Originally Posted by fris (Post 15574091)

hardsextube has some nice converting traffic

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 15573899)

It amazes me how so many of you seem to be sitting around just waiting for something like this to happen to make your day. None of you know the full details of the situation and yet you all are instantly Trademark Lawyer and Business consultants informing me what a slimy shitty asshole business owner I am. Seriously with times as tough as they are how do any of you have that much time to devote to someone you do no business with?

Regarding the Trademark situation. I've been in this business for 10+ years. All of our success has been the result of our hard work from the ground up. Nothing was achieved by stealing or scamming anyone. I'm not interested in stealing people's traffic. I'm just following what multiple lawyers (and multiple law firms) have recommend I do. I don't know shit about trademark law. I leave that up to the lawyers and hope they are giving me good advice. That said I honestly believe there are a number of domains using the name sextube that did so without knowing about the sextube trademark and most likely just registered a domain to use. The had no intention of causing us harm. There are also a number of domains that are riding off the sextube trademark and surviving 100% on search engine traffic that is coming from sextube. We have to protect ourselves. In doing so some people are going to be pissed at us. I'm hoping we can resolve every situation so all parties come away happy.

It's very obvious nobody in this thread has ever dealt with me. You are all so quick to crucify us without even knowing the story. Anybody who knows me knows I'm not interested in hardsextube's traffic. I'm just interested in making sure my interests are protected.

Originally Posted by JaneB (Post 15574107)

I understand where you are coming from Shap. I just have an issue with you going after people, when you are doing the same exact thing. LightSpeed was just one example. What about the interests of the people you are fucking over?

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 15574096)

Hopefully that's coming from someone who doesn't call English their first language.

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 15574108)

I'm not looking to hurt anyone's livelihood. Like I said I'd love to work resolutions where we all come out winners :winkwink:

Originally Posted by JaneB (Post 15574122)

You have always been a stand up man, so I hope that you can work things out to where everyone is happy. Also you may want to post yourself on this issue. Michael just seems to piss people off. :winkwink::thumbsup

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 15573998)

Vexes. I hate threads like this. That's just me. I hate when people don't think the world of us. So obviously this thread has ruined my day. The situation was spun completely out of control and has been interpreted 100% not what I was wanting. That's my own fault for letting that happen. Not much I can do.

That said threads like this are unfortunately usually good for business. The affiliates that are responsible for 80 to 90% of our sales are very close with us. Most of them are businessman that have been faced with the situation we are facing. They know it's no easy situation and you can't always be the good guy. We've never had a negative thread hurt our business. It just doesn't happen. The core of our sales and traffic is with people that don't care about what anonymous gfy folk think. They care about the $$$$ we make together and that's it. On the other hand today for some reason everybody that didn't know about SexTube and GayTube knows about it now and many of them are hitting Michael up for advertising buys.

They say no publicity is bad publicity. I hate bad publicity but when it comes to GFY I can honestly say that saying has been true for us.

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 15574098)

They must. I notice you've been defending them like you own them :winkwink:

Originally Posted by Sands (Post 15574153)

Shap, I'm truely very sorry for my comments in this thread. Earlier I pointed out that you advertise on a copyright-infringing tube site, http://www.tnaflix.com, but your employee pointed out that it was an affiliate. I should have known that you'd, never, ever, ever advertise on a tube site that profited from copyright infringement. Not even Youporn.

Also, I can tell you're pretty torn up about all this publicity you're getting, and how you're getting such a raw deal with your lawyers advising you to take a domain/site that benefits from search terms that your own site can't rank in the top three for. It's hard, I know.

And even though you put up a brave front here on GFY, I know you're wiping your tears away with 100 dollar bills while bitter-sweetly enjoying that tropical sunset and lamenting your decision to get into the adult industry in the first place. I feel your pain.

If you need someone to talk to, I'm always at my computer working tirelessly to develop sites on domains that maybe one day your legal team will advise you to take too.

My ICQ number is 418194907.

