Should i site rip this now or not

[WatchItDry]

It's fine. I posted a different thread offering to support creators by having a little competition and this thread gets bumped instead. I thought it was a cool idea. A way to give creators a little incentive and maybe start to attract some new creators as well. And given the fact that I create new stuff monthly there's potential to have it become regular and even grow. That's whats the bummer because I think it would be great for the community. But instead of that idea being supported this thread gets bumped and turned into a why ch creators should not be paid tirade. That's what I'm referring to when I say the community does not want to support its creators. Because any ideas that even hint at supporting creators are immediately shut down.

[Pseudonym]

While risking that I'll get some heat too by entering this thread, can I have a couple of philosophical questions that might lead to some interesting and productive discussion?



I haven't watched the situation around WatchItDry very closely so I might be missing some crucial part, but I've noticed he has been relatively harshly criticised in this and other threads.
Is reason of the criticism usage of copyrighted material in combination with paywall on his site?



My thinking and questions would be then:
1) We know that usage of copyrighted material is not exactly leagal, but this whole sub-forum is build on it and most users wouldn't probably say we are doing something immoral.
2) Similarly, most Milovana users wouldn't probably say paywalls in themselves are immoral.

What is it then about the combination of these two that creates the immorality and seems to make people so unconfortable?
Does WatchItDry cause more damage to either porn studios, other authors or audience than other average CH creator?
What exactly do you procieve as immoral with his approach and who is being hurt?



Are streamers on twitch immoral for using copyrighted music, videos, games and other content while monetizing their streams?
If not, would such a streamer become immoral by putting his stream behind a paywall instead of donations?
Even in a case where he would made less money by doing that?

Why are donations procieved as more moral than paywalls when dealing with illegal content?

What about a combination of 50% free content + 50% behind paywall? Is that immoral, is it only 50% immoral now or does it cancel out and becomes moraly neutral?



And lastly, if you think that what WatchItDry does is wrong, do you have some suggestion on how he could change his approach?
Is there a moral and feasible way to monetize his production without losing most of the income?

Is wanting to be compensated for your hard work an immoral thing in a world that doesn't allow for a feasable legal solution?
Are there ways to do it atleast in a moral way if not legal?

Are CH videos forever destined to be illegal and non-monetizable?
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?



And again, these are all philosophical questions. I'm not either defending or condemning WatchItDry.
I'm simply trying to understand.
(And also I don't want to do immoral things myself.) :D

[fragrantEmulsion]

To illuminate my position. I am not saying creators shouldn't be paid, I am saying that there are valid economic reasons behind why they aren't paid. I am not even against paywalls, let the market decide if they are fairly priced and desirable. I would pay between $10-20 for some of my favorite productions.

It's fine. I posted a different thread offering to support creators by having a little competition and this thread gets bumped instead. I thought it was a cool idea.

I like the idea of a competition, yet I find it somewhat questionable that you only come to post here after someone suggests ripping your content.

I stand by the opinion I had over a year ago, this dude is charging money for content that is stolen in the first place and has the audacity to cry about morals.

He has no right to demand money for his "creations" that feature mostly stolen content anyway and we have no right to demand his content since it's stolen.

Define "stolen," isn't every cock hero made from "stolen" material? Or are you referring to the 3d models, or CH rounds themselves? I want to see evidence of this theft. So far I only see accusation. Maybe I will do my own digging into the deep magics of the forum and book guy can pull out his necropost memes.

[WatchItDry]

I like the idea of a competition, yet I find it somewhat questionable that you only come to post here after someone suggests ripping your content.

I was actually made aware of this thread a couple months ago. I just didn't bother to comment since I still have stuff to work out with ph before I want to direct any attention to this site.

I generally don't bother posting on milovana just because I'm already aware of the responses I'll receive. So I will only take the time when I have a new demo of some new mechanics that I've added to our games.

The competition was just an idea I had and just went ahead and posted it regardless. Since given the logistics of having to give creators time to create and me time to build. That's like a month already. Than you have to give players time to vote. So that's another two weeks to a month. So I just wanted to put the idea out there sooner rather than later.

