Producers - if you haven't been on the Store Owners Forum check the link to a whole load of our material being pirated for free so you can issue a Take Down notice. I have said on my notice that virtually all of the material is pirated. Its even being described as a xxGB Mega Pack of Wam.

I know this has been covered so many times before but why can people not see how damaging this is to the WAM Community? Producers rely on meagre sales to pay for the next video. Non of us are ever going to retire on it, its a hobby and each sale goes back into the pot to pay for the next film. If people don't buy the films then the producers can't pay for the next film and the whole process just grinds to an end Ultimately the people who think its acceptable to steal films won't have any films to steal as the producers have just given up.

I'm curious as to why people think it is acceptable to share material online and if you do share on line would you consider shoplifting acceptable as well. Its no different, if you shoplift you are a thief, if you steal films you are a thief.

Comments please as to why you find this acceptable or not !

www.thegungeshop.com

I agree with everything you say Dave it's very demoralising. Sadly its been happening as long as I have been on the UMD. Back in the early days it was people trading passwords. Now its file sharing, same result though. There seems to be a group of people bereft of any morals who care little for the community. I only wish they would find a new hobby like throwing themselves off cliffs or setting themselves on fire!

There are some of yours on there Bob

Where do we draw the line with something like this? While I will admit I do not know every situation or the results, I can only speak to what I see. There are people who come on looking for a scene or two they lost in a hard drive crash. Is the scene replaced for free by a member that has a copy or is there a deal worked out with a producer to get the content back? I don't have any idea. Is it outside of the realm of possibilities that a person gets a private message and someone sends them a copy of the beloved video? Not to me it isint. This seems like an acceptable practice as the person paid for the content once upon a time and while they enjoyed the content and it got lost, lost is lost. If they get it back for free is that not also stealing? If you have a rare DVD that you share with a friend and they make a copy, what about then, is it stealing? To me, there is enough free stuff out there through youtube and various other places that the only time I purchase stuff is when I like the work of a producer. I would like to think that a lot of people in the WAM community are the same way. That they support a producer. How much is it killing the industry? Is there a way to track how many times something is downloaded? The movie industry is including a watermark on the Oscar movies to catch the people sharing since that is the time of year it happens the most. Would it be possible to do something similar?

Hi

My Videos are all over pornhub along with everyone else (Messygirl Rich Anglefan etc). Wish I could find someone to sue LOL LOL

Lenny

Hi it's Mike not Jess.
Yes I've been concentrating on this for the last week or so and so far has 16 Messy Jessie scenes taken down from different places and I'm on the case.
I wish these people could see the effort it has in our case on a girl who has been ill for 27 years,has zero computer knowledge nor financial knowledge,debts etc
She would just cry and get depressed when she saw them.
She had no idea about DCMA's and take downs etc
So we're on it now at least and she doesn't have to worry about it.
I suppose if it's just one it could act as an advert but I think zero tolerance is the answer.
As far as lost files go Jessie had list loads of her own material so we were grateful that customers helped out and I have to say ALL of those who helped
refused to accept free downloads back as they just wanted to help Jessie!
Quite amazing and brilliant!
We will make sure they get the next new film for free though at least.
My thoughts are any pirated stuff any producers spot we should notify by PM only and just work together as UMD members to get them taken down or maybe producers work in pairs where there can fill in others DCMA forms,
Jessie and I are up for the fight back so we're to join in.
We do have a customer too who works in copyright etc and I have my own barrister etc so will ask who we can and can't go for.

Why do you think I quit producing:

https://umd.net/forums/a-bit-of-a-rant-about-copyrigh

Phil

From a customer perspective. ....
It's great when you get snippits, previews or trailers on the likes of YouTube. However I have never downloaded anything from any free site. In the past I have taken the time to inform sellers like Jessie and the Moomins etc.
Having paid my hard earned cash on monthly subscription, downloads and extra to the odd producer for little extras.
It's sad and sick to consider that pepole are stealing from producers, sad individuals who everything for nothing.
I will continue to report anyone who tries steal from others in a heart beat.
I have nothing but highest of respect for all producers...amateur and professional.

Pornhub has been saturated with it in the last few months. I used to search messy terms in there once every while just to see what came up and there would be a few little amateur pieces of work. Now there are loads of things from old scenes to brand new ones being uploaded.
Let me make it clear that having sympathy for producers I abstain from watching these clips. But I did do some digging and it appears most of these stem from people using the site as a way to share it and ensure new stuff keeps being added. People upload content to their account and mark the majority of it as private (presumably partly to avoid copyright issues). To gain access to someone elses private videos you have to send a friend request and for most these accounts they deny any friend requests from accounts without any content on there( I sent requests out to see what would happen). Thus to see all these videos marked as private (which mostly have a screenshot and video title designed to make you want to watch it) you yourself have to upload content in a cycle.
Pornhub DGAF because they still get the ad revenue and probably see themselves as too big to sue. I mean they don't even have a copyright flagging button! You just have to flag it and type copyright and then feel demoralised as nothing happens. I used to bother doing this but gave up when i realised that nothings gets done and my clicking on the video just boosted the views and encouraged the accountholders. Seems like a wicked problem to me.

