The END of PornHub as we know it!

[doremi]

First, a petition! (many before but didn't stick.) On December 1st, 2020:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release ... 22030.html

December 4th, the opinion of a Staff Columnist at the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opin ... cking.html

December 7th, and now credit cards in the bandwagon:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/07/busi ... rnhub.html

December 8th, New PornHub Terms Of Service:
https://www.pornhub.com/information/terms

In short, UPLOAD is off-limit if you are not a verified and approved member.

[kerkersklave]

Yeah, the desire of some to make all kind of criminal content on the internet impossible, threatens the freedom to publish content without much effort on the web. Happens to non-sexual platforms as well, but there at lease there is some public protest, with a still politically taboo topic like porn that probably won't happen.
Stuff like cock-heros are already difficult on sites like porn-hub, but probably will disappear, privately produced porn will as well. This stuff will move to smaller, less reliable and less trustworthy sites. Same for the criminal content.

[doremi]

In a Huge Policy Shift, Pornhub Bans Unverified Uploads
https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m7k8/ ... icy-change

[tckt78]

I found that many of my PLAYLISTS (no content I personally uploaded) have been pulled down by PH this week. I'm quite upset about this all around.

[Assloverdude]

How about alternatives? Can the CH community in here agree on another site to upload to?

[kerkersklave]

Oh, downloads are banned as well? That was a great feature for the site that you could so easily download a video you liked... Somehow, it is always the same story, a great service starts, some criminals use it as well, relatively speaking very few, but well, the world is large, so there are many. Instead of tracking them down, some people protest and credit card companies or law makers force the service to get worse. At some point, people move on.

[RedLighter]

I'm actually happy with that, but I don't use pornhub too often and when I do, I only look for verified content. I used to watch A LOT of amateur porn on streaming sites like xhamster or xvideos and I often was shocked with the content available there. Don't get me wrong, I like rough porn, but amateur rape-like videos with questionable 18 years old girls? That's a red light for me. And some of my friends had issues with revenge porn, luckily pornhub took it down before it hit more than few thousand views (and that's still a lot). I'm aware that those things won't disappear, but if they will be limited on the biggest streaming site, I'm fine with that. The obvious downside is CH content, but porn will find a way. The quality of streaming was shit anyways.

[masperturbator]

How about alternatives? Can the CH community in here agree on another site to upload to?

There are already. Some are ones that their owners upload our work to when we publish.

Best alternative is WebTorrent, the Bittorrent Web RTC tech that BitChute uses. WebTorrent should be ready or nearly ready for average persons to use after some instruction to learn the new thing. The code to let regular torrent clients (like qBittorrent) seed WebTorrent files was merged into LibTorrent 5 years ago.

[3xTripleXXX]

Spankbang.com is a pretty popular alternative for CH vids, I've found. I usually upload there too.

[kerkersklave]

I'm actually happy with that, but I don't use pornhub too often and when I do, I only look for verified content.

Well, I mostly look for CHs, music videos and stuff like that. That will probably be gone, cause who will make a verified account for that. It will probably move to other sites that often are slower or otherwise inferior, but maybe they will grow.
I sometimes watched amateur SM porn, that doesn't seem to be much on pornhub anyway, and I do not watch much porn these days anyway. I'm more annoyed with the general direction of the internet becoming a place, where it is difficult to publish content. I'm also a member of various sm community sides were members share videos and pictures and stuff. Nobody there wants to be "verified". I did rarely see content that fits in the categories that you describe, but then I wasn't looking for particularly young girls nor rough sex scenes, were you might get more of that stuff.

And of course revenge porn, abuse or even child pornography cannot be just tolerated. Sites should use the technology Google and others use to track reuploads of such material to block it etc. Also police should figure out were this stuff is made and who makes it, which is of course a difficult task.

[Roblsforbobls]

This is upsetting, hopefully they won't start bombing the videos that are already online.
At least getting verified doesn't seem very difficult?

