Paranoid moment. . .

. . .ok guys, bear with me. It's midnight here and I can't sleep cause Im certain the sky IS falling now. . .

As some of you remember, I shared with you all our new logo designed for my site, BearBound.com. Well, today my business partner in L.A. attempted to have THAT logo put on our new business cards, and the owner of the business contacted him this afternoon refusing the order. He had apparently checked out the site and decided the content. . .and therefore the LOGO. . .was obscene.

I am really contemplating whether any of this is truly worth it. While I certainly understand that the images of tied-up bear men is a very unique niche and would not appeal to many (I find it delicious myself), I have never found what we do to be outright "obscene". Particulary since almost all of our models are solo and a great majority of them are clothed.

The stories I have read about and the posts I have seen on here are finally getting to me. While Im proud to say that BearBound.com is COMPLETELY compliant with the new 2257 regs as of this week :), I am just simply too afraid that our material is going to send us to prison as a violation of the obscenity rules.

If anyone can shed some light or give advice to my paranoia, I'd appreciate it. And thanks for allowing me this "chicken little" moment!

Leathermen can be such drama queens. . .

Dart

1. here's a fresh beer
2. here's a hug
3. find a different printing company

Yes, chill out Dart. We've been through this before.

Wait and see what happens, then make decisions. In the meantime do what ever you can to be "compliant" :-)

Your stuff is not what they're after. And if it is they'll never get away with it.

Hey Dart,

Good to see you here. Sorry you're fretting, but last night it was my turn. Read some stuff about this obscenity task force that's amassing in DC. It's scary shit when other people start to decide what they think is obscene. I've been fighting all week with a link list operator because I have three pictures on my site where a man has four fingers in another man's bum so the link list rejected my whole site because they don't allow site that feature "fisting." I'm sorry, I though it was only fisting when you heard the suction kick in and the thumb slide in for home. Meanwhile, get this, they have numerous sites already listed in their quaint directory that encourage you to explore their galleries full of fisting. Morons.

Anyway, this whole week had me whipped right into a frenzy last night and my poor host Chili Host caught the brunt of it. Luke's an amazing man and friend and he held my hand and patted my head. At the end of it I decided it's time to move my empire from the pristine lands of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to a place where a little boy sticks his finger in a dyke.

And btw, xstr8guy and partner are arriving to our fair city on Tuesday. We should get together and have a beer and see who we can tie up.

Cheers
Dzinerbear

Dart, you are in Canada right? Here's what you do:
- put up 2257 links on all your domain homepages and a 2257 complaince page sayiing you are in full compliance and fully support the new 2257 regs, blah blah blah....rip it from one of the many posts that have been made by chadknowslaw on the various boards so the terminology is correct. If nothing else this will buy you time
- plan to get the hell out of the USA, setup hosting in Canada or The Netherlands or wherever...take your time and do it right and you will be 100% fully out of the DOJ's reach

too easy!

cheers,
Luke

hmmmmm. . .

Tying up xstr8guy WOULD get me out of my "funk". . .

:shifty:

I asked him about that, he said he has body issues. Well at least about being photographed, maybe he'd let you tie him up anyway. :)

dzinerbear

Enough about tying me up already, lol

I'm having a serious paranoid moment right now too. I've made a decision to pull all my sites next monday if the injuction doesn't go through. I will re-upload my (hundreds of) AVS sites one-by-one after I get all of the information entered into some kind of compliance software. I will also remove hardcore sponsor banners and fpa's from the members areas.

And in anticipation of the crusading obscenity task force, I will censor all of my tours and remove all extreme hardcore from my members areas. I don't want to go to prison.

Who has a 2257 software solution that actually is not in beta? Komply looks good but the site hasn't been updated since the beginning of this month, so I don't have a lot of faith in this product.

Jeez, I've been non compliant since I got in the business for 10 years now. I've definitely had my paranoid moments because I have been in open defiance of 2257 for so long maybe I'm pushing my luck. It's definitely not worth jail time or even the thought of jail time. I will simply take my site down. I am confident that I can make another site to comply with the new regulations. There's definitely alot of risk in this business. If you're not prepared for the heat that's surely coming our way, then it's probably time to look at doing something else.

Dart, I am familiar with your content as I've seen it on Bear Porn. It doesn't seem to me like it would be "patently" offensive. In the end, that's something only a jury can decide. You can "what if" this thing to death but in reality, no one can tell you for sure if your content is safe.

