Maybe you should sue one of the smaller webmasters, let it be well known that you have. That might scare a few of the others into pulling the illegal content down if they think you will target even small time sites.
This sucks big time. It should really be a criminal offence as its theft.
It's really so stupid .. smart enough to build a site, but too stupid to see the potential in doing it the honest way, and sign up as an affiliate.
:cash:
It's occured to me.... are many of these sites run by teenagers?
In the 1980s a great many of the hackers were just teens who had plenty of time on thier hands and lived in their own rooms in very comfy suburbs.... like Plano TX, the Woodlands TX, Highland Park, IL. Ma Bell and other companies had to change their calculus of confrontation when their tacks led to kids.
Steve
So many of these guys aren't even earning a dime from ripping videos. They just put them on torrents because they get-off on file sharing. And as desslock says, I bet a lot of them are young and don't have any money. And since they aren't members of any webmaster community how are they going to find out they they may be subject to legal action? I guess they may have file-sharing communities, I don't know.Originally Posted by marcjacob
There are some people who genuinely are fans, and they are just very enthusiastic about the videos they share. It just doesn't occur to them there is a huge conflict between being a fan and appreciating the quality of the video, and ripping it off and hurting the company that created it.
When you email that blogger and politely tell them what they are doing to your ability to continue making more movies, they respond well. They take them down. They choose to stop posting them and any other videos and change the nature of their blog. I've dealt with a number of individuals like that.
However, most just don't care either way. They like the "celeb status" of having a high-traffic blog with lots of comments and requests pouring in from their visitors. They do it because of that, primarily. They like the attention. Which is why the put the effort and energy (minimal as it is) in to posting links to videos up. Some also do make some revshare money, but a great many I've seen don't even do that. They just want a ton of people coming to their website so they can feel cool.
CorbinFisher's Amateur College Men
Blogs is an issue that is controlable. Torrents are not.
Should one assume that paysite owners now have to hire a new person to watch and read and ask for images to be removed or be correctly linked?
Maybe that refers to Lee's past comments when the cost of business is not worth having affiliates and the headaches.
I think one should very well assume that. It is at the point where that is as much a part of the cost of doing business as paying for hosting, if you ask me. That much of a given, and that much of a necessity.
The costs involved when talking about piracy go beyond just lost revenues (which can be substantial and even immeasurable. How many initial signups and rebills do you lose on account of piracy?) but also involve the time and money spent fighting it. Staffers get stuck having to track down piracy, distracted from other important tasks. Instead of being involved in revenue generating activity such as marketing, recruiting, filming, and the like.
On our end, we had everyone at the company spend some time sending out DMCA notices and emails and the like when and if things came to our attention but that became such a task that it got to the point we really did need someone doing nothing but that, fulltime. There's a whole salary, payroll taxes, benefits and what not all going to that.
CorbinFisher's Amateur College Men
Guys, I completely understand that it is a problem. But I just have to point out something:
You guys aren't the first company ever to deal with theft and loss prevention. Any company of any size receives it.
It's a part of business.
Should the street produce vendor stop displaying outside since several apples and pears will assuredly "walk away?" Why not compare the losses of a Internet adult website vs. a brick and mortar retail store.
Yes, when guys steal your website videos and distribute them for free, that is a loss. But as I mentioned earlier, it's a normal cost of doing business.
Once way back in my Radio Shack days, we constantly battled people writing hot checks for things. I once sold a $800 laptop to a guy to had gone on a weekend binge cleaning out the town of camcorders, radar detectors, other pawnables. (My words to Tandy Loss Prevention - hey I followed company proceedure ;-) )
And that's not counting people who grab an electronic items which I've chased out the store.... or answered alarm calls at 4am because someone stole a truck, drove it through the store's front glass, and grabbed all the vcr's and camcorders.
How would your loss prevention woes compare to that of Macy's or Circuit City? I'm not asserting one enjoys more or less, but it's an interesting question.
One advantage to the internet is the easy, inexpensive means of distribution.
I guess not everything is a free ride. Easy, inexpensive distribution can also mean easy illegal distribution as well.
There will always be loss. It just needs to be kept minimal.
Steve
[ I just remembered a funny motto from Loss Prevention they told all employees --- Always cover your ASSets ]
Once difference though, Steve, is the attitude people have towards online content theft.
Online content is ethereal. Intangible. These people stealing video files, in many cases, have absolutely no concept of it being theft or even inappropriate in any way.
You bounce a check at Radio Shack and it's pretty much universally agreed that's a bad thing. Shoplift or steal from a brick and mortar business and everyone knows it's a crime and wrong.
Online, however, you can have entirely, fully, completely law abiding people - their only transgression being theft of music and video files. Because people don't view that as theft. The lack of a physical product has them thinking they're not really stealing anything from anybody at all.
So you're battling way more than just theft and piracy itself. You're battling a culture and belief system in which the theft and piracy is perfectly acceptable behavior. You're not just trying to fight the measurable monetary losses. You're fighting this mindset in which there is nothing wrong with the thieving.
Online, you can throw up a blog with blatantly stolen videos and distribute them openly, freely, and without hassle whatsoever. Your peers encourage it. Sites like Blogspot and flash video sites make it extremely easy to do so. There is no consequence, and that feeds in to the belief there's nothing wrong with it.
