Milovana.com

Hello fellow Milovanians!

Over the many years of being part of this fantastic community, I’ve noticed there is a one controversial topic that seems to spark the worst in us and generate more arguments and attacks than any other.

The monetization.

It’s usually happening during the releases which would ideally be a moment where we all come together in celebration.
Instead, it’s a huge bummer for everyone involved. The authors who sometimes spend hundreds of hours working on these projects, the people who have genuine issues with monetization and the rest who are caught in the crossfire.

So, I thought I would create this thread where we all, no matter on which side we stand, could discuss the issue, voice our concerns, fight if needed, vent our frustrations, but also try to understand each other and learn the reasoning behind other positions.

We don’t have to end up with agreement, but I think we are doing ourselves a disservice by not being able to identify the potential issues with monetization and find out ways to solve or avoid them.
Instead of attacking, which I’ve been guilty of too, we could try to ask clarifying questions and get better understanding of the person we might disagree with. We might even learn that the issue is more complicated that we previously thought.

So I guess, I’ll start with some questions I’m interested in to get the conversation going:

- Why do you like/dislike the idea of authors monetizing their work?
- Are there legal issues? Moral issues?
- What positive/negative effect could monetization have on the community and the “art” itself?
- Are there types of monetization that you prefer, If any? Why?
- Is there a way to find some compromise? Approaches that would work for both authors and viewers?
- Why is this issue controversial and why it evokes such a strong emotion in us?
- Do you want to understand where the opposite position is coming from?
- How can we fix this mess?


If we won’t, no one will fix it for us, this process will repeat with every new author who dares to release new monetized project and we won’t move a step forward.

If there is something that us Milovanians excel in, it’s our ability to create new things, problem solve and help and support each other. I believe that if we put our heads together, we might come out of this with better understanding of this issue and find out new ways to apply this knowladge.


Now,
Let's Get Ready To Rumble!!!

plenty of creators are kind enough to give us their creations for free.
this means that the people who want to get paid will possibly get passed over

make a sub forum under on video that lets people post content that is for sale

this way the people who dont mind paying can do so, and the creators that want payment have a home
this way, they dont get attacked, since people that browse that sub forum know its not free

Dave

I personally don't pay for porn 99% of the time, that's my choice and if I am not willing to pay it does not mean the creator isn't allowed to charge for it. I am of the opinion if you put a bunch of time into something and want to charge for your time it's cool, as long as you are not straight up stealing someone else hard work and it is of quality and the creator has a track record of putting out great content. My only opinion is to be classy about it, posting to somewhere that any service including porn has always posted for free and linking to an external place away from the original site to ask for payment to view something on another site isn't very classy. Posting it in your tag saying hey I have additional paid content here if you want to support me further is classy and respectable. My greatest fear is an announcement post here on Milovana hyping up a reboot or return of any of the greatest series then then making it paid on release. Patreon links or anything like that is fine anywhere in any situation, "hey you like my content help support it".
The issue why i personally would advise against pay per view content on a public site that doesn't usually do paid content is pay per view content can lead to grey areas of legality as CH content as a whole skirts the edge of Copyright laws as it is and charging for the content on this site can lead to avenues of much worse actions than video takedowns or hosting links being blocked once monetary gain is involved. Like targeting of this site and or it's creator directly as well as content creators.

donation better

i will keep the Part of 99% of the Material not legaly being yours aside to simplify this...

Donating for a good Cock Hero/Fap Hero? Sure i don´t mind if i enjoyed it...

Paying to see a Cock Hero, to then see if i enjoy it, to then figure out if i just waisted money? Yeah no, never going to happen...

Paywalls are the worst and i never will understand why people are dumb enough to blindly throw there money at them...

Blindly buying a Car hoping for the best = people are smart enough to not do it

Blindly throwing money at paywalls hoping for the best = people do it

What´s the difference? Yeah aside from the different prices there is none -.-

I would be willing to pay for great interactive webteases, but then I would expect something with a similar amount of content like a similarly priced computer game. I would say only the most extensive interactive teases reach that level.

