

Just because Jake and Lex didn't whore their content out to some guy who cold-called them doesn't make them "bad at business", nor did it issue a license to dogfart or anyone else to rip it off and build a program out of it.

:2 cents:

there's also a lot of nice people here. Personally I've met some beautiful people here (and I mean beautiful inside), and I'm proud to call them my friends.

I agree with the second part.

What do you know it is the biggest parisitic, mooching, thieving, ratbastard, leech, scumbag posting on GFY. I knew it wouldn't be long before he would show up.

CATFIGHT!!!!!

:warning

double standarts. You would have sold your sites to zango or ibill if they placed right bid.

Sure, who cares? As long as they pay me up front.

Appreciate the kind words :).

Right, it was just easier for the thieving ratbastards to mooch off of people and make money years back then it is now.

I agree 100%. The only difference now is no matter what your money maker is it requires a lot of effort and work to actually make money. A lot of people really don't like that part.

it's that attitude that is why things are the way they are today.

Because people like you Jay, you can't think 2 steps ahead. You will do business with the people fucking over the industry as long as it is not happening to you, you don't care. Then when it happens to you, you make threads like this how its all gone to shit and you just want to leave.

You are part of the problem for a couple reasons. For be apathetic and not doing anything sooner to help stop things from getting to where they are now. For doing business with the "bad" companies and helping them to prosper. For not giving a shit about anything that was happening until it happened to you, when easy logic shows if it was happening to others it would happen to you sooner or later.

How can you bitch about people and then in the same breath say "oh but i would do business with them, sell them stuff".

/Moron

This actually made me laugh...alot :thumbsup

So Barefootsies, I brought up that example to compare it to tube owners who are abusing the DMCA.

They are taking advantage of a loophole to build huge brands. Not to mention to get their foot in the door on licensing deals.

If they don't, they are leaving that opportunity on the table for someone else to grab.

Eventually, the DMCA will be amended somehow, but even when that happens and they "lose," they will STILL win, because they've already created huge brands.

Thoughts?

bingo, that is what I have been saying...

All the bullshit in the past was people trying to make a billion and 1 dollars. The bullshit happening today is the people trying to make enough to pay their bills. Different reasons, same bullshit.

What did you expect?

Barriers to entry are virtually non-existent in this industry.
Everybody can learn a little html and get cheap virtual hosting.
It had to attract a whole bunch of scumbags...

Anyone see that 60 Minutes piece last weekend on hollywood movie piracy? They basically arrived at the conclusion that they had no idea what to do about it, aside from somehow making it illegal to use bit torrent, which would never happen.

Shap is Da Lord
 

True fucking dat.
:thumbsup

Don't hate the player, hate the game. This is a business.
:2 cents:

FUCKING A !
Now you're talking :thumbsup

Circle jerks, dialers, Xpics PINCH ME :1orglaugh

For real, mate, the signup ratios was better as you couldn't get what you want PERIOD. Now, surfers will settle for less to blow their load. If it's free, bahhhhh it's not what i wanted but it's better than paying !

I couldn't tell what you were replying to because you deleted what you were replying to.

This, right?

Can you elaborate on your hip hip lingo? What do you mean by "don't hate the player, hate the game?"

I ask because it feels like you are using that in an imperative sense, as though there is some player or game that I, personally, am to stop hating. I'm just getting into an ethics discussion, not hating games or players or whatever.

Help me understand what you mean by that. Is it just a comforting aphorism for you? Or are you hinting at something deeper?

Dude, who are you? I'm in man-love with you.

I mean the laws/DMCA are set up the way they are now (game) and there are many (players) who are taking advantage of that loophole for financial gain.

Same as big coal, banks, oil and credit card companies, and other industries do the exact same thing even when they know it is fucking the planet, the consumer, the economy.

That said, most of the people doing this are idiots who do not have a proper LLC in place, business bank account, separation of business and person or legal counsel to C.Y.A.. So they are playing a dangerous game, and should someone actually enforce their copyrights AND go the distance. They are royally fucking fucked.

Which is on par for most of this industry. Invest nothing in your business, spend it all trying to impress a bunch of fry cooks on an industry message board, or drinking and partying it all away. Or not investing in the future, and think you are going to get away with it forever.

The point being, this is a business like any other and some are taking advantage of the rules as they exist today. Whether unethical, immoral or whatever you would like to call it. It is the rules of the game that exist right now in 2009 for the online industry.

So they are gaming that system for financial gain. So hating, metaphorically, for being intelligent enough, ruthless enough, uncaring enough to make money doing shit like pre-checked cross sales, and driving a mack truck through the loop holes of DMCA is just business.

:2 cents:

Yup. One of my big motivators for starting our first paysite was how many times I saw my magazine pages scanned in and posted online without attribution.