Due to the new 2257 regulations, as of Tuesday, August 24th I
request that *ALL* thumbnails be *SOFTCORE*. This means that they can not
show any insertion or sexual touching. This means no dildos, fingering,
spreading the pussy, fucking, dicks in a girls mouth, etc. Just nudity etc
is ok. I prefer clean face shots as well.
>
> Please do not push the envelope because if I feel that you are even
getting close to the line I *will* remove your partner account and delete
all of your old galleries. 2257 is a very serious situation and I must put
forth these rules to proect myself, and as a submitter who recieves free
traffic, you are required to follow them. Also, I am not inititally
requiring a 2257 link on your galleries, however it would be a very good
idea to begin including that. It wil be for your protection as well as my
own.



Mike had this to say on the subject to futher clarify:

I'm talking about the thumbnail that they submit to me. I guess I need to send out another message to clarify.

And yes, it does make a difference legally. If my thumbnails that are shown on my TGP's are softcore, then they do not require 2257 documents to be stored by me.

And no, I'm not freaking out. If the time comes that people are being prosecuted for hardcore thumbnails with no 2257 documents, then I am completely wacked. I want to have a database of softcore thumbnails available so that I won't lose all of my traffic.

Thumb tgps do better when the thumbnails are softcore .. Any big thumb tgp owner will tell you that. The prod automatically increases because people click more to see if the chick is getting fucked .. or what's going on .. If its all put out there in the thumbnail then they may not click as much.




This will make madthumbs much more productive, so those of you with partner accounts should be pleased.. Softcore thumbs tend to draw more clicks.

:wnw: :wnw: :wnw:

:okthumb:

The same goes for Galleries, and Tours ;-)))... now TGP owners are catching up - I like it :-)

There will be several other networks of sites that will be following suit in short order! This will be applicable the entire Mad Crew suite of sites.

that's awesome LM - are you the first major tgp to do this?

I believe Madthumbs is the first large tgp that's announced it, but honestly I'm not sure. I know this is something many are considering.

I personally think that while it is up to the individual operator, I don't feel that thumbnails will be an issue with 2257. Otherwise Google is going to have to shut it's image gallery thing, because they have tons of hardcore thumbs on there.

I am starting to think this is getting like the Cambria list... good ideas that put together are a massive over-reaction to an ill-defined threat.

Alex

do you own madthumbs?

Your post would make sense if mad thumbs were doing something detrimental to themselves by removing hardcore content ... but its taking an opportunity and finding an advantage in it.

Come on Alex, you of all people aren't short sighted!!

ouasd

It's a free market so what you are saying is you are letting your competition gain an advantage over you.

Funny thing

I don't know how this will all play out but one of the conversations I had at Internext went along the lines of

"I can see the industry making a slight comeback but part of it will be due to government intervention"

Sorry my laptop is fucked and I can't type on it... anyways no I don't own madthumbs, but I do work with Mike.

Honestly I think it will be a good thing for tgps in general... More tgps will follow suit just out of precaution, and I think it will definitely alleviate soem of the issues people have with tgps as far as "giving out too much". Softcore thumbs tend to increase clicks, which increases productivity in general by sending out more hits to galleries, generating more gallery views and more opportunities for clickthrough. It just makes sense.

Your post would make sense if mad thumbs were doing something detrimental to themselves by removing hardcore content ... but its taking an opportunity and finding an advantage in it.

Come on Alex, you of all people aren't short sighted!! [/b][/quote]
That's really what is going to happen.. it's going to create a lot of opportunity, and if history repeats itself, it will make partner accounts etc that much more valuable. They won't buy the cow if they get the milk for free, so to speak.

I don't see this kind of policy shift by Madthumbs (or any other TGP) to be a bad thing at all.

and as Lady M says, it will more than likely increase productivity.

Many TGPS are making the same move sooner than later.

Maybe you should familiarize yourself with the new regulations and talk to an attorney before making such statements, because it will be the TGPs that get looked at first when the changes go through. Google is exempt because they are a directory and are not a porn site, so the difference should be pretty obvious. This is a very smart thing that MT is doing and I've suggested it several time lately on the boards and on my radio show.

