How integrity and good business gets tossed away for money.
 

Interesting to see how things have changed over the last 3-4 years. About 3 years ago the tube sites (stolen content) and spyware (stolen traffic/sales) became big issues. Battle lines where drown in the sand. Companies either engaged in these practices or they denounced them.

Both decission turned out to be profitable for both sides to some degree. The companies that advertised on tube sites with stolen content and bought spyware traffic prospered from in house traffic, the companies that took a stand against it also gained new affiliates and supporters.

The decissions of those companies who did business with illegal tube sites and spyware companies early one was " fuck it, i'm here to make money, I want to make as much as I can and I don't care about anyone else, the industry, whatever." aka greed.

In recent times I am seeing and hearing about more and more companies that took a stand against these practices now engaging in it. Most of their motives are " everyone else is doing it, my opinion doesn't matter, etc.." but it seems apparent to me that their real reasoning is desperstion to make money. While the "everyone else is doing it" statement is true, I believe it is the current state of the economy and their business that is forcing them to try to make money to pay the bills.

3 years ago, greed made them do it.
today, desperation to stay in business.

And I suspect as the times get worse the business practices around here is going to get worse as well.

This doesn't just apply to B2B (companies and affiliates here), look at how some companies have treated their customers over the last couple years with all t he cross sales and illegal cc transactions etc... For some of those companies it appears they have both issues going at once, greed and desperation.

It will be an interesting next couple of years.


Just an observation.

Its probably no diferent in any buisness in the world.

business is not a charity or ngo.

I think you are correct...a business is in business for one purpose and that is to turn a profit and in order to do so it must stay competitive with other businesses in the same business even if it means doing something that you find to be distasteful...and if you don't your business will fail. In addition a business is in business to serve its self interest and not the self interest of its competitor. Dog eat dog.

Unfortunate that they make illegal tube sites. Well written. Thanks for writing, will76.

its all about the green...LEARN

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

No - they only denounced them in public.

Its my opinion that tube sites are like music downloading... if something is really good and you want it in high quality you will buy it.

This industry has been on a downward slide for years.

..and guess what? It's not all about the green.

yah, 3 years ago this industry was loaded with integrity and good business.

No you are wrong, it was easy enough to go to the tube sites that had stolen content to see who was listed there. The vast majority of the companies that said they weren't doing business with these sites really weren't back then.

more than there is now, and it's getting worse and worse by t he day.

The people who usually start "tube" threads are always the people who don't know shit about them.

Thats an easy out that's not true, you dont see the music industry buying ads on music trading sites.

I think the biggest problem is getting the legal momentum built up, getting precedents established for the record, coming to grips with just what the current DCMA laws permit and what they prohibit and organizing in the industry to beef up the rules where needed.

With 2257, we had an eager assortment of lawyers, webmasters, program owners and coalitions lining up to take on and act on the issues on behalf of the industry. I don't see that happening here and I think this is part of the problem.

The biggest problem is always the same in this industry: herding cats.

There is no common interest here like there was with 2257. One of the biggest problems is that dating and cams sites are not hurt by tube sites where as regular picture and video membership sites (in general) are. So the cams and dating see tube sites as a traffic / revenue source with no damage to their bottom line.

I know the membership sites who advertise on tube sites still profit from them but they are shooting themselves in the foot. Lets say for example 100 people today where going to join a membership site, these 100 people happened to find a tube site, 90 of them probably would be satisfied with full length videos for free and never join a membership site. 10 of them would see a banner, watermark, ad etc.. to a membership site like Brazzers and join. So Brazzers makes a lot of money, because of shear volume of traffic, even though its just a small percentage.

The problem here is that 90 people who were potential porn customers now will not buy porn, so thats 90 less customers in the pool for everyone else to pull from. Does Brazzers care, hell no they just found a great traffic source for themselves. But in the end, the will shoot themselves in the foot, eventually as everyone finds out about tube sites they will get less and less customers from that traffic source and they will be in the same boat as everyone else.

All membership sites can't go tap into tube traffic, there will be a select few that make deals or buy the spots and everyone else will be left out in the cold trying to fight over the scraps.

i don't think so. You don't see software companies advertising on piracy sites, cable tv companies running commercials for companies that sell cable convertor boxes, etc...

