So if you owned a hosting company would you be getting cold feet?
 

Just noticed that Redtube and a few other legal suits also include the hosting companies and advertisers.
Just wondering if hosting companies may start to think twice about hosting these illegal tube sites or is the draw of the cash that strong.
win or lose a suit the legal costs are huge.

How should a hosting company know if the site has licensed or pirated content?

perhaps they get notices from copyright holders:2 cents:

there is no draw of cash with tube sites.
they can only afford to pay the very minimum, meaning your cost or sometimes even lower. tube sites are not direct profit makers for hosting companies.

the only reason really to host them would be to try and raise your bandwidth commitment so you can get lower prices overall on your bandwidth.
otherwise i dont see the point, unless there are hosting companies who like to be charities?

You don't think adding a 5,000+ gig a day client to your stream wouldn't make your company more net profits?

when theyre paying what i pay for bandwidth, before taking into account the costs of processing their credit card or paypal payment?
then also buying the hardware they "need", but don't want to pay for and want included in their "5,000GB a day" bandwidth commitment?

tell me how adding a loss, generates profit?
the only way it does, is if it lowers your overall cost elsewhere -- like i already said.
but for some hosting companies, they are already getting the lowest price currently available market-wide and don't need to rely on illegal video streaming sites to get their costs lower.

P.S.

5000GB/day is about 750Mbps -- peanuts.
If you don't have a minimum of 1Gbps, you're a very small tube.

Why does it being an illegal tube, make it so you can't profit from it?

If you add a major affiliate program or big plugin content provider, wouldn't you profit from the growth? I don't see how it's any different.

it has nothing to do with legal or illegal. the margins are so small on tube site advertising profits, that they need to squeeze charity-like prices out of their hosts.

the only way the hosts benefits really is by the ability to raise their overall bandwidth usage/commitments and get lower costs that way for the rest of their client base.
if you're already at the floor of the lowest market pricing though, adding a loss will just equal a loss - UNLESS, you can some how "eat" the added bandwidth usage of this new client without increasing your overall usage too much because of your other clients traffic patterns, etc. but thats just a gamble as you don't know the specifics prior to them moving in and you already purchasing the hardware. anyways, explaining how and why hosts would take on a big bandwidth user at their cost or right above it is a lot of typing and saying words like "overselling" which 90% of the people on here think is a "bad" word; so not gonna get into all of that at 5:20AM.

to answer the question of the OP:

I would indeed be very worried that I would be involved in a lawsuit (due to recent rulings) over a tube site, like you said -- win OR lose -- the legal fee's would be very high and try getting your tube customer to pay for them ;)

So you assume a tube that size makes no money, so you would have to charge them a really low rate? Why think this and a bigger factor, why care?

Think about this.. If I ask you to host me and you say a price I don't like, because you have to make a profit, I will just go to a host that can give me my price or I will host with you.

You not making a profit, is your fault.. simple as that.

Typically, "illegal" tubes have the longest videos and the most of them, therefore they _generally_ get more traffic, burn up way more bandwidth, and use the most resources (hard drive space, processing, multiple servers, etc) which all drive the cost up. When hosts are only charging ~$2.50/mbit they are not even charging for the multiple servers being used.

Like he mentioned above if it's under 1 gbps it really is a small tube, the bigger ones push 15-100 gbps a day. This huge commit does however allow a host to have better pricing as they are purchasing more bandwidth therefore can resell to other clients not running a huge tube at $10+/mbit.

EXACTLY MY POINT! The tube customers want the host to be a CHARITY.
My point is not that they are not making a profit, their margins are slim more than likely. I've heard time and again "I can't afford that, the tube doesn't make enough", etc.

The point is that they want HIGH END 16+ HDD servers for FREE, and want to pay MY COST on bandwidth (which is the LOWEST available on the market). So if I don't want to be a charity and try to make a LITTLE bit, then like you just said. You will go else where to a host that does want to be a charity.

