When is someone going to start enforcing adult copyrights?
 

I want to get rid of p2p, filesharing sites like rapidshare, newsgroups, forums and yahoo-etc-groups. I personally think there should be 1 single entity that we all pay a yearly fee that takes care of this shit on our behalf, and we should go after the guys who do the seeding/uploading not the places they upload/seed.. doesn't really matter who downloads the shit.

Could someone please eliminate all of these, within a week or so would be pretty nice. I'll epass the guy $2.50 who does it.

Thanks,
tgf

I agree it's a fact if these places were not around we would all be making a lot more money.

Programs are under the mistaken impression that they make money off their "branded content" as long as people type the URL into the address bar and come sign up.

News flash: newgroups and p2p people make TGP surfers look like huge buyers of porn.

Programs need to step up to the plate and start working to support their affiliates rather than fucking them up the ass every chance they get.

There is a few problems to go after it you need deep deep pockets for lawyers or it takes a shitload of work . A msn group had over 800 pics from my wifes site and growing. Wrote Msn they said they needed every url the pictures came from, we did they shut it down but it was a mountain of work. Then you have the motherfuckers overseas that you really cant do anything about. I really try not to think about it but what does pissed me off,is the AFF banners all over alot of these places.

Tony, if you do a DMCA notice to each and every company in the chain, someone will have to act, because if they don't act, they become liable. Asking MSN just to take stuff down is nothing. Send them a full legit DMCA and send it to their upline service providers and you will get quick action, no lawyer required.

I'm actually pretty pissed off at a finnish forum that's quaddrupled in daily visits (according to alexa) within a month, and comparing to my own tgp ratings I can estimate they have about 30-40k daily uniques..that's a ton of FULL-LENGTH porn downloads.. I'm considering of making a list of all the banbros content they have in their 'members-area', making an user for bangbros and sending bb all the urls to the threads their content is in, with username/pass they can go see it.. then do the same for all the scanned playboy mags and send that to adult.com, then naughtyamerica etc..and hope that if all of these 'big' companies send dmca notices the forum will have to shut down (they've already removed all of the finnish content and put up rules that deny users from sharing finnish material because they'd get shut down by their host if more complaints were received).

..they have none of MY content there, so I can't send the dmca..or contact the authorities..but I want them gone. lol.

I agree, people should take this very serious.

Someone should have the power to act legally against everyone in the chain up to the host. And if everyone is too far from the reach of justice, just nuke them until they give up.

*bump* :(

Eventually this industry will mature enough and actually form a joint group to do just this and some other things. It took the software/computer gaming industry quite a number of years but they finally did it themselves although they tend to go after a lot of the asian pirating.

But right now it's still in the do a few lines, party hard and get drunk mentality.

That'd be a good cause to donate too. Kinda like an FSC, for adult copyright protection. Good project for someone with the resources and the time.

I agree this would be a fantastic idea, but what authority would a group like this have to take down sites based overseas?

How would I know? I'm just hoping someone does, and starts this. I wouldn't mind paying a few grand per year to get some solid help from professionals that'd keep the p2p guys, forums and other sharers into check. I remember in the 90's when some of the p2p software came out and I was sharing a Disney video and I got a call from my ISP demanding I stop doing it, disney's attorney or someone had downloaded the video from me and gotten my ip and made the call.. so it can be done even on p2p networks. forums and rapidshare should be even easier..

The guys who SHARE the materia should be held responsible, ie. The guys who upload the stuff to rapidshare, seed torrents or share their collections on P2P.

I agree 100%, but the problem is even though Napster was taken down there are still tons of places you can download free music or movies online. Maybe you can curtail it to an extent by putting fear into people by cease and desist letters and phone calls in the US but I wonder what can be done overseas. Hmmm...I have to say this idea seriously intrigues me and I would love to explore it further. Even if you can't get rid of the problem completely you can still do enough damage to put more money back into the pockets of the copyright holders.

I'm not in the US.


Also, I don't suggest going after the places that make it possible to share, ie. rapidshare, torrent sites etc..but the individuals that are doing the actual sharing.

