A while back I worked for a major gay video company, shooting a few scenes for them. When the video came out I liked the photos of me on the box cover and requested digital copies, with their watermarks of course.

The reply from their marketing guy was "We don't distribute photos because they just get stolen and passed around online."

I really wanted to ask him "Are you in the still-pictures business? Is that your primary product? Or isn't the only reason those stills are taken to market your primary product: videos?"

My site Redhead Guys has about 5,000 images and hours of video on it. But I see any individual pic (heck, any individual 5-minute video segment) as marketing tools. My primary product is memberships which is the only way someone can truly access all the material on the site. Although I haven't yet dropped pics in newsgroups or p2p networks, I have put some of my stuff on free sites and can only hope people share it around.

I put pretty big watermarks on my pics, even though it's a pay site. Never heard a complaint.