There is an moral and legal issue their as well though: most of the teases on here are very clear copy right violations. Even if they use promotional images, the material is usually not provided to use freely. Legally, we do get away with this, because the website is free and probably does not even make the money it costs to run and the producers mostly do not care about images as they make money from videos. Also, the community is small enough to stay under the radar.

If people would starting to make money from webteases and would actually be successful in doing so, this might change. Also it is an moral issue, because you are actually running a business selling partially stolen content. Another question would be, why should milovana host commercial webteases for free?

So if people would want to do that, they should source their images legally and use a commercial platform. There are adult games on steam for example. I would buy such a webtease like game if it is well made and suits my taste. I am not sure that there really is a big enough marked though.

I don't think it is a problem to provide a patreon link or something like that as an author though. Theoretically it comes with the same issues but the donations will probably just be enough to buy a coffee now and then.

meowww wrote: Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:05 am Paying to see a Cock Hero, to then see if i enjoy it, to then figure out if i just waisted money? Yeah no, never going to happen...

Well, do you buy movies, music, books, games etc? I sometimes do. It of course has to be sold via an established platform, there has to be some kind of preview/teaser and comment system like platforms for other content has as well. But if some of my favored cockhero authors would start to sell cockheros somewhere. Lets say something like 10$ for a 1h cockhero I would consider buying that.
If a random guy would sell cockheros without any preview on some shady platform, I of course would not.

Thanks for opening the thread, Pseudonym!

I personally would be very willing and able to pay for my favorite productions. I have no problem paying for quality porn and have done so often enough in the past.

Some pros and cons from my point of view:

+ It would be a way for us non-creators to not only show our appreciation but also contribute a tiny bit.
+ It would also help cover costs (content, software, hardware, bandwidth) and therefore finance further productions. Depending on the financial situation of the creator this may make a huge difference.

- If it is a mandatory payment, it would exclude those of us who cannot afford the payment. This is something that I feel would go against the spirit of the community.
- It seems possible that more trouble with regard to copyrights could arise if the copyright holders consider this as a way of earning money based on their IP
- I would not be comfortable with a creator turning this into a real income model - not because I think they don't deserve it or their work isn't worth it, quite the opposite, but rather because I would fear that the quality would suffer (as a business model, it would be better to produce content frequently, which means shorter videos and less perfectionism put into it etc.). I think it is important that the main motivation remains intrinsic rather than monetary. Happy to be proved wrong, though :O)

Speaking for myself, while there is a lot of content I hugely enjoy, there is also much content that I don't particularly care for, either because I'm not into that kind of content or because I don't like the production style or quality or because it somehow just doesn't work as well for me (e. g. I might like the content and quality but dislike the music or the beats or the tempo). I wouldn't want to pay first and then find out. I would rather donate (maybe more than once) for those productions I return to often, as a way of thanking the creators for the good time.

So in my opinion a donation model would be the way to go. For me it would be important that it is on an anonymous basis, so payments via paypal are no option. I am not familiar with other options but I assume there is a way. Why not make it an accepted standard to add donation details at the end of a video?

I think the biggest problems with monetization come from the combination of predatory behavior on the part of the creators and decreased quality of the forums. What makes this place and the content we produce so great is our love of the art.

When monetization comes into play this pulls everything towards what I feel is a darker path, preying on peoples natural desires to extract money from them. This is everywhere, in every aspect of regular life everything is attempting to leech off of you, and milovana is one sanctuary from that. We don't have huge ads on the sides of our website nor are our forums cluttered with advertisements from people trying to get you to buy stuff (There is the occasional person which I dislike but its few an far between a large amount of quality work). We have a community, almost a family in a strange sort of way, but this only works if people are working together rather then trying to take advantage of one another. I think the moment you restrict content behind any kind of paywall any semblance of the community that was once there vanishes.

I think the best solution would be to make a new forum called something like advertisements or something and have it with the other games, video, ect and within that have pinned threads for video, games and other forms of content that are in some way behind a paywall. That way in the normal forms everything is available and if people desire more or want to see what they can pay for they can go to the quarantined area where it is allowed.

