| Michael O |
02-20-2006 04:42 PM |
Posted in another thread
Original post by Pam Winter on another board and a great post.
Quote:
This will be a controversial post for sure! Why do we, as adult webmasters, support theft? We do, you know. I'm going to talk about 2 situations but I am NOT picking on any individual.
First, we have a webmaster here who talks about **** and encourages webmasters to sign up under him/her. Now, **** is a major pet peeve of mine, and let me tell you why and explain what it is.
**** sells access to materials from the Usenet newsgroups. Back in the beginning, Usenet was the only way most surfers obtained photos and videos. Most ISPs would carry the newsgroups at no cost, though some tried to filter out the adult groups (that's another story for another thread). Basically surfers would join paysites, then post the photos they found. Other surfers would then download them. MANY paysites were started this way, with stolen content. I knew a 15-year old who would download pictures and put them on his paysite, an AVS site, and made a few hundred bucks a month this way.
This was before TGPs and many webmasters, like myself, fought to have photos removed from newsgroups, but it wasn't easy and still isn't. Oh yes, Usenet newsgroups are free. Some are moderated, where they purposely keep out the spam, trash and copyrighted photos. Others are free-for-alls, where you have to go through 4300000 spams before you get to a free photo. Viruses are rampant, too. An employee of mine downloaded a stripper screensaver he read about in the newsgroups and had to reformat.
So, **** makes money charging surfers to view what they could otherwise get for free if they simply used the right program (there are sites where you can access all the newsgroups at no cost).
They have an affiliate program, and any webmaster who promotes **** is scum in my eyes. Why? They are promoting and making money off copyrighted material they don't own.
If you think this isn't a big deal, let's say you spend $24,000 a year in content. Now, it's a given that some surfers will buy a membership and then take your pics and post them in the Usenet newsgroups. There are only 2 ways to minimize this -- watermark your photos, or disable right click, and anyone can disable that disabling!
Now, imagine you drop $24k and you find out someone is making money to charge people to look at your photos. How would YOU feel?
We also have people who have websites where they allow surfers to upload photos. While they have a TOS that says the user is responsible, that's bullshit, because legally, the site hosting the photos is responsible. It's up to the owner of the site to check every photo to be sure it's legal. If you have any doubt of this, check the recent ARREST of Chris Wilson in Florida, who was nailed for having more than 300 "pornographic" photos on his website, all reader contributed. BTW, his website is hosted overseas, yet he was still arrested.
Why do we allow people who knowingly host copyrighted photos, or knowingly make money from this, to be part of our community?
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