Open Letter to the Adult Industry About PornHub and Other UGC Sites

[porno dan]

Open Letter to the Adult Industry

Now Is the Time to Support PornHub and Other User-Generated Content Sites That Combat Exploitative Content and Piracy

Before I go any further, I want to stress these are my views and my views alone.

Most everyone in the adult industry is aware that in less than a span of a week Pornhub went from updating their terms and conditions for uploaded content to being banned by both MasterCard and Visa.

Like many of you, I have not always had a great experience with MindGeek. Many years ago, I almost got into a physical altercation with one of the founders of YouPorn because of their pirating of my content. After calming down, I had a discussion with this gentleman and he explained they did not control what was uploaded and he gave me his personal contact information in case I needed assistance with removing my content from YouPorn. After that night, whenever someone uploaded my content it was quickly removed. Fast forward several years, my company was invited to be one of the first studios to join their partner program. It provided a chance for my company to monetize my older scenes.

I am sharing my negative experiences first because in the nine years since I met that gentleman much has changed in the ways MindGeek has interacted with my company and others in the industry. They have changed so much that I now consider them industry leaders in working with producers while combating piracy.

First and foremost, MindGeek was the first of the three major tube sites to work with producers so they could monetize their content. Since that time both xHamster and Web Group (the parent company of xVideos and ****) have done the same and now all three of them work with the vast majority of professional studios and countless amateurs as well

In the last few days MindGeek has banned and removed content that was uploaded by non-verified users in their best effort to purge stolen content as well as questionable content so that uploaders can no longer be anonymous. This has been met with a lot of anger and hostility by many people, but this is being done for the best interests of everyone.

I have seen a lot of people rejoicing that MindGeek is not able to process Visa and Mastercard, believing this is a good thing. No matter what your prior opinion or experiences have been with MindGeek now is the time to come together as an industry and to support them. An attack on MindGeek and Pornhub is an attack on all of adult. MindGeek is doing more than any other site to combat illegal and exploitative content and I am optimistic that others in the industry will follow their lead. Sadly, since there are many other sites that will continue to ignore these issues, it is our responsibility to cease doing business with them.

 

[FreeOnes_Adam]

I think it's good that something finally happened that enacted change. It sucks that it had to come in this form for them, but yes, hopefully this is a call for change.

 

[John_8581]

With Mindgeek, not particularly at Pornhub (I'm a paying member of Pornhub Premium) .. but at the sites they own, like Brazzers, Digital Playground, Reality Kings, Mofos and especially Twistys -- the redesign and new layouts that the owners have authorized and that the webmaster has implemented have caused many members to put their hands up in amazement because navigation in many of these sites has actually gotten worse. For me, I cannot go into Mofos directly. I have to use the Brazzers Porn Portal and circumvent the Mofos homepage. I can get into Mofos that way. Both Playboy Enterprises and Wicked Pictures, for whom Mindgeek was just managing their sites, did not want anything to do with Mindgeek's idea of the redesign and new layout. Both the Playboy and the Wicked ownership groups decided to keep what they had and they left on their own.

Manwin / Mindgeek technically destroyed the Reality Gang Network (Big Sausage Pizza, Milf Cruiser, Euro Bride Tryouts, adult.com) - after they acquired them, they did not bring over any of the photo galleries and they never remastered the videos. Eventually they dropped Milf Cruiser, adult.com and Euro Bride Tryouts, leaving only Big Sausage Pizza after all the affiliate money dried up. They also ruined Muffia aka Molly's Life (Molly Cavalli's lesbian website) by merging only 90 or so scenes and photo galleries (out of her 475 plus scenes and photo galleries in the fifteen year life of Muffia) into Reality Kings. Not good.

With Mindgeek, and with all of the other owned websites that they control: Twistys, Brazzers, Mofos, Reality Kings, Digital Playground, etc. They continue to take down photo galleries of models and actresses from the membership areas. Adult models themselves, for example at Twistys, have been delisted. At the other websites, go back to a scene from 2006, 2007 or 2008? Sure the videos are there, but the photo galleries? No. They are doing that to avoid paying royalties to the photographers. It's different with videos. For a video, they pay a one time salary to the videographer. So they own the videos outright. No royalties there. It is much different with the photo galleries. The recourse is to not payout any royalties to the photographers whose galleries they just delisted.

For me, as a paying member the Brazzers website and it's Porn Portal and two other networks (Property Sex and Mile High Media) under Manwin / Mindgeek's control ...

The jury is still out on Mindgeek. I just can't trust them.

 

[D-rock]

My concern isn't Pornhub or Mindgeek so much. Lets face it are we just supposed to forget all the years in the past they screwed over other people in the industry just because they are somewhat reformed now and don't screw others over as blatantly?

My concern is that the tactic that is being used on them can be used on others who have operated more ethically by people that are anti-porn. I fear this could be used as a road map to do that.

 

[Pornfan99]

John - so .. is Big Sausage Pizza still up and running / able to be accessed? And, paying members can download videos?

 

[John_8581]

John - so .. is Big Sausage Pizza still up and running / able to be accessed? And, paying members can download videos?

The Reality Gang Network is available through the Brazzers Porn Portal. You have to purchase it for a one time fee of $74.97 (now at $59.97 during Christmas and New Years). Or you can do it through Pro-Biller. They will work out the numbers for you so that it is cheaper. They'll even have it put directly onto the Brazzers' Porn Portal. But the network has been stripped down to almost nothing. When I had access to it last in June 2015, the videos were still at SD 480p. They were only able to be viewed as streaming videos. Yes, let's go back in time to 2005 ...