If people asking for money were more prevalent on this site I likely would have never come here, never joined or participated in anything, nor ever started creating cock hero videos. I did all that because you people where sharing everything freely, it is what motivated me to join in and give back. I can't say for sure but I imagine many others here were in a similar position and it is that, communal seeking and delivering of pleasure, that makes this place so special.

kerkersklave wrote: Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:06 am I would be willing to pay for great interactive webteases, but then I would expect something with a similar amount of content like a similarly priced computer game. I would say only the most extensive interactive teases reach that level.

There is an moral and legal issue their as well though: most of the teases on here are very clear copy right violations. Even if they use promotional images, the material is usually not provided to use freely. Legally, we do get away with this, because the website is free and probably does not even make the money it costs to run and the producers mostly do not care about images as they make money from videos. Also, the community is small enough to stay under the radar.

If people would starting to make money from webteases and would actually be successful in doing so, this might change. Also it is an moral issue, because you are actually running a business selling partially stolen content. Another question would be, why should milovana host commercial webteases for free?

So if people would want to do that, they should source their images legally and use a commercial platform. There are adult games on steam for example. I would buy such a webtease like game if it is well made and suits my taste. I am not sure that there really is a big enough marked though.

I don't think it is a problem to provide a patreon link or something like that as an author though. Theoretically it comes with the same issues but the donations will probably just be enough to buy a coffee now and then.

I think you did cover everything. Charge something you don't own the rights and you can get in trouble.

Pretty much agree with Spark86. Requiring payment would seem to cause more problems, in the US, at least. Right now, CH videos have a shot at a fair use defense, but charging hurts that line of reasoning.

Problem with paywalls is that it will eventually get uploaded as a torrent, like virtually all porn.

The world is a very unequal place, economically. Some can easily afford $20 while others cannot. I've been on both sides of that but right now, I would gladly pay ~ $20/mo -- but for content I enjoy. Namely, quality softcore with esim. Others will have different tastes.

Part of how you get people to pay/donate is to make the process low friction. You have to make it easy to pay/donate.

Suggestion: Any content creator who wants donations should put a simple request at the start and finish of the video with a simple way to pay. Let's see if this works before resorting to paywalls.

Spark86 wrote: Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:28 am So in my opinion a donation model would be the way to go. For me it would be important that it is on an anonymous basis, so payments via paypal are no option. I am not familiar with other options but I assume there is a way. Why not make it an accepted standard to add donation details at the end of a video?

I don't think donations would provide anyone with any reasonable amount of income. I find donating to be inconvenient at the time I am enjoying the production and I do not often follow through often . I do however have several Patreon accounts on various topics.

If I created a CH I would not put any kind of easily traceable address on it, especially for any income request. I can see me being questioned by some legal beagle representing a studio asking, "Did you produce this using other studios material in your CH and did you expect monetization for the content?"

I have noticed that some producers are buying the rights to the content they are using. I consider this different and should at least generate enough income to pay back the costs involved.

Just my opinions of which I have many!

Ultimately, be it the webteases, or cock hero videos, the problem lies in one simple thing; time.

As a creator, unless it's a project that you are somehow incredibly invested in from start to finish, it can really feel like a slog making it after the initial rush of the idea. So, even if we assume you enjoy making it for half, if they're quality, it takes, probably at least ten hours. So, it can very quickly reach a point where you're spending five hours bored out of your skull finishing the project.

For monetizing, asking people to pay for access (functionally a purchase) isn't the end of the world (though, I do think it would be best to put them in their own area.) I mean, I haven't made much. But, I don't expect people to throw money at me to access what I do make.

Paywalls I think are genuinely problematic, and borderline predatory. Demanding payment to access even just 10% of the creation is really irritating. This honestly makes me less likely to support the creator than if they had just made the whole thing free and I enjoyed it.

Requesting donations is by far the best choice for everyone involved. As a creator, at least, I still know people are going to play with, use, and enjoy my content. As well, if I make it really good, people may want to support me financially. As a player, I'm not annoyed by the person asking for funds, after all, if it's good, it likely took quite a lot of time. I'm not just going to keep scrolling when I find it, since I know I can actually use it without having to spend 10, 20, or more dollars. Paywalls actively aggravate me. Like, you're giving me access, but you're functionally just lying to me, it's really annoying.

