[BIZ THREAD] the ultimate solution to industry issues?
 

OK, before you start reading, be aware that what you're going to read might be controversial and/or be totally outside of the box. If you're an open minded person, you're welcome to continue reading, debating, discussing and arguing as much as you want. If you're terribly afraid that your values and visions might be shaken, this is a nice moment to stop reading.

I just was reading a post here about the TGP2 experience, and I posted about some of the reasons it failed. Those of us who are of the "analytic" type got some good learning for the future and the rest is history. But it got me thinking about all the issues nowadays, how we predicted this 5-6 years earlier, how and why we failed, the "cartel" thing someone mentioned, the leverage and regulations I mentioned and so on. All aspects that, put together, have the solution written in the wall. At least IMHO.

The keywords here are LEVERAGE and REGULATION. Yes, there's absolutely not a single business activity that isn't internationally regulated from A to Z... but online business. Yes, there are some small regulations, mostly about domains, but not much more than that. All kind of crimes and felonies are "legal by default" since there's no legislation in contrary. And when one country decides to do something, offenders simply move away and continue doing what they were doing.

The good news for adult is that, for many reasons, it's way easier to regulate than most of online business. It just needs a common ground to go from. And no, I won't be so naive to think industry will auto-regulate: not only that is an impossible, but it's the certain sheer way to kill any kind of effort in practically no time.

So, let's say we create a lobby of some kind. Some kind of association that, unlike the existing ones, ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING. And this something is as simple as follows: get politicians to CENSOR PORN. Yes, you read it well: CENSOR PORN. That's all what that lobby needs to do. No special arrangements, no some kind of deal, just CENSOR PORN.

Outrageous, isn't it? Please continue before you suffer a stroke

The other part is that this or any other lobby creates a new TLD, which now is allowed. This new TLD has to be 100% non-profit and MANDATORY. Let's say the .abc TLD for shortening purposes. So, people owning the different main top level domains (.COM, .NET, .ORG) will bid for their .abc extension. Those having 2 or more top level extensions will automatically get the TLD. Price will be just less than 10 dollars and all profits go to UNICEF, Red Cross or whatever. At the same time, all countries will be invited to create the .abc.(region) domains to reflect their regional domains on the same basis.

By now, I'm sure most of you already got the point and what does this mean and how will this follow: .COM porn domains will redirect to .ABC. With just these you're solving several problems, being cybersquatting one of them (not the most important though).

Now, your beloved congressmen/women will be able to block porn on any free access domains and require that any kind of hardcore depiction requires a block of some kind. Whether you charge or not is at your sole decision and discretion, but people will need a credit card or ID or verifiable ID method of some sort.

Of course, it can be done without the domain thing, it's just an additional step for PR resources: the evil porn industry auto restricts itself and on top of that does more good than any other business in the world. Hard for any congressman looking for votes to say no to that gift.

So yes, there would be a time of adjustment, specially until this spreads across the globe, but in the end, it sets the parameter for online business (mainstream and adult) from here to who knows when: the free meal has ended. Now you have to PAY.

And yes, I know there are some issues to be solved, some of them I can foresee now and if asked I will try to answer them, I just tried to make it short and sweet and provide the wire frames of the idea without going very in depth

Hope you like it and join the discussion

VIVA LA REVOLUTION! :)

too much to read, but I agree less free porn would be much better

good old time

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg

maybe stopping piracy

with all due respect, if "too much to read" is what stops this industry from saving itself then we should simply give up. If we can't even give up 5 minutes while comfortably sitting on a chair, then we're doomed.

Hope there are a little more pro active answers :2 cents:

Hi

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not getting the joke this time, I'm on "serious thinker" mode :1orglaugh

what I'm proposing stops piracy for good BY DEFINITION.

we are doomed either way, whether i read it or not. greed rules the world and porn especially. no matter how much we philosophize it and type in long essays nothing will change unless we get regulated. practice and history proved we can't self-regulate.
please excuse me that I didn't read your post completely word to word .

When I started, the industry DID regulate it self. Just in the last 24 hours there has been one great example of what used to be the norm. Evidence was presented that a company was banging cards. Gfy pulled their ads. This is the same gfy which was once skinned by a thieving tube site, so it's quite an improvement.

Many affiliates pulled their links. It used to be that practically every affiliate would pull the links. Self regulation at work.

You may recall that when gfy associated itself with the tube site, many webmasters caused them out and leading webmasters created a replacement forum at hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Gfy got the message and switched and got rid of the tube ads. Self regulation at work. Self regulation DOES work. We just need more of it.

Specifically, we need more webmasters to take the step they did with gfy. When hfy accepted tube ads, people didn't just boycott the tube sites. They boycotted gfy for associating with the tube sites. When the card banging thing just happened, gfy knew they didn't want to be associated with the offender. By making it "against the rules" to do business with an offender, the offenders are isolated and self regulation works.

That self regulation didn't eliminate all scum back in the day, of course, but it did isolate them, separating the scum industry from the porn industry. The scum could only host with scummy hosts who ripped off their scummy clients. The scum only got traffic from the scummy affiliates, who sent take traffic with stolen cards. By forcing the scum to do business only with other scum, all the scum were ducking each other over and keeping the scum in check.

To make that happen again, just do two simple things:
Don't do business with people who lie, cheat, or steal.
Don't do business with people who assist liars, cheats, and thieves.

maybe you should because that's EXACTLY what I was talking about :Oh crap

I agree to some extent, but I really don't think self-regulation alone will do miracles

nonetheless I agree with you, less is more, but without external regulation nothing will change imo.

In fact with need a more efficient way to fight the cheaters (tubes)

good idea :)

this thread and the lack of interest is almost a definitive description of this business' status quo :(

I wrote a nice long reply to your original post (and deleted it) but what I said basically boils down to I support the idea of a regulatory body overseeing our industry but the complexity of it in practice would make it impractical if not downright impossible

And what should be the purpose of the sentences you expect to read ?

"Blah blah blah blah Sally rand blah blah Paul Markham quoted"

You know what ?
Contact the guys from the opus dei and tell them that you work in porn and that they should help you to censor everything ... worldwide, so before, vote Sarkozy for president of the world.

at least that someone is still alive. At least that someone is willing to do anything, at least arguing and letting me know why am I wrong. I fucking hate when everybody cries and whines, point fingers and blame everybody else yet none of them is willing to do anything to save their own asses. The funny thing is that I'm one of the least affected by the situation, but seeing those really affected just pointing out why EVERYTHING is impossible and why we're doomed is frankly depressing. To say the least.

Plus, I would vote Berlusconi!