Our belief is that if we weren't smart enough to register it, free game. (Just as long as you promote us)

When TB first launched, we actually didn't buy any misspells or .biz, .net, etc because we wanted the WMs to register them to promote us. It worked.

We still continue this biz model - and hell, we'll even host it for you!

there is affiliate life outside of porn.

Hit any of us up if you need anything ...

ICQ#: 147-945-440
kristin @ topbucks.com

maybe there was it looks like

Nastydollars Here!!
 

Hey Guys. We understand all of your concerns and as always we want to work together with all of you to find a mutually beneficial arrangement. Please feel free to contact us directly.

Nastydollars
[email protected]
ICQ: 266736716

now that's more like it. that's the guys I thought you were all along.. I understand people taking advantage of trademarks and causing havoc.. but there has to be a happy medium for both you guys and the webmasters. We work together to make money and as long as you have honest hard working affiliates and a sponsor who puts out great content and sites we should be able to work together and make money for both parties. hopefully ND will treat everyone right I think they will now after seeing people upset by this. props to ND for responding and atleast saying you are willing to work with us.

They have a whole squad of in house seo people.

a solution would be to transfer the domains to them but they leave your site (and user id's) as-is.

No offense, I am not one to get in the middle of you trying to pull some affiliates off this apparent opportunity, but the fact of the matter is that if the owner(s) of your company saw that it was in their best interests and it made business sense to do the same thing that Nasty is doing then they would do it in a heartbeat and you would be here trying to explain why things changed.

No disrespect, but I would even go a bit farther to say that this post is very detrimental to the protection of your company's copyrights and trademarks. :2 cents:

How much does it really matter if it is? Lets think about it...

You can use it and promote someone else's program... They take you to court... The judge sees Top Buck's argument that they have been allowing certain advertisers to use the mark for promotional reasons. This other guy isn't an advertiser of the product associated with the mark. The judge rules that the guy either can advertise the site in question or give the mark to Top Bucks. It is pretty plain and simple...

And now lets look at the likelihood of someone using something like HerFirstBigCock and sending the traffic to Monster Cock Junkies. The surfer was searching for Her First Big Cock and doesn't really care for MCJ. So the conversions would be less than to send it to TB. It'd make NO SENSE!

So now lets say the owner of MCJ buys a domain for HFBC and he sends it to his own site. Somehow he gets #1 in Google. Now TB contacts their domain squatting affiliates and puts a price on their head. Instead of paying a lawyer 1000's they pay an affiliate $1000 to beat the other guy or get TB's own domain to #1...

And for the record... If you own a site and you cannot beat your affiliates to #1, you have something seriously wrong with your linking codes, etc... Cause getting #1 is pretty fucking easy since 95% of your affiliates have 1000's of links into your domains.

BTW, these programs all own their trademarks for their logos, site names, etc and copywrites to their content... Yet somehow they allow you to use it all to promote them. A domain name is NO DIFFERENT than your logo!

There is also this to think about:
No judge involved or any of these other scenarios: If TopBucks (or anybody else) doesn't actively protect a trademark they lose it. Not that the govt. goes around searching for every trademark in the world...

But, let's say that Top Bucks goes after a pirate (as they are doing right now in court). The pirate lawyers point out that TB doesn't protect their trademarks. Probably isn't going to win the case for the pirates...but it DOES put TB's trademarks at risk of being default.

That was my thinking in my earlier posts on this subject. Everybody needs to get their ducks in a row as far as trademarks go. There is a legal battle going on and it just doesn't make any sense to me to take a risk of losing your trademark over affiliates who use domain squatting as promotion.

You could lose everything if you're not careful.

If I were a company like Nasty Dollars or Naughty America and I had an affiliate who actually sent joins and had done so for many years...I would work out a deal to have the domain transferred to me and sign an agreement allowing that affiliate to continue to run that domain and promote the program.

That would seem like a fair balance to satisfy the trademark owners responsibilities and at the same time not hurt a long standing affiliate.

I also don't think it would be that difficult to do. There probably aren't a handful of affiliates making sales of any consequence at this point in time anyway due to the fact that piracy has made all paysites content available for free out there. So it shouldn't be that hard for a company to take each on a case by case basis, check their stats, and make a determination to play ball or just take the domain (in cases where the affiliate has never been successful with it)

Are all you guys telling me you are not hiding your traffic sources? If not you should start asap.

:2 cents:

here is the repost of mail:

Dan from Nastydollars here. Our legal department has been going
through Trademark Infringements against our sites and the following
domains were found to be infringing.

domains named here

Due to the fact you are an active affiliate and have been with us for
some time, I have persuaded Legal to give me the chance to reach out
to you directly before any legal action is taken. We request that the
above domains be transferred to us and hope that we can continue to
work together. A response from you is requested within 3 days or your
account with Nastydollars will be suspended. Look forward to hearing
from you.

Thank you,

Did anyone ever hear back from NaughtyAmerica after contacting them to facilitate transferring domains to them?

What kind of domains are they going after? Variations or blatant typos?

I was told ANYTHING with a ND site name in the url

Then they aren't thorough enough I guess

You can add Paper Street Cash to that list.