[mument]

PornHub have been on a weird crusade against all sorts of content recently, but doing it in a really unfriendly way. I had my account deleted without notice. I didn't even know what had happened. I got in touch with their support who flatly refused to explain what had happened and said they could terminate accounts at any time without explanation - not really very helpful if you don't even know what you did wrong. I might not have minded if it wasn't for the fact that I was a paid up premium member with 3 months left on an annual subscription and purchased videos. At every stage PornHub have been obstructive and unhelpful, so they can go to hell. I'll not be spending any money there again because they can't be trusted.

[throwawayacct]

I'm actually happy with that, but I don't use pornhub too often and when I do, I only look for verified content.

Well, I mostly look for CHs, music videos and stuff like that. That will probably be gone, cause who will make a verified account for that. It will probably move to other sites that often are slower or otherwise inferior, but maybe they will grow.
I sometimes watched amateur SM porn, that doesn't seem to be much on pornhub anyway, and I do not watch much porn these days anyway. I'm more annoyed with the general direction of the internet becoming a place, where it is difficult to publish content. I'm also a member of various sm community sides were members share videos and pictures and stuff. Nobody there wants to be "verified". I did rarely see content that fits in the categories that you describe, but then I wasn't looking for particularly young girls nor rough sex scenes, were you might get more of that stuff.

And of course revenge porn, abuse or even child pornography cannot be just tolerated. Sites should use the technology Google and others use to track reuploads of such material to block it etc. Also police should figure out were this stuff is made and who makes it, which is of course a difficult task.

TraffickCam is an app you can use if you travel frequently (as I did, before "the sickness") to upload photos of your hotel room which aids investigators in searching for victims of sex trafficking.

So much porn gets shot in hotel rooms, too - I would not be surprised to learn these photos can help investigators shut down child porn, abuse, or other non-consent pornography.

To say there is very little of it, is to have a blind eye and ignore the iceberg ahead. We don't see much of it because it's being hidden from the casual/"normie" and if it were on front pages and recently promoted, it'd get found. I have always found the "teen" genre pretty icky and questionable even in US-produced, professional shoots. There aren't controls in so many places, Eastern Europe, China, Japan, etc, and there's a non-zero chance that you've come across an illicit/illegal video and *not known* the actor was underage, or that the "rough" scene was not just a scene.

That's one end. On the other, the more localized morality issues of hypno or popper porn, drug use, even taking into account the silly UK laws - ultimately it's the content host's decision. For DMCA, if you know artists or performers in any medium, you'll know they aren't fairly compensated for their work while all the rest at the trough are getting their fill too. With compilation/CH/tease comps like numberonefan or pseudonym's to name a couple - in my mind these aren't strictly violations because 1) they're not profiting in any way, 2) the work could increase the traffic to specific performers, and 3) using a whole combination of different performers/scenes isn't necessarily taking the artist's work. It IS, however, using the artist's image and work without their consent. We say 'Big deal" and move on because it's porn. I think it's important to have an honest conversation about this specific aspect and how it affects performers both negatively and positively. Forget the studio's interest, or host site's investment - while the vast majority of remix/redux/comp content producers are doing so out of appreciation and homage, it's still not normally involving the artist whose image we're enjoying. What's the right thing to do there? Give credits? Link to performers' sites or catalogs? Pretending it's not an issue is what results in mass DMCA takedowns, canceled accounts, and ending up on an investigator's list.

[RemiHiyama]

I had to laugh-to-keep-from-crying at the person who thought leaving porn to 'professional production companies' would fix things. Because there has been a non-trivial amount of terrible stuff done on and around 'professional' shoots. They aren't universally terrible, but they are not a panacea either, and that kind of rule would shut out a whole lot of independent performers with good reasons for wanting to stay that way.

I'm not sure this change will hurt most of the content I care about, but it's a poor substitute for actually stopping the remove-reupload-repeat cycle. And while this isn't on pornhub, it'd sure be nice to get rid of the stimgata around having been in porn, without which there would be a lot less harm being done.