But i'm glad it is now being discussed so that people can think more ethically about how they watch their content. Not only should you pay for it to support the creator, you should also think about whether the creator gave consent for their work to just be spread around! (Watch some YouTube about the ethical philosophy of porn for more arguments on this). I nearly mentioned it a few times on the forum but decided I didn't want to draw attention to it, but now this thread exists i hope it dissuades a few people from freebooting their Wam content.

Yeah I'm about at that point...

Sounds like it's time to have a right go at Pornhub etc
My barrister guy represented The Beatles/Apple over something to do with
copright etc
Again maybe it needs a collective action.

I found out recently that at least with youtube a person who posts other people's copyrighted content will not get their account removed unless multiple producers send DCMA take down requests. Personally I think that is BS, I spendtover 2 hrs the other day sending take down requests and on one account alone someone had posted 8 of my videos. Teaming up against copyright infringement will likely be more successful but it can be hard since I don't always recognize another producer's work.[/b]

I think the sites like Porn hub and the like should take some responsibility. I guess they are making money though so don't care. There should also be a better system for getting videos taken down. It seems to take a long time, if at all, for some websites to remove the videos. They ought to carry some responsibility, especially once notified of illegal videos on their sites.

I sincerely disagree. This has caused the artists to get the money instead of the greedy companies. If you look into the history of music in the 60s and the thieving done to the artists by record companies, I think this serves them right. Most artists provide digital copies of their music for sale on their sites. Cutting out the middle men and removing the need for record companies.

I've answered these questions individually but it's not intended as a direct response to dalamar666 but rather a general contribution to the debate.


At risk of sounding harsh, to me all unauthorised copying of wam content is wrong. Most wam producers barely break even at the best of times, without having to worry about pirates too.


Given how cheap most wam content is, why not just buy a replacement copy? That's what most people do if they lose or scratch a DVD of a favourite movie after all.

As I've often gone on about previously, the correct answer to the "hard drive crash" issue is for people to to learn to keep backups. Huge external hard drives can be had for $100, and can be used to back up music files and family photos and everything else important too. Or USB sticks can be had very cheaply to copy just the wam onto. Or for just $5 a month BackBlaze.com will back up your entire computer, with no set-up or messing about deciding what folders to backup - they copy the lot and if the worst happens you can have it all sent back on a memory stick or external drive (depending on size). Lots of people rely on laptops nowadays, the hard disks in those are made of glass, drop one and the data is gone forever. Utter madness not to back stuff up - people have lost all their photos of their families, never mind their porn collections.

In our case we have a BackBlaze subscription for our main system plus two external hard drives - one lives here and one lives in a storage unit on the edge of the nearest city. Every few weeks we swap the two over. Means even if there was a disaster like a major fire or a gas explosion all the data would be safe. Total cost was £150 each for 4 TB WD hard disks and $5 every month to BackBlaze. And it means everything, tax documents, business records, unreleased scenes, personal photos, the music collection - all of it safely backed up in a datacenter.


Yes, it's stealing. Now, there are arguments that a single copy isn't the same as putting something on the Internet for 10,000 people to freeload a copy of, which is true enough and the odd single copy, if it's by someone who would never have purchased the scene(s) in question, isn't as bad. Though personally I'd still feel guilty doing that, knowing how tight the margins are. At the very least the person getting the copy should also buy the same number of other scenes from the producer, or join their subscription site for a few months if they have one, or just send the purchase cost as a donation through PayPal.

I know there are arguments about it being different if a producer has gone out of business and their content isn't available to buy any more. But even then I'd say that, unless someone is a bona fide public archive preserving things for future generations like the British Library, Library of Congress, or the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, they still shouldn't make copies as doing so undermines the ability of current producers to sell their content, and doing that puts at risk their ability to shoot more in the future.

To give a bit of a perspective on costs, when I shoot a wam scene, I pay out:

• Model fees for each model, for each scene.
  
• Train fare or petrol money for each model to get here (and home afterwards) for each day or weekend of shoots.
  
• If the model(s) stay overnight, breakfast for everyone.
  
• Snacks and drinks for the models and crew during the shoots.
  
• Decent restaurant meal for models and crew after the shoots.
  
• Heating, lighting, and massive amounts of hot water for wash-off, hosedown, etc.
  
• All of the gunge, custard, or whatever we are using.
  