Agreed but a lot of them are also overseas and hard to touch. I could be way off base but I believe the majority of the places that make it possible to share are overseas and the majority of people sharing are probably in the US. Are there any copyright attorney's on here that could weigh in and give their opinion on the feasibility of this?

Maybe some big american corporation should start that? Someone that is strict with their own copyrights, the owner has a nice mansion, the vice-president (?) is a handsome and intelligent man, they have very brandable logo, own a chatboard that everyone uses and so forth. They'd have the resources and knowhow...:Graucho

Your basic premise is spot on, but it really is nowhere as simple as you make it sound. There is that other thread running here about the recent goings-on in Sweden - http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/f...?currentPage=1 - which should give an idea about the complexity, effort and uncertainty of going after these people. And bear in mind that Sweden, although liberal in copyright terms by European/American standards, does at least have standards.

And from the wider perspective, no-one can have any illusions that the software, music and movie industries are actually winning their war against pirates. Despite the millions of dollars they have put into fighting it.

Which doesn't mean do nothing. This industry needs to grow up and the businesses in it have to start operating as businesses. When that happens, operators who refuse to work to certain standards should be ostracized: banned from trade shows, boards, and any other way of publicizing themselves within the industry.

How ludicrous is it that - for illustration - Adult Friend Finder, the "bank" for just about every file-sharing site out there, could have a booth at a show alongside BangBros, whose content appears on such sites? How ludicrous is it that legitimate affiliates are promoting sites like BangBros and also sponsors who support sites which undermine their sales?

Branded stolen content surely does produce a trickle of sales. With enough of it out there, that trickle might be a river. Still you might expect that no-one in their right minds could believe that these sales are more than a fraction of what is lost because so much pirated material is floating around. Yet apparently that is exactly what many must think, otherwise why are they doing nothing about it? Has anyone looked into the possibility of a class action on behalf of the sponsors whose copyright material is being used by such sites, against the sponsors profiting from those sites? A conspiracy suit for example, might be cheaper and more effective than going after the sites themselves.

Much more obviously, when an affiliate signs up for a program, why not check his site and if he is promoting programs which allow themselves to be promoted on file-sharing sites, etc., refuse to accept him as an affiliate? If he trades with or otherwise links to sites operating in the gray/black area of this business, ditto.

There are surely some smart people in this business, so why do they all act dumb? Competition is one thing: it makes the industry grow and become stronger. But scams are entirely something else: they make our job harder and weaken us. They take money out of our pockets and put nothing back. It makes zero sense to tolerate them or anyone associated with them.

Good post :thumbsup

will76 will come to the rescue

No, but I want a similar entity for the adult industry.

We've sued individuals twice for copyright infringement over the years - both times we settled out-of-court for damages and 'loss of income'. They weren't based on P2P, but webmasters who had the gall to use our pics on the front pages of their paysites.

One of the guys (in Great Britain) was so freaked out by a well-worded legal correspondence we sent him - wound up phoning us overseas at 4am (he'd forgotten the time zone difference) to try and settle for damages.

But I hafta' say the industry needs more legal precedents for successful copyright infringement cases. Check out the case between Suze Randall and Max Sheridan (Reactor, Inc.):

http://www.apic-worldwide.com/news/051600.htm

So in other words, your suggestion is to do nothing but to see our shit stolen and the next generation of possible customers all to be aware of how easy it is to get shit for free?

:thumbsup

It's interesting to note that the fees in that case were only $16K although obviously in more complex cases they could be much higher. Still - even if they have to be covered by the plaintiff in the event of a loss or there being no assets to collect against - the amount is relatively small compared to the sales of some of the sponsors who are being abused.

Nevertheless, the choices are not only legal action or no action. Someone just posted "will76 will come to the rescue", but not only IMO did will blow it (I have already said this here and to him directly) by turning his "crusade" into something too personal instead of attempting to give it some clear direction, change will not come from affiliates, but from sponsors themselves.

There are simply too many affiliates who are not in this business full time, nor for the long term for enough affiliates to care about this industry except as a source of pocket money for a while. So long as sponsors do not impose a code of conduct on each other and on their affiliates, well... the expression "p*ssing into the wind" comes to mind.

