Content Restrictions
 

Hey Guys,

I am working on making an adult community forum. Yeh I know, people have advised me not too but I am gonna try it out. This will be a surfer community forum so people will be able to interact and submit content. Now my question is the about the content being submitted. I am getting some ideas from an already established community forum and they operate this way and it is very popular. But one of their rules on submitted content is that it cannot have sponsor/cash links with the content. They do not allow link logos on the images either. They request that you have all content on an image host provider. So I am thinking, isn't this a fine line of being illegal (unless the content is owned by the poster)? I mean this forum is all about the law and rules but I don't get why they do not allow sponsor/cash site links on the submitted content. You know that all this content is not owned by these posters so I am trying to figure out why they have this rule.

I spoke with a couple of my sponsors and they simply said that if the submitted content is linked back to their site then it is perfectly fine by them. So I ask, is there or what is the guidelines when submitting content on a community forum like this? In no shape or form do I want to be allowing illegal content. I have mods that will be on my forum to request specific information before content can be submitted but I just need to know the guidelines.

thx in advance

They probably don't want to leak sales to affiliate's link codes.

Surfer forums exist to make money for the owner of the forum, not the porn surfer. They will only allow content to be posted that is from affiliate programs the forum owner is already a member of... and the affiliate links will be posted in-line with the links to images from the affiliate program.

Content posted that is not identifiable and of unknown origin should be deleted immediately to prevent willful copyright infringement.

I see. So each image that is add to my forums need to hv a watermark marking of some kind but no links to external affiliates. What about homemade real amateur porn? The guy who takes photos of his wife for example?

Thx for the help

Some Forums allow people to post from content from any approved source.

Legally - It doesn't matter if you host the content or not, if you get a DMCA notice, remove the content. I tend to try to be pro-active and keep content I know that will be rejected by the original source of the content off My site (ex Playboy), but it is impossible. Ultimately the user submitting the content is legally liable, but we have seen some cases where the site has been declared a criminal conspirator too copyright infringement. This is EXTREMELY rare.

So legally your all good. Making money is a different matter, and I would tend to believe that forums have trouble with ad sales. I have heard many forum owners talk about forum ownership as a money pit, that is until you reach a certain level of traffic, then they can start to make money!

Your not going to get rich, and the more restrictions you place on your users as to what can or can not be posted the less traffic you will get.

Even though you've already been told, I still want to warn you.

I've bought a pretty large forum in the past for a good sum, paid 2 years of hosting (which was loads - high bandwidth costs).

Lost a boatload of money over the course of 2 years before I just decided to fuck the site and remove it (was so pissed off at advertising results, I didn't even feel like selling it).