I wanted to ask what people's policy is as far as trading WAM videos goes. I'd imagine that it's a touchy subject in a place often used for the advertisement of new videos, but there are a number of WAM sites that have pretty much gone defunct in the last few years, or whose owners have kerpoofed or what have you, and for some people probably the only way to pick up these older clips would be to trade with others.

To use PieFightGirls as an example - tons of great content, but the last...four? times it was announced to be returning, absolutely nothing happened, the owner is long since AWOL, and I think that there was a thread a while back about DVDs no longer being mailed (and with ViDown running off the rather firmly defunct SOFTokens setup, it's a bit hard to pick things up that way, if it still functions without an owner to approve sales).

Another example would be clips that have been pulled off of websites over time - for instance, there's a wealth of MessyGirl clips that have been missing in action for a long time. Or the old Lenny's Gunge Tank Girls lineup. Or the Dunk Tank Divas line from WAMTEC. And many other long lost videos from smaller sites that went under.

I've got a fair sized collection myself from various purchases and findings, but I'm curious what others think of the idea of trading WAM clips. Is it something you'd do readily, or only in certain circumstances, or not at all? What's your opinion of the idea? And what policy does the forum itself/mods have on it?

Law forbids trading Copyrighted clips pretty much worldwide... definitely western world wide.

Forum policy forbids trading copyrighted videos.

Morally it is bankrupt.


All of which out of circulation or not.


Unfortunately there are idiots out there that can not use discretion, so grey area has to be kept black and white.

My personal opinion is mmmmmhhhhhh.

I don't want to come across as an arsehole producer, there is copyright stuff out there that we all know will never see the light of day again... but you never know - and selling videos is what allows a producer to make more videos for everyone who wants to splash out.

If I catch anyone trading mine without permission (Anyone can ask! There are good reasons.) I can and have gone after them with a good attorney and caused a lot of hassle... and cost to them. But then again, my stuff is out there and if it's not it will be when I get to it.

Obviously it is bad form (and a crime in most jurisdictions) to trade copyrighted media. Here it is a particularly sensitive subject since so much of what is available was produced and distributed with the express intention of generating revenue from the community. Trading does much to undermine that. Also, the sorts of people who get mixed up in piracy schemes overlap heavily with other sorts of disruptive personalities best exiled and shunned for the sake of the decent majority here.

All that said, some of this stuff borders on the erotica equivalent of "abandonware." From time to time, a producer giving up his or her business will find a way to sell off (or give away) the catalog of old media so that others may continue to enjoy it and a distributor may continue to profit from it. Yet a lot of really excellent material has fallen into the void of utter neglect. Is anyone's interest really served by taking such beautiful works and burying them forevermore? Is there anything that can be done to preserve works that would otherwise be lost for lack of a business arrangement to support further distribution?

In some cases, there actually is a good reason to let material become forgotten. Perhaps a model, in spite of signing releases and originally intending for her work to be available indefinitely, has had a change of heart and no longer wishes said material to be available online. Yet even if we set aside those cases, plenty of good stuff from the past is simply unavailable in the present. Can nothing constructive be done in this realm?

Personally, I think it would be a noble endeavor if someone were to put together a resource, perhaps in the style of a museum, that would preserve otherwise abandoned material (with the copyright holders' permissions, of course) and make it available either freely or at extremely low prices. This should not pose a serious challenge to modern producers working with superior media formats and developing genuinely innovative material, but it could usefully memorialize some of the earliest works. We will all have a better sense of where we are going if we can see clearly where we have come from. Even in a light-hearted pursuit such as what unites us here, I believe that is a wise sentiment.

Regards,
messydom

Making old stuff available cheaply undermines current producers' ability to shoot new scenes. This is a finite and small market, the more "free or nearly free" material there is out there, the less incentive anyone has to buy new scenes, which reduces the market's ability to produce them.

If a scene from the past was regarded as particularly brilliant, then the best way to revive it would be for the scene to be re-made with current models and producers, just as Hollywood re-makes its best films for new generations of audience.

DungeonMasterOne said:




That is a fine point to follow the previous fine points Messydom made.

However, market will always decide.

Personally, I believe that staying current will always sell... even year to year fashions and trends change, and those that stay fluid and current will be fine.



... and we know how that works out. One in a hundred is a decent remake. For every True Grit there are 99 of The Italian Job.

... and that's with million of dollars sunk into it.

Uhh...no. I'm going to agree with Noise on this one - the simple fact is that certain things aren't going to be as good the second time, and moreover, in a way it's somewhat rude to the original actresses I would think to just say "oh, we're writing you out and casting someone else as you". Imagine if someone for instance went back to all the videos with Paris Kennedy from PFG, and remade them with Kym (from the "newer" videos) instead. It would be kind of like a slap in the face.

That, and I don't think anyone would ever be able to recreate the best pie sandwich ever from Heather VS Paris =P

As for messydom's ideas on a sort of "past videos" annex, I agree that there should be some way to acquire some of these older videos. Even dis-counting the places that closed down from not wanting to publish anymore, there are still easily dozens of other videos to be had, and collecting them for either free or low cost re-release would be great for people seeking them. (In my case, I'd love to get ahold of the Dunk Tank Divas videos from Wamtec - they were some of the earlier videos to actually have nudity in the dunk tank, and I swear since then it's like everyone panicked about having too much sexual content or something, because we're only just recently having ONE dunk tank company starting to do nude scenes again, Dunktankbabes).