I only commented now because this thread was bumped after I posted the competition thread with the accusation that now I'm stealing creators ch's and just adding beat meters for profit. Which I took offense to since it took a lot of time to create each and every minute of the ch's in our collection and I didn't want there to be any doubt that these ch's I've created that have never been seen anywhere else were somehow stolen by some unknown creator.

[Doomtrack]

I stand by the opinion I had over a year ago, this dude is charging money for content that is stolen in the first place and has the audacity to cry about morals.

He has no right to demand money for his "creations" that feature mostly stolen content anyway and we have no right to demand his content since it's stolen.

Define "stolen," isn't every cock hero made from "stolen" material? Or are you referring to the 3d models, or CH rounds themselves? I want to see evidence of this theft. So far I only see accusation. Maybe I will do my own digging into the deep magics of the forum and book guy can pull out his necropost memes.

I define it as stolen since even if you buy the video legally you do not have the rights to redistribute it in a simple edited fashion for monetary gains. My big beef with him is the paywall for content that can't legally be monetized and the general attitude of "these people aren't willing to pay for overpriced products and give me personal information on my scruffy personal webpage, how dare they not support me"

If there was a patreon or subscribestar option to support them I would have no issue with it. The fact that he didn't go that route means he doesn't want support, he DEMANDS it.

[Pudknocker]

Before I launch into this, I want to be 100% clear that I support creators - *all* creators - and that all creations have worth, monetary or otherwise. This includes WatchItDry's Unity stuff, which frankly is completely unique and arguably provides a lot of value in addition to the included video edits. I've never charged for the few videos I've produced nor do I ever plan on charging for any videos I produce in the future, but I don't want to come across as combative towards either end of this discussion. I'm also not going to be talking legals here, because legality and morality are frequently not the same thing. Legal angles tend to favor those who have the most to gain but the least to lose, the exploitative and the powerful.

This is something I've always sort of been on the fence about, because at heart what creators do is transformative and adds value - and what WatchItDry does with building Unity games featuring CH clips is even further transformative. There is absolutely value there!

Where I get hung up is that the content is still derivative, but little to none of the proceeds go towards the content creators that make the CH content possible in the first place. This gets into the weeds of the ethics of contracts and performer-publisher agreements, the details of which none of us can know on the individual video level. Some are probably one-and-done deals - performer gets paid and the publisher (FTV, brazzers, vixen, whatever) reap all profits going forward. Some performers may have royalty agreements in place, in which case redistribution - even transformative redistribution - directly affects their bottom line. In some cases it may help it (who here hasn't discovered a new performer by way of CH?) but others ("I've seen this, now I don't need to buy the video") it may hurt. I generally have no compunctions against exploiting the output of larger enterprises, preferring to think of the stars that make the video possible in the first place, but if the sales of a performer's video go down because everyone's bought a CH instead of the original video, then they may not get paid as much for their next one. (Again, the legality of selling derivative works is something I won't enter into here; I'm strictly approaching this from a morality angle.)

There's a distinct difference between paying a creator *to* work, and a creator charging *for* work. Patreon, subscribestar, paypal donations, the like fall into the former category, while paywalls fall into the latter. When you voluntarily toss a few bits into the tip bucket, it's a thank-you gesture and a recognition of the value being imparted. When you charge *for* work, but won't (or can't) route a fair portion of the proceeds to the people who made the thing possible in the first place, that to me is immoral. What I see from WatchItDry is amazing and transformative work which absolutely deserves due credit, but not even an indication that any of the proceeds generated by memberships go towards the performers who made the video content possible in the first place. That doesn't sit well.

----------------------------

ALL THAT SAID, of course, another weighty and complicated piece of this is that the porn industry is absolutely rife with piracy, and you're asking folks who normally steal their porn to pay for it. That's going to elicit a negative reaction right out of the gate. And even if we reduce the sample size to people who *might* pay, there's the associated stigma and the fact that a lot of those people don't want their personal information in yet another database that could be hacked, their purchases/contributions tracked back to their meatspace identities. Advertising inherently drives FOMO, and while FOMO can drive sales, it can also drive people to react harshly when they *do* feel like they can't access content through their usual channels, whatever reasons they have for using said channels. This is especially true when they're used to being able to get something for nothing.