I can't think of any other industry where people "eat there own" and fuck themselves in the long run for a buck.

its much more cuthroat now than it was years ago

one of the reasons is the tube concept is here, whether the content is illegal or user-submitted, or all licensed, its a new technology that cut down drastically on the value that the paysite business model gives the consumer

its easy to point fingers at tubes with illegal content on them, but the model is not going away and when you say companies "that took a stand against these practices now engaging in it" i think its disingenuous

a large part of the value that paysites once gave was they were paying for large downloads of content, but now that bandwidth prices are $3/meg users get the same for the cost of impressions and when there is a ton of legal dvd catalog licensed content a tubesite can put online for pennies a video, and a consumer can get for free, how many people are going to pay $40 for what many sites offer?

With Business/Life, you do have to make compromises with your principles

You Don't Know the POWA of the Dark Side..
 

Bullshit - Really
Take AFF as an example. Everyone would scream and yell about Tubes and torrentsites, but at the same time everyone had AFF in their membersection.

Even AVN with their AVNads was very much in bed with the companies that were some of the biggest supporters of torrent sites. It took months and months of constant hammering at them, go get them to change their mind and actually take a stand against it.

Same goes for 99% of all the rest, and you are naive if you think different. They will accept spammers, torrentsites, illegal tubes and password sharing as long as they can still maintain a healty profitmargin, and do it without anyone notice it

reread what i said again.

We are talking about two different things. You are talking about companines that continued to do business with other companies that were advertising on tube sites.

My comment was about the companies actually advertising on the tube sites, they couldn't denouce it publicily then go advertise on those sites because it would be easy enough to catch them. All of the companies that took a stand against them didn't advertise on tube sites. Now, sure they may have continued to do business with companies who were advertising on tube sites, but thats a whole nother story.

No its the same thing. Its about moral and business ethics.

Morals and business are no longer friends. Its happening all around us, not just adult. Look at how many mutual funds and investment bankers turned out to be ponzi schemes. Greed and a bad recession will drive people to the absolute limit.
WG

yes it is about morals and ethics. yes there were people who said they had nothing to do with tube site with illegal content but then still did business with companies who advertised on tube sites. Yes it was not always clear who these people were. What I am saying was that at least you could see who the companies where that were doing business with the tube sites directly by going to the tube site to check to see who;s banners where there. If AFF said they stopped advertings on youporn for example, it took all but 2 mins to go confirm that or not. That is what I was saying.

If you want to group the first tier people (people who did business with the illegal tube sites) in with the second tier people (people who did business with the people who did business with illegal tube sites) then thats your opinion. I just don't know where you draw the line. Once you get past the actual people buying the ads on the tube sites it gets messy. For example as an affiliate, if I promoted AFF but had nothing to do with tube sites and never bought ads from them, would you do business with me? Would I be a hypocrite to stay that i was against tube sites ?

i agree but those people with those schemes have been at it long before the ecnomy went bad.

They were just pure greed. Now with the economy bad a lot of people are going to get desperate and its only going to get worst.

No I would not do business with you, and yes I would call you a hypocrite. In fact, that Is what I called XXXjay because on one side he bash Brazzer for running and sponsering tubes, and on the other he send them both surfers and webmasters.

lately the people who have cried the loudest about "industry" crimes have consistently been exposed as the dirtiest out there. it happens so much and on such a consistent basis that i tend to ignore anyone who goes on a crusade to "clean up" the industry as their moral crusades just tend to be smoke blowing to cover up their own activities.

Lots of quality posts on the forum lately. What happened?

The irony. How you all greeded your way out of a profitable buiness. Everyone of you knew the tubes were wrong on every level and you let them hurt your buisness without hardely a fight or any unity. Now your only hope is the governement who should have been enforecing the 2257 laws that not too long ago put us all in a panic. Now that enforement could be the only measure to clean up the tube, torrents, etc....I still say pursuing the copyright infringment lawsuits is the best solution, but few seem willing to go the fight that route..