• All the clothes and underwear the models are wearing in the scenes.
  
• All the shoes, boots, or other footwear.
  
• Laundry costs for washing all the clothes and shoes afterwards, after a busy weekend of shoots this will amount to four or five full-load washes for a large washing machine, and often everything has to be washed twice (three times for muddy items) to get them clean enough for models to wear again. Clothes mostly survive but shoes and boots tend to disintegrate after a few times through the washing machine.

On top of that there are the on-going costs of equipment. So far I've worn out three Nikon D.S.L.R. cameras - shutter failure after approx 150,000 frames, and upgraded the video gear twice too, first a DV camcorder, now a Full-HD one, soon we'll need to go to 4k. At which point the main computer will need to be replaced, more and larger hard drives bought, and at some point the hard drives on our webserver will need to be upgraded. There's also the ongoing monthly hosting fees for the server.


Most producers already watermark their content but we have no way to trace where it appears, the best hope is that people who see the branding will then visit the producer's site (or the UMD store) and buy some content too. But that doesn't mean it can just be dismissed as "free advertising", because the wam business operates on such small margins that there's a good chance the pirated scene may not have paid back all its costs yet. It can take years before a scene sells enough copies to cover the production costs, many scenes never do.

After receiving multiple screen grabs from fans letting me know how many clips were actually on there, I was all over pornhub on twitter. I pretty much just started a shit storm and finally they got real nice with me. Any producers having a hard time with porn hub, feel free to PM me and I can get I you in contact with the lady who actually gets stuff taken down.

And WAM, how I love the mess. Hell, I can even look past the clean up, too. But my shooting of messy clips has been greatly reduced from piracy. In fact, most of what you see is either customs, from sessions or things I personally want to shoot. I am not here to get rich, but I do expect to get paid. Find me someone who doesn't expect payment for work! Trust me, if it was all about the $ I would just be a findomme and not even have to leave my house. Unfortunately,(for my bank account) that just don't interest me.

Maybe it's just me but surly if someone buys your film the copy of the film is there's and the way I see it it should be up to the purchaser of the film to do as they wish obviously if there gonna up load to YouTube for example
They ahoild as a guesture state this film was produced by xyz and a link to the producers page so people
Viewing can purchase

But why would anyone want to purchase when the content is out there for free ?

Let's be clear, you buy the right to WATCH the film, you do not have any rights to DISTRIBUTE the film, those rights remain with the content creator or anyone they have sold distribution rights to.

Big difference.

Would it be practical to have a form on Umd that people could fill in and press a button to automatically alert all producers, or which sticks an alert on the Producers-only form which otherwise the rest of us can't access? Perhaps it'd only be a drop in the ocean but it might encourage more people to warn of piracy.

I fear this is a sad reflection on society and the use of the Internet as a whole. Personally I cannot see the difference between this and say sharing music online.

Previous posts seem to suggest its ok to steal from Sony but not from the small wam producer. Sorry, what is the difference? Apart from scale its the same thing and is illegal. In the UK tyhe government have tried to make laws to stop it but I doubt they have had that much success. Its one of those self policing laws and some will just ignore it knowing the likelihood of any consequences are nonexistent to minimal at worst.

Its the Internet generation we live in which seems to feel everything should be free. How you stop it is something nobody seems sure of.

I wish you all the luck in the world as realistically you are going to need it.

Totally wrong. When you buy a DVD of the latest Star Wars movie, you don't buy the rights to redistribute it, just to watch it as often as you like. If you want the right to put it on YouTube or make copies and sell them, then it'll cost you millions, not $10 for a DVD.

You can sometimes buy the rights to WAM videos - occasionally a producer who's retiring will sell their back catalogue to another producer to go on selling the scenes. A former model here sold several of hers to Reverend SL that way for example - but they will have cost a lot more than the $10 or whatever they were on sale to the public for, because what's being sold is the right to make copies (aka "copyright" - that's exactly what it is, the right to be able to legally make copies of something), rather than just watch the scenes.

The instant anyone puts a wam producer's videos on YouTube they destroy the ability of that producer to make any more money (or indeed any money if the scene has only just been released) from it. Given the biggest expense in wam is model fees, what that uploader is effectively doing is taking away the ability of the models to earn income from scenes.

From some of these comments it sounds like the problem people have is cost. People look at WAM for free because they refuse to pay and producers are on such slim margins that the more people pirate it, the more expensive they have to make it. Seems a pretty simple relationship. If you want cheaper videos then don't pirate videos so the producers can maintain margins while reducing the selling cost- Simple right?

I think I should comment, but I don't quite know what to say.

I am very in tune with Lenny, Jessie, Layla, and Leila about theft of intellectual property. And, quite frankly, the model was established with US newspapers, which had no idea what to do other than give content away to build market share. It didn't work (look at Tribune Company).

