My 'tube' experience
 

Joining the club eh...

I didn't realize this was so wide-spread, in the middle of 2008 i installed and setup a 'tube' (video) section to my website just for it's members to upload and share videos associated with the content of our site, i thought I'd maximize my user experience (i was the first to mix a forum with an adult site ::) and it all worked rather well and i (and my members) were happy, i adopted the technology early and customized the video side of things and all was good...

Until a year later i saw ALL of my members videos on a tube-site... obviously the technology and these turn-key video solutions were being proliferated around the web and so like everything else was open to abuse, today i see them all over the place filled with stolen content.

I have since closed my video section and removed the 3-day membership option, if they want to steal our stuff they at least gotta pay a full month to see it, not much i can do besides that i don't think.

Anyhew... good luck to the rest of you.

What about watermarking videos?

That way people stealing your videos (which eventually generates a TON of downloads) see your watermark and a lot of them will eventually visit once. And if the site's any good, they might stay?

Tagging your video?s and pictures is always a good idea, but some people and websites will just remove that with editing software. Most of the bigger tube sites will remove stolen content right away if you send a quick email to the webmaster or DCMA agent. This puts them officially ?on notice? and they don?t want any issues over a few stolen videos. In the U.S when dealing with infringement you can go after anyone who has something to gain from your videos being stolen & posted, that means sponsors, advertisers and even credit card processors because they collect a fee. So if no action is taken after your first email to the tube site itself, start following the money and eventually they will take notice and remove your content. Below is a copy of the email I shoot off anytime I find my stuff on a tube site

To Whom It May Concern, I am the owner, producer and legal copyright holder of a
video which I have found on your site. This content is illegally posted and
has been copied from my website, ?yoursitehere? without my consent. The URL of the infringing item(s) is

"item URL(s) here"

Please remove the item(s) and ban the users who uploaded them, as
they are sure to be uploading illegal content on a regular basis. Thank You in advance and feel free to contact me with any further questions or concerns.

Gus L,
Webmaster
Windycityxxx

Your loyal fans/supporters are often a good first line of defense against that kind of thing, since they are the ones already spending hours on the internet looking at porn. Cultivate a rewards program for whistle-blowers?

Watermarking your stuff is the way to go. Let those jokers advertise your site for you.

Watermarking only helps if thye do not put their one tube site watermark over your own, which has happened to me a few times. And the webmaster of this tube site ignored all my DMCA's ... then i had to DMCA his hosting and then he listened !!!

And if they steal ALL YOUR CONTENT ... watermarking wont help if all they can do is search the free tube site for more of your content or even all of it.

This is why I dont even allow downloads on my sites and my members section suspends activity if it detects someone is trying to access the video stream via other means

I agree with orion - making your stuff for download is just inviting people to steal, post and torrent all your member videos. Not that people cant rip your streaming videos too. Either way, watermark your videos and make them streaming are the main things you can do to help. Doing video take downs can be a full time job to hunt the web and requires some good resources be thrown at it.

Do you let members know your videos are stream only before they join?

I thought about not offering downloads for my Gloryhole Swallow site but it's hard to not offer downloads when most sites do.

"normal" watermarking its not a good idea you need to be smart and put watermark on move and change positions few times in each video

As you can see from my post count, I'm mostly a lurker but this question piqued my interest. How is it that I don't see milfhunter, or bangbros or naughtyamerica for example floating around torrent sites or illegal places... how do they manage this? All their videos are downloadable...

I'm not sure what sites you visit, but there are several torrent sites, porn blogs and porn forums that even have the brazzers/na stuff before they're released on site (how, I have no idea)

ye I see bangbros videos all the time.. milfhunter is still around?

Tubes is evil
Tubes killing adult industry

Not true. The Tube model works well when used properly for advertising with promo content.

probably the worst proof ever...

our GFY forum is cracking down on its BIGGEST scammer...check out my thread in the F.A & Program Discussion immediately.

watermarks need to move a few times so that they cant be covered

Watermarking your videos is good idea and could bring some additional hits

Big names with good brand recall can have their names at the background, or somewhere in the scene, especially if they put in their name, URL or episode title in the dialog. That's even better than a watermark.

Good exchange of ideas, very informative. Thanks!

Moving watermarks is a good idea. Perhaps having a download limit is one way of deterring piracy, but then you give your members a less pleasant experience by limiting downloads or not allowing downloads at all. Then they will just seek memberships to other paysites of the same genre that do offer download.

Just watermark the vids.

put a semi transparent watermark that covers the middle part of the video :D they're pretty good if they can steal that too lol

Yeah it seems regardless of making members pay anything you have that one crack that give's it to the world for free. I'd watermark your work.