So the only reason I would accept them as a customer, is not because they are making me a DIRECT profit, but because their BW usage lowers my costs ELSEWHERE in the business where I can make a backend profit. However, if my COSTS are already as low as is available currently on the bandwidth market - I really give two flying shits if they sign up with me, because I make nothing on the front end or the back end of the business on the customer.

So the companies currently hosting these tube sites are benefiting from their bandwidth usage (thusly increasing their overall commitments), and possibly locking the tube sites into a 1 year contract at a rate that is higher than the newly negotiated rate they get too after adding on the new bandwidth; but once they reach the point where the MARKET for BW is at its lowest (an example $6/Megabit), and adding more bandwidth won't get you below $6/Megabit, then there is no further benefit to giving out free multiple $4,000 machines and BW at cost.

Hi Jimmi,

I'm guessing that Hosting companies do not generally check the content of the sites that they host. Most hosting companies however, have a Copyright and Trademark clause in their terms of service. Our own Terms of Service to our customers includes the following

Copyright and Trademarks: The client unconditionally guarantees that any elements of text, graphics, photos, designs, trademarks, or other artwork furnished to LCN for inclusion in the web site are owned, or that the proper permissions were received by the client from the rightful owner to use these elements in the web site.

Every once in a while we find someone displaying content stolen from us. The first thing I do is send them an email requesting it to be removed. If they ignore it (thieves usually do), I then find out who they host with. I then send a notice of Digital Millennium Copyright Act notice, and INCLUDE the Hosting company. The hosting company has to act by shutting down the website if the site owner does not remove the content, otherwise they are just as responsible for the copyright violation as the site owner is.

your kidding right?

The problem is, tubes do make money... so you can charge them what you like, and like ANY client that size.. they will go to the host that gives them the best deal, period..

It's not Charity, it's business.

Agreed but lets face it with some tube sites we are not talking a video or two but most if not all of their content being "borrowed'
I just think being named in a suit pegged at 40 million dollars might be a wake-up for a few hosting companies.
win or lose there will be some blood spilled, legal fee's will add up quickly.

Exact. It's been in the air for a while now.. Let's see if this has any effect.

Tubes are not a problem."Illegal" tubes however...

we will see case results

Well,if relative simple issue as scareware on alphared got down entire company,then this could also shut down company.

clueless yet again

The host has better economies of scale. I am sure they make a profit, otherwise there would be no hosts for tube sites.

DOc, you are a fucking idiot. Just STFU already.

TidalWave gave you a very extensive and correct answer.

Correct answer to what?

His theory that tubes are going to be forced to pay less because they make no money?

Otherwise, it isn't rocket science to know how hosts work as they add more. So all that babble is just that, babble...

So .. Please Shut The Fuck Up

Exactly...

For once I couldn't agree with you more. We have turned people away because of their demands. Some poor soul will give in and make a peanut or two. We'll pass.

I doubt there is any company hosting tube sites at a lose.
And as mentioned by pat I am speaking to illegal tube sites.

margin for margin against a tube customer profits are slim. The only benefit a host would get is if they were able to drop their commit prices due to larger commits, this works great if your not already pretty low.. but once your there where can you go? The benefit on volume is to gain peering relationships etc and it helps overall profit on existing customers


Remember back in high school math that graph that never reaches Zero? Same concept bw pricing will never reach zero contrary to what some people here might think.

Tidalwave already explained all of this though.

The courts are one way forward. Sadly not enough people in this business have the balls to take on the Tubes or they're hosting companies.

Might be better if you list all the hosts with illegal Tubes on them and see who can be bothered to move.

But even if it did mean the end of illegal Tubes there would still be no great move from surfers back to signing up. Let's dream here for a moment that all illegal Tubes disappear tomorrow.

(A) Some surfers will move back to buying memberships, but very few.
(B) Most will move to Tube sites supported by sites like Brazzers with 100% legal content.
(C) Some will move to sites with 4 to 6 minute clips, often hosted by sponsors.

There is only one way to get customers back. Have a product they want to buy without being forced to buy.

And I know I said it before but it still looks like people dream of Tubes disappearing and everything going back to what it was like PT (Pre Tubes). Will never happen.

Calm down, mate.