Originally Posted by hdkiller (Post 15574137)

Please shap hit me up on icq don't hide in the background!

Originally Posted by count of monte cristo (Post 15574165)

shap, youve been pretty forthcoming and have had some amazingly reasonable/practical responses, let me ax you this, its a tough one.

you seem to have lightspeed domains on your server. i assume you are or were an affiliate of lightspeed at one point and the reason you bought them was to send affiliate traffic to lightspeed. this makes sense

did you approach lightspeed to first get permission to register them before you did so?

Originally Posted by WarChild (Post 15574182)

HardSexTube does indeed have some good traffic and I'm hoping he doesn't lose any of it. He seems like a good guy that worked hard to build his site up. I'm quite sure he nevered intended to steal anything from Twistys either. I hope this ends up resolved with everyone happy about the outcome.

Originally Posted by SmokeyTheBear (Post 15574174)

cmon now shap , you regged the trademark before you used the site as a "sex tube " site, infact it wasnt until years later when others started using tubes that you regged it. You regged it so you could have a generic trademark, now you are attempting to strongarm the domain someone else regged and used before your site even had wings.

Your trying to protect something that didnt even exist when he started his site ? The whole reason to protect it would be so people dont mistake his site for being part of your netword via the name. you know this wont happen because the name is to generic.

Pretty snipey if you ask me, of course a lawyer will tell you to go for it , he make money either way , he cant lose. A lawyer would tell you to cutoff your dying moher if you asked him how far you could extend your legal rights while saving money.

Sometimes its not just about the $$ at the end of the day

Originally Posted by chompers (Post 15574148)

HardSexTube rocks just got my monday Paris Hilton Fill in.

http://www.hardsextube.com/?search=paris+hilton

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 15574190)

No I did not ask for permission. We bought a few lightspeed domains many years ago. We always sent to them as an affiliate. We did quite well with it and obviously Steve came knocking and told us to turn them over. So we did. I was pissed at the time because I was looking at it from my point of view. I knew he was right just didn't like turning over that income.

The Lightspeedcheerleaders domain was supposed to go to him as well. As I mentioned for some reason it wasn't transferred. Probably because it has no traffic.

Originally Posted by Shap (Post 15574193)

I believe it will be :thumbsup

Originally Posted by hdkiller (Post 15574204)

Never got a mail from the Hilton family, evil publicity, hah home made porn is legal, law is evil too... isnt?, a noname canadian company tryin' to scam me for a few millions of dollars... o really? hah! pLAYin' hard hah isn't? letz create more drama (fordced 13375p34K...), affiliates wanna drop links?... supporting farmers in canada? Sir, did you shot your foot?

Originally Posted by WiredGuy (Post 15574228)

wow im surprised this thread is getting so much attention. maybe its because people see sex and tube as being generic, but if this was hardcoretwistys.com, i doubt anyone would mind shap protecting his TM.
WG

Originally Posted by Brujah (Post 15574233)

You're right, because those examples are VERY different.

Originally Posted by WiredGuy (Post 15574228)

wow im surprised this thread is getting so much attention. maybe its because people see sex and tube as being generic, but if this was hardcoretwistys.com, i doubt anyone would mind shap protecting his TM.
WG

Originally Posted by hdkiller (Post 15574236)

i am protect my intrests

Originally Posted by WiredGuy (Post 15574238)

if sextube was too generic, i'm sure CIPO/USPTO would have denied the tm application.
WG

Originally Posted by A1R3K (Post 15574244)

redtube is a TM. not sure why sextube couldn't be.

Originally Posted by Brujah (Post 15574233)

You're right, because those examples are VERY different.

Originally Posted by hdkiller (Post 15574253)

i own hardcorejoy.com, so pleas don't associate that with twisties... i know joy is a cybersquttiing of joy.com...

Originally Posted by WiredGuy (Post 15574238)

if sextube was too generic, i'm sure CIPO/USPTO would have denied the tm application.
WG

Originally Posted by A1R3K (Post 15574244)

redtube is a TM. not sure why sextube couldn't be.