This doesn't excuse reactions (on either side of things) but it may at least help illuminate.

[Doomtrack]

Spoiler: show

Before I launch into this, I want to be 100% clear that I support creators - *all* creators - and that all creations have worth, monetary or otherwise. This includes WatchItDry's Unity stuff, which frankly is completely unique and arguably provides a lot of value in addition to the included video edits. I've never charged for the few videos I've produced nor do I ever plan on charging for any videos I produce in the future, but I don't want to come across as combative towards either end of this discussion. I'm also not going to be talking legals here, because legality and morality are frequently not the same thing. Legal angles tend to favor those who have the most to gain but the least to lose, the exploitative and the powerful.

This is something I've always sort of been on the fence about, because at heart what creators do is transformative and adds value - and what WatchItDry does with building Unity games featuring CH clips is even further transformative. There is absolutely value there!

Where I get hung up is that the content is still derivative, but little to none of the proceeds go towards the content creators that make the CH content possible in the first place. This gets into the weeds of the ethics of contracts and performer-publisher agreements, the details of which none of us can know on the individual video level. Some are probably one-and-done deals - performer gets paid and the publisher (FTV, brazzers, vixen, whatever) reap all profits going forward. Some performers may have royalty agreements in place, in which case redistribution - even transformative redistribution - directly affects their bottom line. In some cases it may help it (who here hasn't discovered a new performer by way of CH?) but others ("I've seen this, now I don't need to buy the video") it may hurt. I generally have no compunctions against exploiting the output of larger enterprises, preferring to think of the stars that make the video possible in the first place, but if the sales of a performer's video go down because everyone's bought a CH instead of the original video, then they may not get paid as much for their next one. (Again, the legality of selling derivative works is something I won't enter into here; I'm strictly approaching this from a morality angle.)

There's a distinct difference between paying a creator *to* work, and a creator charging *for* work. Patreon, subscribestar, paypal donations, the like fall into the former category, while paywalls fall into the latter. When you voluntarily toss a few bits into the tip bucket, it's a thank-you gesture and a recognition of the value being imparted. When you charge *for* work, but won't (or can't) route a fair portion of the proceeds to the people who made the thing possible in the first place, that to me is immoral. What I see from WatchItDry is amazing and transformative work which absolutely deserves due credit, but not even an indication that any of the proceeds generated by memberships go towards the performers who made the video content possible in the first place. That doesn't sit well.

----------------------------

ALL THAT SAID, of course, another weighty and complicated piece of this is that the porn industry is absolutely rife with piracy, and you're asking folks who normally steal their porn to pay for it. That's going to elicit a negative reaction right out of the gate. And even if we reduce the sample size to people who *might* pay, there's the associated stigma and the fact that a lot of those people don't want their personal information in yet another database that could be hacked, their purchases/contributions tracked back to their meatspace identities. Advertising inherently drives FOMO, and while FOMO can drive sales, it can also drive people to react harshly when they *do* feel like they can't access content through their usual channels, whatever reasons they have for using said channels. This is especially true when they're used to being able to get something for nothing.

This doesn't excuse reactions (on either side of things) but it may at least help illuminate.

I agree with almost everything said here, you put it better than I did.

[DWreck1995]

You could say in theory that there's a person out there that would see a stolen video reuploaded to a porn site, or a torrent, and say to themselves "I'm not going to watch or download that because that's stealing from the original content creator". Personally, I don't think that's anyone here though, especially considering the CH's made with stolen porn. Oh, and let's not forget about the people literally begging for EMP invites on a regular basis either, which suggests how "okay" everyone is with stealing from content creators.

Sure, WatchItDry is charging for stolen content. Yet, everyone here would be perfectly happy to consume that stolen content if it was free. The content creator loses the exact same amount of money regardless of if WatchItDry charges for it or not. Because they never get any whether someone charges for a CH or not. We have to ask ourselves if we're upset that we have to pay, or if we're upset that the original content creator doesn't get a cut. Or both I suppose...