Commissioning is perfectly fine as well imo. It's the same as making it normally, it's just someone really wants it tailored to their personal tastes, so as long as after the commission you release it normally, it's perfectly fine.

You brought up legally which is very important, and while I'm not a licensed legal advisor, and laws are different in various locations. Most teases and cock heroes just completely violate copyright law, to a degree. When free to access, it's not really a big deal. You've posted something you don't have the rights to, but you're not making money off of it, so really, if the owner doesn't like you doing that, you remove it and move on. But the moment you're charging people to access the content is when it becomes very bad for you. According to a lot of copyright laws, you putting a clip or picture in a cock hero or webtease, isn't a huge deal, as long as you're not charging for it. If it is, you are literally selling someone else's creation. That is a big nono. Just because you attach words, a bar, and a metronome to it, with some music (which is also quite feasibly copyright protected) doesn't count as transformative content. If you are charging for access (through full selling, or paywall) The owner of any piece of the content used could quite easily sue you. Of course, if the content you're using is in the public domain, or not copyright protected, than it's "fine", but could still result in more problems than if you just made your product free.

The positives to monetization or quite simple, once again, it's time. When you're getting paid it's much easier to both be motivated to create something great, and you can better justify spending your time creating.

It's controversial because money. It's actually insanely complicated, I study psychology, and really? I just can't be assed to explain it all with how long it would take. But one reason is both sides feel exploited. The creator feels exploited for their time, the viewer feels exploited for their money. Of course, it is a lot deeper and complex, and reasons very, etcetera etcetera. If you want to know more, I'd recommend doing research on "Why losing money hurts." and the such.

Neat thread, if for nothing else, maybe people venting here will help reduce pointless clutter in release threads..

First up, my general attitude towards imaginary rights is, in a word, abolition. If you have a piece of data, practically any data, you should be free to give that to anyone (or everyone) at will. Some exceptions for slander issues might be applied; military secrets should be a separate category still; "civilian NDAs" would be written as contracts with payment bound to "continued silence".

Pay a coder for time spent, an artist for an agreed contract, and have the chips fall where they may. Sounds horrible? Well, at the moment people are praying to hit an algorithm in a suitable way to go viral and sell a ton of ads for google... It would change things, but not by a whole lot. Just less of Disney and more of "crowd funding".

That out of the way, I'll answer those questions.

Why do you like/dislike the idea of authors monetizing their work?
Are there legal issues? Moral issues?

I can't really say I like or dislike monetization per se; there's better and worse forms, but the concept of "someone trying to sell me something" is pretty neutral in itself. I'm free not to buy, and I usually don't.
Legal issues.. well. That's a matter of local law.
Moral? I think my abolitionism covers my morals.. information should be free. It's not wrong to keep someone out of your server, but it's wrong to install a rootkit on theirs.

What positive/negative effect could monetization have on the community and the “art” itself?

That's a wide question; "could" be anything. What it practically looks like from the outside, a couple stupidly hard-working individuals can make a decent income on a patreon, some more will make a pittance. Unless you're working 80 hours a week on your craft, don't expect much. Heck, even if you are, the odds are against you.

Does it change the art? Ehh. Some will improve from working harder to earn more, some will burn out trying to churn out stuff to sell. The audience starts influencing some more, people will start trying to please everyone and lose their own interest. All kinds of things happen.

Are there types of monetization that you prefer, If any? Why?

We're on a porn site, soo.. anonymous. Preferably more anonymous than bitcoin. I can't think of one, though. Which kinda leaves me in a pickle.
Other than that, a donation system is likely the best for this type of community. The stuff can't really be "sold" as it usually relies heavily on other copyrighted stuff anyway. And I think adding google ads might be a bit of a turn-off...
Hard paywalls is a no from me; I'm not signing up to a shady site with my direct payment info. "Whaddya mean shady?" Well, you're peddling porn, someone else's porn at that. If that doesn't scream "shady", I might have a bridge to sell..

Is there a way to find some compromise? Approaches that would work for both authors and viewers?