XBiz said in a story in 2008,that after the acquisition, Manwin had promised to remaster all of the Big Sausage Pizza videos up to a minimum of 540p. And that, they were going to keep the other assets in the purchase: Milf Cruiser, Euro Bride Tryouts, and adult.com and make upgrades to those sites as well. Yet they didn't tell anyone about the soon to be missing photo galleries. They lured people in through affiliate revenue sharing. Eventually, they let Milf Cruiser, Euro Bride Tryouts, and adult.com slip by the wayside and Mindgeek (as they were now known) then took the sites off the network in 2012, leaving only Big Sausage Pizza. The next big thing on Manwin / Mindgeek's agenda was the purchase of the tube sites. Porno Dan mentioned one, YouPorn, but there were about ten tube sites in total. It cost them millions of dollars to acquire those ten tube sites.

Now remastering of videos was very feasible, since the technology was there to bring both 360p and 480p videos up to 540p. From experience, the Score Group has been doing that for almost a decade. They remastered those films from 360p and 480p to 540p and 720p, In the second decade, the Score Group has even brought 540p videos up to 720p and 1080p. Amazing stuff that the Score Group has been doing.

In 2007, Bang Bros. even started to remaster their videos up from 480p to 540p. Then in 2010, their videos were upgraded to 720p and 1080p. So the technology is there, you just have to spend the money and reinvest it back into the network or website.

Another example, the website Videosz.com has plenty of older videos that they have available for viewing. They then partnered with Bang.com to bring many of their older videos to state of the art quality. Bang has the technology. So far, it has worked out good for both Videosz and Bang.

... However, nothing worked out good for Manwin / Mindgeek and they basically let the Reality Gang Network sit there idle doing nothing for years. And it ended up being yet another disappointment by the Manwin / Mindgeek team.

 

[kickpuncher2]

With Mindgeek, and with all of the other owned websites that they control: Twistys, Brazzers, Mofos, Reality Kings, Digital Playground, etc. They continue to take down photo galleries of models and actresses from the membership areas. Adult models themselves, for example at Twistys, have been delisted. At the other websites, go back to a scene from 2006, 2007 or 2008? Sure the videos are there, but the photo galleries? No. They are doing that to avoid paying royalties to the photographers. It's different with videos. For a video, they pay a one time salary to the videographer. So they own the videos outright. No royalties there. It is much different with the photo galleries. The recourse is to not payout any royalties to the photographers whose galleries they just delisted.

I started noticing early in December lots of content was disappearing from Reality Kings; at first I noticed here and there a video would just be gone. I started digging around and realized multiple years of content was no longer around, and not just pictures but videos too. Entire models profiles were just erased (Lily Love, a favorite performer of mine, had over 15 videos with accompanying pictures spread out over the site and they were all gone). Across the whole site we're talking about hundreds of videos, thousands of hours of content gone with no notice or word if it will return.

 

[maildude]

There are two roads here. One in which the "legitimate" porn industry benefits because these video sites have to tighten their harnesses and that discourages free uploading. The second---and this one directly assaults the first point---is the aforementioned likelihood that these actions are forerunners to an all-out attack on ALL adult material. I'm very, very very much against underage and real, nonconsensual activity. Unfortunately, those things are much easier to see than the true motives of some of the principals involved. RESULT: Porn...or much of it at least...goes further underground, and we have the Seventies again. Larry Flynt isn't all wrong.

 

[Pornfan99]

Maildude: you mean, like with A-L-L the talk about trafficking, and the Federal law that was passed, that effectively shut down the craigslist personals, and backpage? So, now legitimate sex workers have to use .. Tor, or foreign sites.

 

[maildude]

Maildude: you mean, like with A-L-L the talk about trafficking, and the Federal law that was passed, that effectively shut down the craigslist personals, and backpage? So, now legitimate sex workers have to use .. Tor, or foreign sites.

"Legitimate sex workers?" Try selling that terminology to the lawmakers.

 

[John_8581]

I started noticing early in December lots of content was disappearing from Reality Kings; at first I noticed here and there a video would just be gone. I started digging around and realized multiple years of content was no longer around, and not just pictures but videos too. Entire models profiles were just erased (Lily Love, a favorite performer of mine, had over 15 videos with accompanying pictures spread out over the site and they were all gone). Across the whole site we're talking about hundreds of videos, thousands of hours of content gone with no notice or word if it will return.

They will never return.

With videos you could probably find them on a pay-per-view channel. Vivid.com used to have affiliate pay-per-view websites that you could go to find Janine Lindemulder and Nina Mercedez videos that were taken off the Vivid.com server.

But for tracking Brazzers videos? Only if Brazzers is a content owner at Pornhub. They'd probably be there at Pornhub. I used to use Pornhub (the free tube site) to track down partial Brazzers vids and Pornhub Premium (the paysite) to track down the full Brazzers videos that were taken down at Brazzers when the Brazzers server became overloaded.

But you cannot do that anymore.

With photo galleries, I've already discussed why they've been pulled. So unless you go to a questionable content or stolen content website, and are fortunate that an uploader has brought in any content of that pornstar ...

Any of those respective photo galleries would be gone for good too.

 

[maildude]

Well, even before all of this, PornHub, XVideos, and the like, were never sources for me anyway. The quality is sh*t, or the video is brief and incomplete (which I understand). It's not just the porn companies trying to make a buck, either. It's uploaders who will put any piece of crap on the site just so they can say, "Hey, look! I uploaded something!!" I guarantee that the highest quality stuff I have in my collection was gotten from other sources.

 

[D-rock]

They'd probably be there at Pornhub. I used to use Pornhub (the free tube site) to track down partial Brazzers vids and Pornhub Premium (the paysite) to track down the full Brazzers videos that were taken down at Brazzers when the Brazzers server became overloaded

It's pretty sad that a company with the resources and cash of Brazzers would just run out out server space. That they remove legacy material because of it is even worse.