Nothing stops anyone from simply purchasing the videos that form up each CH. Presuming WatchItDry knows where the source material is from, he could post the purchase links for each video that forms the CH so we could buy them before watching it. Then, on top of spending a fortune buying however many videos we needed to for that particular CH, we can pay him for his time and effort in putting it together. That sounds like an idea that's to rich for my blood though.

[Pudknocker]

Sure, WatchItDry is charging for stolen content. Yet, everyone here would be perfectly happy to consume that stolen content if it was free. The content creator loses the exact same amount of money regardless of if WatchItDry charges for it or not. Because they never get any whether someone charges for a CH or not. We have to ask ourselves if we're upset that we have to pay, or if we're upset that the original content creator doesn't get a cut. Or both I suppose...

This isn't wrong, and I do feel like it's a little of column A, a little of column B. But I think most creators would agree that there's honor among thieves, so to speak? *Because* the content is stolen, because we recognize the effort that went into the original productions, and because we cannot give back in proper proportion, we agree not to profit off of it. We don't even pretend that the content is ours to monetize and a lot of us even directly credit the source material at the end of our compilations. This is honestly where it gets murky for me, because as I've noted, WatchItDry's Unity stuff is even further transformative than any single CH video or series. There's the work that goes into the video editing, but there's also the work that goes into the software development.

I feel like a reasonable compromise would be charging for the *game software* and providing the video clips as free separate downloads. Plug-in packs, if you will. Sure, the software might not be, you know, any fun without the videos, but a plug-and-play video system could actually make the games more replayable as users would be able to create and customize their own content for them. And it'd skirt the issue of what exactly is being paid for quite nicely.

[Thamrill]

I'd rip it and then decide what/how to handle things with the archive.

I ripped the original webteases.com and its predecessor orgasmdenial.com back in the early '00s. Both were precursors to Milovana, in terms of being webtease sites. They both went down and/or stopped producing paid content soonafter so it was good that I made those archives!

Sorry to respond to this post at such a later time, but I was wondering if you'd be able to share those sites you ripped. I'd like to get a chance to see those sites content, if it is possible.

Thanks anyhow in advance

[DWreck1995]

Sure, WatchItDry is charging for stolen content. Yet, everyone here would be perfectly happy to consume that stolen content if it was free. The content creator loses the exact same amount of money regardless of if WatchItDry charges for it or not. Because they never get any whether someone charges for a CH or not. We have to ask ourselves if we're upset that we have to pay, or if we're upset that the original content creator doesn't get a cut. Or both I suppose...

This isn't wrong, and I do feel like it's a little of column A, a little of column B. But I think most creators would agree that there's honor among thieves, so to speak? *Because* the content is stolen, because we recognize the effort that went into the original productions, and because we cannot give back in proper proportion, we agree not to profit off of it. We don't even pretend that the content is ours to monetize and a lot of us even directly credit the source material at the end of our compilations. This is honestly where it gets murky for me, because as I've noted, WatchItDry's Unity stuff is even further transformative than any single CH video or series. There's the work that goes into the video editing, but there's also the work that goes into the software development.

I feel like a reasonable compromise would be charging for the *game software* and providing the video clips as free separate downloads. Plug-in packs, if you will. Sure, the software might not be, you know, any fun without the videos, but a plug-and-play video system could actually make the games more replayable as users would be able to create and customize their own content for them. And it'd skirt the issue of what exactly is being paid for quite nicely.

I agree that there's honor among thieves. I guess it depends how it's applied. Because there's multiple angles to look at it.

An example of this would be someone stealing a bunch of wood from a lumber yard. Let's say they choose to make a boat out of the wood they stole. If they want to sell the boat, should they include the cost of the wood and the labor in building the boat and sell it for market value? Or should they sell it for less than market value, considering the wood was free, only charging for the labor in creating the boat? I think an "honorable" thief would choose the latter.

If you look at it from a parts/labor perspective. One could argue that WatchItDry, for example, isn't monetizing the videos (parts) that go into a CH, per se. Because he's only charging for the labor he put in to creating the CH from those videos.

In the end, thievery is going on regardless. Maybe, CH creators that don't charge are more honorable, I guess. But I believe there's an argument to be made that WatchItDry is still somewhat of an honorable thief, all things considered.