Originally Posted by jayeff

Without a way to monetize their ventures content thieves would not be in business. It must be clear by now that the sponsors who allow them to do so, pay no attention whatsoever to threads like these. So how much longer before legitimate operators in this industry recognize that boycotting such sponsors is the only alternative to accepting content theft and the like?

If it is a nonsense for a sponsor to see his content being used so that someone can (primarily) promote another sponsor, then it must be also be a nonsense for that sponsor to work with affiliates who promote the offending sponsor(s), even if they do so by fair means.

Sites relying on stolen content, scumware and the rest undoubtedly generate significant income. But it is a fraction of the income earned by the industry as a whole and in most cases not extra income at all, but income which would be earned anyway, either by other affiliates or directly by the sponsors themselves.

Appealing to professional good sense hasn't worked, but if sponsors who support black-hat sites began to lose a significant part of their income from other sources, it would surely not be long before they began to re-think their policies. If that upsets affiliates who consider only their own immediate situation and not the health of the industry on which we all depend, so be it.