While I agree with the notion that too much free content diminishes if someone would spend money on a newer title, I also disagree with it in the same thought: I would think that seeing a few OLDER videos and their quality would make me more likely to shell out cash for newer releases if they hold my interest. In the case of Messygirl for instance, if you have a membership (which I did), you have access to a rather large collection of clips and various video releases, and several of the older clips with Linda and Sara and other now-gone models ended up being the basis for my purchases of newer videos. I suppose it differs from person to person though.

Think you have a little typo there. Here, let me fix that for ya:

He's right about that pie sandwich though.

Let's be honest, they're still WAM videos. While a producer adds his or her own style to their videos and some scenes have a "timeless" quality, they're not so chock full of artistic brilliance that remaking them with different models would be offensive.

There are producers here who have established very long, prolific, and successful careers by shooting the same 10 scenes over and over again (with a new one being tossed in occasionally when inspiration strikes) and nobody says boo about it. The "Hollywood/WAM" comparisons are nice for some discussions, but let's not get carried away. We're still dealing in 10-20 minute long fetish clips.

In all fairness, I have no idea who Paris Kennedy is. She might be the greatest WAM model to ever walk the earth. She might have been part of the greatest WAM videos to ever be produced. But if her scenes were hot, chances are another attractive model could do the exactly same scene and have it be just as hot.

I'm not a fan of piracy, and I detest the bit torrent-era contingent that seems to think they're entitled to everything for free and that copyright law should be void because it's, y'know, inconvenient.

That said, I'm a movie buff, and we have always been able to locate and exchange films that the studios have chosen not to make commercially available, going back before the VHS era. One prominent movie critic has compared this process to the work of monks in the Dark Ages, copying scrolls by hand in order to ensure their preservation.

What we would really need for this is a wam-oriented bit torrent site where users can post and trade old wam clips, and (ideally) moderators who would verify that what's being exchanged there is genuinely out of print and aren't legally for sale elsewhere. (That ignores the concerns of the defunct producers but I'm not sure I have an ethical problem with that; once intellectual property exists, its audience is a stakeholder as well its creator.)

How this would co-exist with the UMD is a tricky question.

Well, as Noise pointed out early, it's a question of discretion, and there are plenty of trolls in our little community who's judgment does appear to be sub-human. The rules need to be in place for this reason, and I certainly don't want to see any current producer's vids being reposted.

That said, assuming everything was done legally (models all signed releases, etc.), the only person harmed by reposting is the producer, so for producers that no longer visit the forum, no longer have a website and no longer have any means of obtaining their materials, the harm is miniminal (Neil of PFG would not be an example, as his DL store is still running - Wammonkey's old Lauren clips might be a good example). When the only person who will be potentially harmed will likely never know of nor feel any negative effects due to the "harm", I'm unlikely to object. Protecting current producer's copyrights is important, but it hardly seems fair that those who came into the WAM scene more recently don't get to see the great videos that came before on the basis of a "harm" that is virtually non-existent in some cases.

Of course it's easy to say this - much harder to come up with a legitimate system to regulate the process. Regis' torrent idea is decent, if people are willing to staff it (next offshoot of the WAMbank?).

Oh and for those desperately seeking the Dunk Tank Divas series, a little google search goes a long way - I bought the entire series last year off Tracie's DVD store:

http://thewamstore.com/cgi/store.pl?site=traciez.com&keyword=wetlook

9th from the top. Enjoy.

I'll just make this simple. Trading is a NO-NO!

Producers will lose money and no more pie vids!

If you get taken to court, you may be more embarrassed about the "sorry excuse for a justice system" finding out your fetish than Anthony Weiner is about all the Weiner jokes he had to put up with throughout his life.

Speaking of our justice system......Casey Anthony is hot,but STILL GUILTY!

It's illegal. Case closed.

Illegal is not the same as immoral. So no, the case is not closed, at least for me.

Amen.

It also occurs to me that the out-of-print situation bears some comparison to the "orphan works" issue of unfindable copyright owners which has been the subject of legislative attention in recent years:

http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/

Obviously the analogy is inexact -- documentary clip usage and beating off are not the same thing. But I think it's relevant that the Library of Congress, and even Congress (the same body that now routinely amends copyright law to favor corporate interests), concede the point that intellectual property should not be totally off-limits just because the copyright holder is missing in action.

It's called copyright violation. That thing that you first see in every pie clip hopefully. Something makes me believe that someone or someones (made my own word,lol) is currently involved in this immoral,oops,illegal practice.

Is there no way to say, put the videos up on the UMD download store for a small price and then donate the proceeds to charity. Your not then giving the videos away for free and if a producer did miraculously come back then at least their hard work has gone to a good cause rather than been distributed for free. I'm sure the community and mods etc could decide if a producers work was okay to distribute in this way i.e a producer was unheard for a long time and was known to have left the community behind. I think morally the mods would be able to do a good job and i'm sure that a lot of the videos could be submitted easily by the community members here.
I agree that it would be a shame to lose old content but in the same sense a shame to give it away for free and I also think it would be wrong for anybody to make money off it.

Jinxguy, your "immoral / illegal" quip causes me to assume that your post was at least partly aimed at me, so I will address you directly. You are obviously less interested in participating a serious discussion about this subject than in claiming some kind of moral high ground and lecturing everyone about it. If you'd bothered to read my comments just in this thread you would've noted that I came down strongly against trading of in-print material, insulted a whole generation of internet file-sharers, and suggested that copyright law might ethically be flouted in only certain very specific instances. So your implication that I'm "currently involved" in intellectual piracy is unfounded, offensive, and kinda ridiculous from someone who's wearing an eyepatch in his avatar.

Right up until just one producer comes back with a decent attorney and recovers the money from the UMD... just for a start.