That guy passing bad checks at your Radio Shack couldn't park a van in the townsquare and sell all those hot items out the back of it without raising suspicion or getting in trouble. Bloggers distributing pirated content can.
Yes, fighting theft is a given. Anyone who has worked in retail has heard that speech many a time. But it goes way beyond just product theft in the case of online, creative materials. It's a belief system we're fighting against.
CorbinFisher's Amateur College Men
In a perfect world, pirated content with watermark would be free promotion, enticing a certain percentage of viewers you'd never have otherwise have been brought to the attention of to sign up.
But I'm not convinced that's the case. What I think is happening, instead, is that people are being further conditioned to seek out stuff for free and avoid paying at all costs, thanks to the amazing ease with which they can acquire everything for free.
Your site doesn't become a destination on their web browser. Instead, the site featuring your pirated videos becomes the destination on their web browser and the only place they will ever go to get your videos.
When it's so easy to get everything for free, they have zero incentive to buy - regardless of how great you make your site, how great you make your videos, or anything else.
Once they're conditioned to get it all for free, they're lost.
So that's why I feel it's important to hassle these sites. Get them shut down. Get videos removed from the networks. Make it difficult to get them. Have individuals distributing pirated content, as well as individuals seeking out pirated content, to get conditioned to the fact that it's an unreliable means of acquiring it, it can be difficult and inconvenient, they can't expect good quality or resolution, they have to go through hoops and up ladders to get it, and constantly have to seek out new ways to find it.
There will always be piracy, but it's key that it can't become so easy to the mainstream masses that there's no longer an incentive to pay.
And, quite frankly, I'm not content to let huge numbers of people get all the stuff for free in the hopes a small but decent enough percentage will come out of those masses willing to buy.
CorbinFisher's Amateur College Men
sorry to be nagging corbin but here are the results for corbin fisher and rapidshare on google... 25.000 links.... are you going to try and get them all down?
http://www.google.com/search?q=corbi...n&start=0&sa=N
dont get me wrong. i dont approve piracy, but as long as there arent any real global ways of fighting it, itīs in my opinion no use to try. but as i said: its just my personal point of view
Well, I don't doubt a great many of our videos are out there. But it should also be noted not every one of those 25,000 google results was a pirated video. Not a very good marker.
Try and get them all down? Not necessarily. Try and get every single one we're made aware of taken down? Definitely.
I'd like a good number of people going to blogs to get their free porn fix to click through to a link that says "video has been removed" and get all frustrated that keeps happening. I'd like blog operators to constantly get emails and comments from their readers bemoaning removal of videos shortly after their posting of the link. I'd like blog operators to keep having to change the upload service they use 'cause they're tired of the files constantly being deleted. I'd like surfers to spend awhile downloading a video only to find out it's not what they were expecting, hoping for, or of such poor quality they can't get off to it.
I want people to know the flat out easiest, most reliable way to get ahold of the content is to pay for it. Rather than have to dig around looking over a ton of different blogs to see who might actually have the videos today and who hasn't been busted yet.
Attentive and dedicated attention to combatting piracy can go quite far towards accomplishing all of that.
CorbinFisher's Amateur College Men
corbin i know that the google thing isnt exactly totally right. but the point is you would have to go through all those links to see if it is a link to your ripped content or not (and thats just google). and since there is no global internet law you cant even get at 80% of the people.
and i would also like a world, where all people would be good and live in freedom and peace. this kind of world doesnt exist in the internet though (nor anywhere else).
but please go ahead and fight that fight. itīs good for all of us. believe me, we have spend more than 150.000 $ in the past years to try JUST that. i am just plain tired of putting money into that fight with no outcome at the end.
I don't think things are as hopeless as you might believe.
There are a great many individuals involved in piracy, no doubt. But those great many individuals are all tied together by the shared networks they use to engage in piracy. Those shared networks include the blogs they go to, the online communities they go to, the online groups and forums and social networking sites and other venues through which they communicate with another to share videos.
Those are the things you go after. And they are much fewer in number than the individuals.
I've personally shut down entire blogs on Google's blogspot - not by getting Google to take them offline, but getting their readership so sick and tired of clicking on links only to find the video was removed that all those surfers stopped going to that blog. Or getting the operator of that blog so sick of having to repost videos or find new filesharing sites to use or so sick of their readers bitching and moaning about deleted files that they gave up on the blogs.
It's an ugly word, but "harrassment" does well to describe it. Harrassing these blogs and communities not through any illegal means but by getting their ISPs to enforce their own TOS's, making it such a pain in the butt to do what they're doing that they give up.
CorbinFisher's Amateur College Men
I agree with Corbin_Fisher_BD on this one. There are many ways to combat the pirates, particularly by not tolerating bloggers who indiscriminately link to pirated videos. Any blog that becomes "known" as a cool place to find links to pirated videos will quickly become known to the companies whose stolen content is being given away. Getting the file sharing services to drop a particular file is not that difficult and causes frustration for the visitors to the blog, hopefully enough that they will stop visiting the blog.
It is an endless battle, but not fighting it with all the tactics available would be disasterous for the industry. I don't own any content but how the heck am I supposed to sell memberships to sites when it is so easy for surfers to get the stuff for free?
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