As to what the artist is to do: complain? It's known that Bob Hope's estate monitors YouTube to remove unlicensed material from the NBC shows he owned, but no one here has the multimillions to monitor this.
And when we talk about the '60s, a lot of guys got screwed (rock, pop, jazz, etc.)

Actually It's probably good you posted this Peewee as I'm sure you meant no malice.
However if you thought that paying one tiny fraction of the production costs involved in making a WAM film then maybe others think the same.
This gives a chance to explain.
I used to be naive to the actual costs involved when my ex boyfriend ran the business.
I would just get filmed and answer queries on UMD.
When I was by myself I underpriced/got bullied and haggled into cheaper prices and doing stuff I was uncomfortable with.
Mike was shocked and costed everything out accurately and now customs/sessions etc and films for the site are properly costed out.
So Peewee how much of your $2.99 to $30 do you think pays for:
A server
A website
A webmaster
Then for one scene:
Mess
Room protection or rental of a studio
Time to protect and prep the room
Time to go and buy then prep the Mess
Pay for the mess
Pay for the outfits
Pay the cameraman or film in one position
Pay other models travel and hourly rate
Do the messy film
Everybody getting clean and getting sticky mess out of your hair
Cleaning a huge mess
Editing the film
Writing out all the description
Getting stills from the scene
Marking each pic with a copyright
Marketing
The cost can be between $300 and $1000
That's before normal life interferes etc
So all the small fee that you pay does is go towards getting the costs back and then hopefully making a profit.
I have some films out of the 700 plus I've done that have sold ZERO copies or ONE copy.
So they lost money and then some thief might put it on Pornhub or something.
Then we have to spend hours retrieving stolen content.
So for you to think you 'own' the film you obviously don't.
So if anyone is thinking about pirating one of my films or any of the UMD producers please think of the effects of stealing a product from someone (and in my case it's been whilst being seriously ill,I can't drive and have two kids and find everything a big effort).
If you would like to buy the rights to any of my fully clothed films I will sell them to you with pleasure to you for the original cost plus £250.
If I did that with every film I would actually be in profit.
Hope that explains the matter in simple terms and anyone else who doesn't understand the reality now understands.
Jessie

Pornhub sounds like a virus-infested plague.
So ironic the analogy between physical viruses spread by unprotected porn sex and computer viruses spread by unprotected online porn.

While the points here are all sensible and valid, I also think keeping this thread active in such a public forum will only encourage people to go looking for these clips you've all claimed are so easy to find. Yes, it's an important conversation to be had, but the negative effect of conducting it here will probably outweigh any benefit from this discussion.

Additionally, this thread doesn't even allow for people who actually pirate clips to voice their opinion anonymously, which would be very valuable in learning the motivations behind their piracy. As a result, it just ends up being an echo chamber of people saying "Piracy is bad," with little value being added.

Also, just to respond to people who compensate those who report piracy: Things like offering an incentive for finding clips can actually encourage people to go post clips illegally. People could post clips illegally, "find" and report the clips they posted to the owner, and then get some sort of compensation. That's an example of the Cobra Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect), where good intentions have unintended negative consequences.

I think the argument is that Youtube/Pornhub/*insertvideosharingsitehere* get much more traffic and are more accessible than the other sites. I mean I'll admit to not knowing where to start with torrenting something- I think you need that firefox addon that lets you get on the darkweb? And even if I did know how there is no gaurantee what i'm getting- Could be the latest scene or could be some virus infested thing. Youtube/pornhub is easily and widely accessible and for the most part you get what you expect with no danger to your privacy

From what I can see on Pornhub, etc,etc.
Pornhub is just the marketing.
It is the file host that is the real bad guy, it seems to me to be a little site ripping industry.
Think about it, you use stolen cards to do site rips from all the porn sites you can find.
You then upload all your stolen content to your new hosting site you've just set up.
You then post the links to the media to forums such as Pornhub etc.
Your hosting site makes people wait 10 minutes to be able to download 1 clip for free, the wait increases with every new download you try to do.
But, for a fee, you can instantly download with no waiting.
If there are morons willing to help with your venture, even better.
Just change the name and domain of your hosting site every now and then to avoid the heat.
So the real problem is the content host, not the site that promotes it.
I even have my doubts that the people posting our stuff to Pornhub etc are even Wam fans, so very much doubt they'll read or care what's written here.

So when issuing DMCA's, issue them to the host, not the forums.

Issuing it to the forum means that the media is still on-line and easily re-linked to somewhere else.

The host's current name is filejoker.net, you will find the DMCA info in their links.
abuse@filejoker.net

I looked long and hard at this problem and in my case I thought the best thing to do was to make our offers so good and our media easily accessible, so that it's not worth the trouble of illegally downloading.