JamesLast wrote:Just try to answer this question:
What would kink.com, brazzers.com and all the others site say, if someone asks them if it is legal to take their videos, edit them and upload them somewhere on a public site?
I am sure most of them would say No, don't do that, you don't have the rights to do that..
I can actually tell you what they would say, since in the case of Kink.com I did ask that question. Specifically, whether we could use their images in webteases. They said yes, they gave me instructions on how to download a list of their 16000+ promotional images and they are now paying us around 200$ per month - our biggest source of income by far.
Content producers care about revenues, so if you steal their member-only content or you don't include a link to them, your videos are almost certainly infringing and will be taken down. But if you use promotional content and you make sure your viewers know where to get more if they like what they see, that is something you may very well get permission for. It's very tough to advertise in the adult industry and giving out free content is one of the cheapest and best ways to do it. Almost every site offers an affiliate program for just this reason. You may get some "no"s simply because CH doesn't fit the pre-existing model that everybody is used to: Usually you need to have your own website to sign up as an affiliate. But it doesn't hurt to ask. With smaller producers I could absolutely see you getting a yes.
Be aware of their economics. For them it is worth it to give you some promotional clips if they think you will realistically send them real users who may sign up. So be upfront about your plans, tell them that CH is very popular and that by its very nature it's a tease that leaves people wanting more. If you make no money off of CH, say that, if you want to make money off of it, you could create a page for your creations somewhere and become an affiliate.
I realize that it is probably much harder for you guys to get producers' attention than it is for us. If CH keeps gaining traction we will probably set up a separate site for it, which would include setting up affiliate licencing deals so that authors would have preapproved clips to use.
Alas, if it turns out that the majority of CH on this forum right now is infringing we may disallow posting download links entirely. This forum would be a place to talk about your favorite clips from sites like C4S and KinkBomb and of course we could discuss a more organized effort to create CH. I mentioned the affiliate method, I could also see a crowd-funding method - there are sites where you can license content. Usually you pay around 50$ for a 15-20 minute video if you want to put it on a paysite (I think a site charging 1$/month would qualify) and about twice as much if you want to distribute it freely (although there are usually conditions on that like you can use max. 5 min clips, which would be fine for CH purposes.) There are also hundreds of models on sites like clips4sale who offer custom clips, we could probably even have our own clips made at 100-200$ a pop. I would say this is definitely not out of reach for a community with 250000 unique visitors and half a million visits per month.
Personally I would totally chip in 10$ from time to time if it helps make andyp's next project possible. And of course, once a clip is licensed, we could let anyone use it in their own CH, so once we build up a bit of a "content pool", using that would allow new creators to make a name for themselves.
Anyway, these are just some ideas for now. My point is there doesn't have to be a conflict between producers and their audience. In fact nothing would be more absurd than to say there is. What we need is a system that allows everybody to get what they want.
janmb wrote:Torrents vs. magnet links vs any other technology is really irrelevant
Correct. Under the DMCA, if a link is infringing we'll always remove it. Doesn't matter whether it's a torrent, a magnet link or a web link.