It's not clear how things are supposed to work for people producing non-live-action videos under these rules. I don't think a lot of people posting only 3d rendered content are going to be thrilled to have to send real pictures of themselves in... but there do still seem to be verified people posting that kind of content, so I don't know.

As for downloads... Jdownloader exists, and it still works just fine.

What's the right thing to do there? Give credits? Link to performers' sites or catalogs? Pretending it's not an issue is what results in mass DMCA takedowns, canceled accounts, and ending up on an investigator's list.

Giving enough information that people who want the whole scene can find it should be the absolute minimum, IMO. Both for "giving credit where it's due" purposes and for making it easier for people to find things they want (which in turn helps performers get compensated).

[Pseudonym]

I'm not a lawyer so take this with a grain of salt and please correct me if I'm wrong on any of this.

With compilation/CH/tease comps like numberonefan or pseudonym's to name a couple - in my mind these aren't strictly violations because 1) they're not profiting in any way

Whether you do or do not profit doesn't change anything in this situation. You are still infringing on their copyright and could be sued either way. The only difference might be the likelihood.
Plus I've recently created a Patreon so...

2) the work could increase the traffic to specific performers

True, but you would have to prove it in court. On the other side the copiright holder could sue you for the amounth of lost revenue (price of the infringed content * number of views = you get fucked in the ass) if they really wanted to ruin your life.

3) using a whole combination of different performers/scenes isn't necessarily taking the artist's work.

Whether something falls into fair use cathegory is, again, decided by courts. But in my opinion there is close to zero chance that any CH video as a whole would be considered a fair use. The visual portion in some rounds might? Perhaps? But don't forget about the music. You can't defend that.

We say 'Big deal" and move on because it's porn.

I say we move on because there are no real options to do what we do legaly. I did some quick "research" on feasibility of legal CH videos some years ago and come to this conclusion:

1) We could only use appropriate Creative Commons music. It sucks, it's extremely limiting, but it's possible I guess.

But what is worse:

2) There are no even remotely reasonable ways to acquire permissions, licences or to pay a fee to the right holders of videos that we are using in our edits. Good luck with emailing all the porn studios and getting even one response let alone any kind of permission.

The solution that came to my mind would be cooperation with amateur porn producers and to create some mutaly beneficial relationship.
But at that point you realize that all of it is just more work on top of what is already pretty hard and time consuming hobby and to gain what? To greatly limit your creative options and make much worse CH videos.

So yeah, there is no way for us to create anything similar to what we do now legaly.

I think it's important to have an honest conversation about this specific aspect and how it affects performers both negatively and positively. Forget the studio's interest, or host site's investment - while the vast majority of remix/redux/comp content producers are doing so out of appreciation and homage, it's still not normally involving the artist whose image we're enjoying. What's the right thing to do there? Give credits? Link to performers' sites or catalogs?

Giving credits and not editing out wattermarks seems like the only thing that we can do at this moment.

When it comes to morality of what we do, I would argue that the damage done by us is probably non existent and we are actually making some money to the right holders.
No one goes to PH to search for a particular CH in order to listen to that one song. You either buy it directly or listen to it on YT or Spotify and pay for it in form of ads or subscription.

When it comes to porn studios, the problem is so large that CH videos are like a drop in the ocean, but sure, let's focus on piracy.
I think that the great Gaben was right when he said: "Piracy is a service problem".
Look how succesful is Valve's Steam gaming platform. If there was something similar for porn with reasonable prices or subscription, I would use it instead of Empornium.
Cock hero is not destroying porn industry. They are destroing themselves and the piracy is just a symptom.

For DMCA, if you know artists or performers in any medium, you'll know they aren't fairly compensated for their work while all the rest at the trough are getting their fill too.

True. This article seems to be very topical and get us nicely back to conversation on PH and how fucked up the copyright laws and porn industry is: (If atleast half of what is written there is true)
https://slate.com/technology/2014/10/mi ... tries.html