*I* don't do business with the companies like AFF for that exact reason, because they supported spyware and content theft sites. But I also only do business with a small group of companies... If you do business with a lot of people, it will be virtually impossible for you to not do business with someone who does business with the AFF's out there. Whether its your host, tgp, a designer, etc.. you will come across lots of people who do business with them. Hell for that matter if you want to take it to that extreme you shouldn't be posting on GFY and supporting GFY because they do business with the AFF's.

Also, the way the times are changing, more and more peole are giving in and doing business directly with the illegal tube sites, so if more people are doing it first hand, thats going to be even more second tier people you want to stay away from. You pretty much will be doing business with yourself real soon if not already. Unfortunetly I don't know how else you can avoid it.

i came back :) :winkwink:

there is no such thing as "morals" or "honesty" when it comes to adult .... I knew it the minute I started pushing it ..... at this point in time nothing strikes me as odd.....

Sad shit for people who have 100% of their resources focused towards revenue generation through content ....

i don't like to use "morals" because a lot of people get religious thoughts. My word is "business ethics". basically don't steal, don't shit where you eat honor your committments. I can't tell you how many times I hired someone to do something and if I paid anything up front they never finished the job. Some companies still practice good business ethics but they are shrinking in numbers everyday since sales are getting harder for most of these companies to generate.

Sorry to say, but the people who lose in business always want to call the morality police on the winners.

I'm not going to argue about what is right and what is wrong, because that's irrelevant. I'm just saying that the people who are leaders in almost any business got there by cutthroat methods, and this business is no different.

Look at Microsoft in the early days, or Standard Oil. All of the companies those two put out of business had some sort of moral argument for how what happened to them wasn't fair, but at the end of the day it doesn't matter. For better or for worse, that's just how capitalism works. :2 cents:

Maybe most, but not I. I've never scammed or stole from anyone in this industry. I have never used traffic from spyware or tube sites that fucked other people over. Could I have made even more money if I did. Probably. You can lose everything in life but the one thing that you can't have taken away from you is your integrity. As much as some people will laugh at that or think its stupid or cheesy, it only really matters what you think about yourself. If you (not you specificly) are the type of person that doesn't think twice about screwing people then more power to you.

Now its easy t o say when you making good money. If my financial situation was shit and somone offered me traffic from an illegal tube site and I knew i was going to make bank and be able to pay my bills... to be honest i can't say for sure that I wouldn't take it. I have never been in that situation. Doing it for greed just to make a few bucks more by screwing people, no way. Desperate to pay the bills and advertise on sites with stolen content for example... i guess we dont know until we are put into those positions. So I can at least understand why some people are doing it now, for what that is worth.

Set up a shell company offshore to take the negative PR from supporting tubes and reap the rewards. If anyone is the wiser... blame a rogue programmer/affiliate, rinse and repeat.

Oops...

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

lol don't give away all the good secrets :winkwink:

You should see the conferences - people are actually showing up to work, learn and grow their businesses. It's very refreshing for a change to see everyone hit with a good dose of humility. Attendance numbers are meaningless and always have been. Pretty much all year the shows have been down by half but by in large if you queried the average attendee they would mostly say the same thing - they're doing more business and getting more out of the shows now that the BS has disappeared.

Ethics and money don't have to be mutually exclusive. There are a great many creative thinkers reinvesting themselves back into their businesses and will come out of all this shining, without going over to the dark side. Those in search of the quick buck won't last nearly as long this time around.

Brad

I will stop posting on GFY, if they censur my oppinion about AFF. GFY have never done that, and I have a great deal of respect for that. GFY is the closest thing to "freedom of speech" I have seen on any forum

GFY is brilliant marketing, because they figured out a way to get other programowners to send traffic and money to their community. It raises the awareness of their brand in a way no advertising could ever do.

I'ts not my job to judge them, but its my job to deside if I want to support them or not.

It's simply not true to say I will be doing business with myselfself real soon if not already. I have been in this industry for more than a decade, and not once have you seen me looking for more work. Every time one door closes, another will open up


The reson why I moved my server from the netherlands back to denmark 1,5 years ago, was because I discovered that they hosted a great amount of forums with illegal content. I dont care if they support them directly or indirectly - its the same thing to me.

Well written and a observation that is forcing me to be more social in the industry.