Sponsors' lethargy is much harder to understand. Some have been in this business for 10 years, surely long enough to get the message that short-term thinking has saddled us with rising fraud, unwanted Visa regulations, costly and time consuming legislation, etc, etc and much more to come. Without in any practical sense compromising either their independence or competitiveness, the example of other industries makes it plain as day that it is in their interest to legitimize the positive aspects of this business and outlaw the negative.

What tiny percentage of their income would it cost forward thinking sponsors to fund a trade association which could not only set a code of conduct for their behavior in respect of each other, but also towards customers and affiliates. Logically it would include standards which affiliates had to meet to be members and if done and promoted properly, would put sponsors in the position of being able to demand that affiliates were association members.

Not only could such an association enhance our everyday transactions, but it would/should be the obvious body to present a united face when issues arise which affect the whole industry. We would not then be thrown back on the too little, too late solutions which are the best we have managed to date.

It seems absolutely crazy that a bunch of people who have got rich from this business, many of whom know each other and even meet regularly, whether at shows or whatever, haven't taken such an obvious step.

Jayeff, one of the things that slows the process down is that every new program owner learns one thing from the older programs: Put your site URL on every image, and all the traffic you get as a result is some sort of "payment" for all the copyright violations.

Second one up is that copyright holders seem loath to go after the programs that sponsors and support the content thieves. I posted up a site in another thread that is packed with sponsors content, magazine rips, and even a huge section of family guy stuff, all of it in obvious violation of copyright. The sponsors? AFF and Zangocash. Do you honestly think they give a flying fuck? They would if one of the copyright holders suddenly went after them for contributing to the violations.

The whole thing will be settled with a beer at a show. In the meantime, people who try to run honest businesses get squished.

It's so nice.

The finnish forum I was talking about has only 1 ad, and they were online for a long time before they had ads..so not all of the big 'communities' are sharing the content because they can make a few bucks of zango or aff or whatever. THe problem lies with the users that help make these sites get popular.. ie. the sharers. If there was no content, there would be no users. The sites (not all) will continue to exist even if they would stop getting paid.

The forum I'm speaking costs probably like $20/year to run. they have no images, they use a small finnish host that has 'yearly plans' without any mention of bandwidth. They don't host anything themselves, they link to megaupload/rapidshare and images on whatever those free image hosts are.. so basically they pay nothing for everything, so they don't have to cover any costs to keep their board running.. they do it because they feel that 'porn is supposed to be free'.

Do you mean like APIC?

Someone needs to get hold of Steve Easton.

I will join up. All it nneds is someone with a legal mind and the experience, there are ways to make money if you get it right. You make them buy a license after they stole it.

I WAS going to be launching a new service dedicated to enforcing copyrights for its customers but the partner decided he didnt need me and the idea hasnt gone anywhere.

I had the idea of a company that sponsors would signup for a monthly fee and we would actively find copyright infringers and serve everyone along the line c&d's and dmca's, hosts, registrars, se's isp's the whole shebang.

I still think its a great idea. If anyone wants to team up we can do some great work i think

I think I chatted with the guy as well, bought some sigs on gfy and then something came up and he wasn't so popular and things fell apart? Same guy?

I'd team up with you in a heartbeat, but my time is limited. I'm too poor to hire enough help to do all the shit that needs to be done, and my own projects take like 18 hours a day to get done.. :(

Wasn't apic more or less B2B operation? I'm looking to keep consumers at check...the site operators etc that use stolen content isn't nearly as big of a problem (to my knowledge).

Is it just me or do we spend more time making these "we should band together and do something about it" threads once a month then we do talking to each other behind the scenes to actually band together and do something about it?

The class action suit sounds great... ok, we got the plan. Now what? Seriously.... now what do we do? Unfortunately I'm afraid this thread will be on page 4 in a few days and we'll go on posting in 'would you hit it' threads... that is until next month when we'll start all over again.

:thumbsup yup same guy , hah now i remember the board drama after , was glad we werent still partners as far as the drama goes lol i forget what it was all about but anyways..

wel i dont think this needs to be very complicated really , its just in order to even put a dent in the problem you have to first do alot of legwork that doesnt pay off right away.. ( like from the sponsor level ) .