That's an artificial split for the most part; the creators are also the viewers, and most don't seem to be looking to make a career out of this. For the few that place things behind paywalls, I'm sure they've looked at a lot of compromise options, and found them all wanting - a paywall is not exactly an easy sell, so the audience will be limited, they have to view the compromises as pretty poor.

Why is this issue controversial and why it evokes such a strong emotion in us?

The cynical response; Disney is great at one thing, propaganda. They've made everyone think that whatever they wrote on a piece of paper once is theirs to keep forever and ever. Because Disney's bottom line demands it.

A little less cynical; it's just a complicated mess all around. I've held my abolitionist stance for quite a few years by now, but it took quite a bit of reading and thinking and arguing to end up at. The tricky part was to let go of the idea that creatives "deserve" their compensation. In a way still, yes they do; if you're agreeing to have someone spend time to create something for you, you're obligated to hold your end of the deal.

But the creation of a digital copy of a set of data; that's no longer the artist working, that's a mundane digital copy-paste. If you can't gather a lot of donations, or auction some work for piles at once, you might not get rich by being an artist. But it's not like 99% of even-somewhat-good artists manage to make a living from their art.

From what I've seen, that is the part that ruffles the most feathers. People have wildly differing ideas of what is "right". It manifests in different types of arguments, but the core differences are usually somewhere along the line of "deserving" something. Add in some interesting personalities (artists are known for their stability, right? ) and the discussions get a little wild.

Do you want to understand where the opposite position is coming from?

Me? As my final position is pretty much "You do you, boo. Good luck.", I don't think there's a real opposite.

How can we fix this mess?

Trust me, we can't. People will keep launching paywalled projects, and others will keep complaining about them. Even if we managed to convince everyone to chill today, some more will get born tomorrow.

Even if we were past money in a "luxury communist space utopia" or whatever, I'm sure people would still be launching paywalled projects where the currency would be something .. raunchier.

meowww wrote: Sat Sep 03, 2022 12:05 am Paywalls are the worst and i never will understand why people are dumb enough to blindly throw there money at them...

Blindly buying a Car hoping for the best = people are smart enough to not do it

Blindly throwing money at paywalls hoping for the best = people do it

What´s the difference? Yeah aside from the different prices there is none -.-

This analogy doesn't hold much, if any water at all. Have you ever been to a cinema? Did you pay for your ticket with an understanding that you could request a refund if you found the movie unenjoyable? What about at a restaurant? Do you demand to taste each of the dishes before agreeing to pay for one of them?

The issue with the argument is that there are many many things in life that we pay for that we don't get to sample/test drive before hand. Games, books, movies, food, and recreational experiences (theme parks, cruises, guided tours, museums, skydiving, etc). In this particular case, it would actually be silly to demand a "test drive" - because the artist is charging for the experience of viewing the art in the first place. To say "I need to see it first to decide if I want to pay for it" is like telling a cinema or a restaurant "I want to experience the movie/food first, and if I enjoy it then I'll consider paying for it."

It's just not how much of life works. Specifically, in the case of Supermassive's new release: we have a body of work that he's created over the past several years that are all available to sample or download for free. You're able to check out everything he's done prior to this without paying a dime. He's not an unknown variable and has demonstrated time and again that he creates quality content. It's not a risk if you've enjoyed his previous works.

My general comment for the discussion is this: I get that there are many people with many (perfectly valid) reasons for not buying porn. That's cool. It's true of any product or service. What perplexes me a little are the people who feel a sense of entitlement to receive the porn/art/experience for free and are very vocal about it. It's okay if you don't want to pay for it or can't or you don't think it's something you'd enjoy. But you don't deserve to experience it. None of us deserve free stuff. We enjoy the free things we can find from the many generous creators and artists who do it for free. But we shouldn't complain when someone who makes genuinely good content (I'm not talking about scalpers, scammers, rippers, or low-life resellers) asks to be compensated for their time and expense. Not all of us will be able to partake, but those who can will enjoy, and those who cannot will wait for the next free release.

I won't comment on the moral/legal/ethical side of it as that's a totally different facet of the issue. My main concern are those who feel they deserve free content and the "have first; (maybe) pay later" folks.

[Edit for tone and typos]