It's impossible to fuck anyone over when you're focused on quality.:2 cents:

Your scenario, no offense, is full of speculative and assumptive assertions. First off, going to court would never play out in a manner that is so definitive. Second, the cost of going to court would have to be factored in. Next, you have to take in other possibilities, like what if the domain promotes not just the TB site but other competing sponsors in the same niche and makes it not so black and white and a judge and jury has to figure that grey area out for themselves.

I don't really understand what you are saying in that paragraph about price on the head and getting another affiliate to beat the one out. How is that a convenient solution?

Maybe because they own a lot of the tubes?

Do I need to rewrite all the blog posts and pages that have any Nasty Dollars sitename mentioned in them?

I'm sure that will be next on the list. Since I am using your 'trademark' to promote you, I expect to be hearing this very soon.

I will make it very easy for you all. anything I have of ND's is coming down today.

What is NastyDollars answer to ripping the html off these domains and putting it on their own servers, while only switching the referal code?

So these guys in question, send you sales for years, you JACK the domains, COPY the html, design, content, and replace the webmaster ids to your own.

Pretty fucking cheesy if you ask me. Play it how you want, word it how you want in the emails, but we can see by your actions what the real plan is.

You can't threaten people with money you owe them (closing accounts), and then rip them off since they need to get paid.

Fuck you guys.

Why you weren't open to find a mutually beneficial arrangement earlier? Now you are ready to cooperate because your affiliates started to talk about your practices. I asked how long can you keep my ref code on 1 of my sites, but I didn't get any reply. You forgot that we are NOT your enemies.

bump 1 2 3

I can see why companies do this. I used to promote a well known credit card company program about 2 years ago, Infact my site was #2 on google, above their own corporate site.

They never complained. Until one day I got greedy and decided to promote one of their competitors offers on the same site, boom, I got a letter. I had to turn in my domain and kiss it good by.

lesson learned :)

Anyone learn anymore about this issue?

Thank you for coming forward with that; it is one great reason that programs have a problem with this issue. In adult, there is another possibilitiy that needs to be considered. Say a trademarked domain gets used to not just promote a competitor, but a competitor with content that is questionably legal. Now that site might not just be confusing the trademark but associating it with something that the original trademark holder wants zero connection to.

This is certainly a issue where both the affiliate and the mark holder/program need to walk a mile in each other's moccasins.:2 cents:

Can we get a list of sponsors who do not allow this at all, and those that do?
I asked one and they said it was cool but im getting the feeling they could change at anytime.

In my opinion...

Anyone that tells you it is cool to do whatever is probably not listening to the advice of a good IP attorney. Any company with a mark worth protecting either has or should have a very clear guideline on what you can or cannot do with the marks.

Every program I know of has terms in their affiliate agreements that make it possible for them to change, alter, amend, etc. their terms to be able to change their minds on things like this with zero to minimal notice. So, no matter what affiliate rep jumps in here to snag biz from this conflict telling you whatever you want to hear, there is still going to be the plain open truth fact that the ownership can change its mind on a whim and the affiliate will have little to no recourse for reconsideration.

So why don't you own names like homegownvideo.com & homegronvideo.com?

Homegrown Video is trademarked
 

Thanks for bringing those to my attention. :thumbsup

what i want to know is if you would have a problem with affiliate promoting homegrownvideotube.com? I dont have this domain, but im just saying if someone is selling your product on this domain exclusively why hammer him after he did all the work? makes no sense, and yes i understand the use of marks, non-competes, etc I used to own some stores in a national franchise chain. The site owners are losing that revenue to tubes and torents, cus dumb surfers are typing those terms in and getting free porn first.

Now there is difference to someone who jack your domain, buy the mispell, then cross promo other sponsors. But there is no good reason to hammer guy who simply registered another variation of your name and promotes only your product. I actually used to like some of these brands but now :321GFY ill stick to smaller sponsor take my chances.

Btw, the first time i signed up for a porn membership, i typed in "bangbros videos", cus i heard from a friend and saw on their computer the cool bb content on assparade. That was 8 yrs ago. Now if i made the same search i may type "bang bros tube". Go ahead google it. And come back and tell me how many affiliate or sponsor links come up in top 10.

WIPO is your cheapest option, even a so-so laywer should be able to get those transferred. WIPO is $1500, lawyer costs depend on the lawyer. If you want me to find you anymore drop me an e-mail. I'll run a scan for you.

Well in our case we are pretty up front about wanting people to ask permission first and then we are very specific about what is ok or not ok. We are also small enough to have reasonable control over the situation. We have had some nightmarish legal precedents in our history that have made us very aware of the advantages and disadvantages of affiliates using/misusing our marks. Since our brand is literally the oldest established amateur video brand we have to be hyper vigilent about our marks.

So far, as a result of our experiences, we have been able to amicably resolve nearly every dispute without resorting to attorneys or WIPO complaints and with turning the webmaster into a successful affilliate. We always start with the sugar, never the vinegar; works for us.

Good luck with TRFCN, I doubt they'd even respond, looks like it's just a front. They own a large portion of the best paysite typos.

LOL

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Isn't what Topbucks is saying a bit like a franchise agreement?

so what about NDsitename.mycrazypornsitdomain.com? or http://www.mycrazypornsitedomain.com...ame/index.php?