industry people profiting from content theft

there are a few large message boards out there designed for surfers. they can come and chat, find hookups, and of course post pics. they hotlink, they download & post, they cut off the branded url and post, etc... if posted as an attachment, these stolen images are physically located on the message board server.

what bugs me is that these message boards are integrated into sites. i can think of a few large free sites that are large because of all the stolen content. its easy to build up 100k a day site if you have tons of people posting all kinds of stolen images.

then you just revamp your site, sell some ad spots, put up sponsor banners, etc, etc... maybe even a members area...

but the whole business model is still based on stolen content.

discuss...

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Originally posted by Dawgy
discuss...

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All that is fine with me except the cutting off of watermarks, logos etc. I see it as free advertising and most don't get off on images, they want to see the video and will hopefully come to my site to get it.

Just what i was thinking, Squirt.

And I don't think we'd mind if people took stuff off my free sites as long a the watermark was there.

I don't know how many surfers who post at sharing boards are taking the time to cut off URL watermarks. I've always thought they probably saved it from a website who stole the content and removed the mark.

The members of such boards usually post a grab bag of pics from various websites. Most have the watermark in tact in the post, some don't. Kinda points to them getting it that way.

As for such board owners profiting off it.... If the watermark is there (and it usually is), then that board is certainly providing a valuable service. You could almost call them a form of TGP or pic post that surfers submit to.

And why not use that to your advantage?

Post your own links on those sites and see the traffic roll in.

Works for me...

what if there are pics you are trying to keep exclusive that you don't use for promo? anyway, these people very rarely type in the urls - and the sponsors to click on each page are the boards' sponsors.

the more pics are seen, the less valuable they are.

Well one thing about marketing to these types of board and i can guarantee you this..

Posting your own watermarked images to them DOES work.

Surfers, despite what many people, are creatures of habit and in fact, many of them keep large collections of porn they have 'aquired' from the web on their local and removable storage devices.

What Patti mentioned about the URLs may not be to far from the truth however, considering that many of these people will share their image / movie collections at some point in the future, putting a logo and / or a url on the images can work wonders from a brand building perspective :)

Regards,

Lee