Even if at the beginning it was PURELY "s.e." clearing . "ie protecting brand names on google" and cleansing the results of infringers

I have filed successfull dmca's in the past so its not really hard just a bit of work. With a few templates it would be realy easy

I really ought to chat with you about that (smokey), but unfortunately now I have 0 resources to do anything but whine.

See my post about the sharers not caring about income alone. They share because porn is supposed to be free, news-group style

dont be so sure, everything starts with nothing right :) you got a keyboard and the will right :)

im as busy as a beaver myself with other projects but i not only think this is needed i think it can be quite profitable for both us and the sponsors :) and all it takes is some legwork..

For it to work takes full time dedication, for one sponsor or one affiliate to try it on their own wouldnt be cost effective. they would waste their time saving a few dollars, not very cost effective.

Just look at the quote from that dvd vod saying they estimate over 10million in losses. so if you can curb that for $5 million you have saved them 5 mill and made yourself 5 mill

No he would go after anyone, he needed controlling and the problem with stolen content went away once content producers came online.

Also Brandon of "Fight the Patent looked at it. He would be a good guy to run it.

realistically i dont think many of those really exist.. kinda like hippies supporting "medicinal marijuana" , most of em just wanna smoke it, sure they would like to see people who need it have it but their incentive is so they can smoke it :)

even if you get a few uploaders and annouce it publiccaly word will go around and this may stop the small time uploaders, may help.

but this problem is a real big bitch.

nearly all are hosted on rs and megaupload and ALOT of people buy premium passes on rapidshare.

Yes you are. Text-only site. Movies not hosted on your server, they're up on megaerotic, rapidshare, etc etc. bandwidth is less than a text-only tgp.

True the amount of sites that do that isn't much...BUT,
the forum I mentioned is the 65. most popular site in finland according to alexa.. megaupload etc are in the top 10. So it IS a big problem.

I need to wrap something up next week, but I'll try to put up a post-it note about hitting you up next weekend, and hopefully not lose it amongst the dozens of other notes I have. I am really interested about this, and not necessarily because I want to become rich doing it..but more or less because I hate freeloaders, and theft more than almost anything.

I was seriously considering an idea like this myself. The 10 years I spent running adult bookstores including a ton of time spent in court fighting various public indecency and public nuisance charges trumped up by various cities in an effort to shut us down. We mostly used Louis Sirkin to defend us and I really got to appreciate what he did.

What we need is an entity that monitors AFF's activity. That's good enough for me.

hollywood cant even do it so why would anyone in adult be able to

I don't think you'd ever be able to curtail it completely but the idea would be to do enough damage to start flowing the money back where it belongs.

I agree but for some reason the people "in porn" don't act like most business people do in all the other professions. I am not talking about the cut throat / competitive aspects, thats in every industry. In this industry people act like it is expected of them to act like an immature asshole with no business ethics and a fuck you if you look at me funny attitude. If people in this industry can't act like adults they will never be professionals and the idea of working together will at best consist of throwing parties and buying each other drinks...

I agree with this P2P is not bad, it is a great platform and method of distribution, it is the people who upload the stolen content and share that is doing something wrong.

I'll take that one step further....


and they are shaking hands and working deals with affiliates who walk up to their booth just to openly steal from them as soon as they start sending traffic.


But people will do business with them and not hold them accountable. They fear if they stop doing business with them they will lose money. SO they sacrifice their business ethics and basically give the company a license to steal more and more. The more the company steals the more all affiliates lose, including them.

No one holds anyone accountable in this industry, so we get shit on every which way, because these companies can. Even though some people might lose a few bucks by dumping companies like this in the short term, in the long term they will make more money because they will be forcing the industry as a whole to raise the bar and cut out all the thieft, spyware, password sites, etc...

The biggest evil is still in TGP. All these filesharing/p2p etc are for the ppl. who won't buy anything in any case.

We need to stick together, and what i mean by that is to drop guys like AFF that are all over those sharing forums. In the end AFF will still be standing because you can't hook up with girls for free, but you sure can download all the free porn you want.