Jim instead of deleting and reuploading everything you can just move the entire site into a hidden folder and as you work on getting it all recorded just move it back...it will save you heaps of reuploading :)

cheers,
Luke

Thanks Luke! That's why I love you. :)

I will still need to remove all hardcore sponsor banners and change the 2257 text on my pages. But I won't need to re-upload all of the content, so that will save a lot of trouble.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

a place where a little boy sticks his finger in a dyke.

---

Heh, that doesn't sound very 2257 compliant either. :joker:

Hey Mike, good to see you back. Your site was down for a bit, wasn't it. I went looking for it one day and couldn't find it.

Jim, oh God, you're going to need a vacation to recover from all that work. Too bad you're taking the vacation beforehand.

dzinerbear

Yepper, my itsy bitsy site was offline for a week or so there, the server's storage crashed and I had to conduct a transplant, change DNS, etc. I recovered alright, though. Gave me more time to work on 2257 stuff.

Nice "seeing" everybody again. I do pop in regularly and see what's going on, though. I'm the quiet one in the corner everybody worries about. :devil:

Mike,

How's your site going since we reviewed it here on the board? I noticed you've made some changes.

cheers
dzinerbear

Yeah, I added a tiny bit of color. LOL. The tips were great and I'm still making tweaks here and there. In general the site is performing a bit better overall since then. So there's some proof that the advice here works.

My weakness is traffic in volume. I mostly go the route of very carefully crafted ppc as opposed to lots of tgp/free traffic, etc. That's not to say I'd do any better, but don't we all want more and more. :)

i don't recall that your logo showed dick - did it? it's true that in some places bondage is not legal, but l.a. isn't one of them. bondage is legal here, and your logo isn't even a photograph, so it seems to me you should be okay.

i ran into problems with a lot of printers when we were doing print ads. i finally started calling and asking if they printed light adult material before wasting my time going to each printer. i'd say 2/3's weren't comfortable with it.

we have a couple printers in our adult world. maybe best to go to them for business cards, or just ask our local angelenos who did their cards.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dart

. . .ok guys, bear with me. It's midnight here and I can't sleep cause Im certain the sky IS falling now. . .

As some of you remember, I shared with you all our new logo designed for my site, BearBound.com. Well, today my business partner in L.A. attempted to have THAT logo put on our new business cards, and the owner of the business contacted him this afternoon refusing the order. He had apparently checked out the site and decided the content. . .and therefore the LOGO. . .was obscene.

I am really contemplating whether any of this is truly worth it. While I certainly understand that the images of tied-up bear men is a very unique niche and would not appeal to many (I find it delicious myself), I have never found what we do to be outright "obscene". Particulary since almost all of our models are solo and a great majority of them are clothed.

The stories I have read about and the posts I have seen on here are finally getting to me. While Im proud to say that BearBound.com is COMPLETELY compliant with the new 2257 regs as of this week :), I am just simply too afraid that our material is going to send us to prison as a violation of the obscenity rules.

If anyone can shed some light or give advice to my paranoia, I'd appreciate it. And thanks for allowing me this "chicken little" moment!

Leathermen can be such drama queens. . .

Dart

---

Surely there must be a printer in TO who would print your logo. Maybe you could ask someone at xtra magazine or the stagshop who does their card printing or recommendations.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dart

my site, BearBound.com.

---

Holy cow, some of those guys on your site are fucking Hot
nice job casting your models :thumbsup:

Well thanks Marc! And my intention is to KEEP it that way :)

Appreciate the compliment,

Dart

you keep your ass our of jail long enought to do more. Don't hold your breath... Crossing my fingers for you and of course all of us in this new era of the "land of the free.".

Sad times indeed for free speech and expression (unless you happen to express the views of BUSH)!

Lee

and what exactly DID you mean by that comment? Are you saying my stuff's illegal?

Dart

I rented an office here and the contract was cancelled once the "church lady" office manager found I was in the adult industry. How did she find out? She was asking everyone coming to my office what the purpose of their visit was... LOL go figure.

Now I have a new office where they do all inverviews for me!

So I guess my point is.. choose your battles. Because some uptight closeted church guy with a shitty wedgy up his ass was intrusive enough to stick his nose in your business doesn't mean you have to counter strike.... unless you want to.

You've spent enough time, and negative energy, on it today.. let it go and find a new printer.

Who am I to say...tha't the point. Only Bush and his Bible buddies can say...

Lee