If the thumbs are hosted on the TGP owners server they need to comply with 2257 and since that would be impossible, the smart move is to use softcore only thumbs.

The webmasters that are submitting the galleries will need to post their custodian of records info on the galleries themselves if the galleries contain sexually explicit content, but the TGPs won't have a problem if they link to them with softcore thumbs, or text links.

For anyone that thinks this is something to take a wait and see approach about, or worse yet, the ignore it and hope it goes away approach, I hope you like small rooms and anal sex. :awinky:

Maybe you should familiarize yourself with the new regulations and talk to an attorney before making such statements, because it will be the TGPs that get looked at first when the changes go through. Google is exempt because they are a directory and are not a porn site, so the difference should be pretty obvious. This is a very smart thing that MT is doing and I've suggested it several time lately on the boards and on my radio show.

If the thumbs are hosted on the TGP owners server they need to comply with 2257 and since that would be impossible, the smart move is to use softcore only thumbs.

The webmasters that are submitting the galleries will need to post their custodian of records info on the galleries themselves if the galleries contain sexually explicit content, but the TGPs won't have a problem if they link to them with softcore thumbs, or text links.

For anyone that thinks this is something to take a wait and see approach about, or worse yet, the ignore it and hope it goes away approach, I hope you like small rooms and anal sex. :awinky: [/b][/quote]
Especially with madthumbs being as big as it is, it's going to be one of the primary targets for enforcement when (not if) they actually go after tgps... Honestly I think Mike is doing the best thing, and everyone has discussed it to death, but in the end I think it will do more good than harm. Anyone who has issues with it... well they can let me know what their partner account names are and whatnot and Mike can remove them. He's indicated that he's not going to be flexible at all with enforcement, and will delete anyone who even pushes the line. It's his many years of hard work that are going into the tgp, and it should be his first priority to protect both himself and his investment. Glad to hear that you're supporting him too... he's actually been pretty surprised at how many people have detrimental things to say about the entire situation, when in reality he's really protecting his submitters as well as himself... he's preserving the traffic stream.

LadyMischief, I'm guessing you explored the other option, which would be to have the submitters submit the url to an 88x88 thumb which is hosted on their own server. In that case you could still use hardcore thumbs and also avoid the 2257 issue since nothing would be hosted on your server.

Obviously this would pose a concern if you accepted galleries from non partner status submitters, but I'm sure MT is big enough to have plenty of partner submitters and could just stop accepting galleries from everyone else.

The Hammer, can you please show me the part of 2257 that says "and google is exempt"? I missed that part of the law.

Alex

I guess the part you missed is the part where it says the law pertains to the "publication" of sexually explicit material. Google does not publish anything, they just link to images and sites.

That's the exact reason that a thumb preview TGP like MadThumbs could get away with avoiding complying with the law if they chose to only link to thumbs that were hosted on the submitters server rather than uploading the thumbs to their own server and hosting the images themselves.

Umm, Hammer...

http://images.google.com/images?q=anal%20s...off&sa=N&tab=wi

All the thumbs are on google's servers.

Alex

Pretty much... But honestly we do avoid much more BS by not hotlinking the thumbs.. Quality control is a little easier too, how hard would it be for someone to change the thumb if they hosted it? Nobody wants to have to police things further than they already have to.

I guess the part you missed is the part where it says the law pertains to the "publication" of sexually explicit material. Google does not publish anything, they just link to images and sites.

That's the exact reason that a thumb preview TGP like MadThumbs could get away with avoiding complying with the law if they chose to only link to thumbs that were hosted on the submitters server rather than uploading the thumbs to their own server and hosting the images themselves. [/b][/quote]
I think the laws too are vague enough that it's easier to just go the full gammut and not have interpretation come back to bite anyone in the ass.

Okay, my mistake. Now if you could just find some cp on Google we could get them busted and take the heat off of all of us. :awinky:

Hammer, while i will not post the results here, it was not hard to find underage nudes and other sorts of stuff on google. It was also interesting to see who is marketing porn by naming their pictures things like "underage porn" and "preteen girls"...

sick bastards.

Alex

Im eating pizza and watching...pass me the popcorn.

What it would come down to in a court case would be that Google is a directory that uses spiders to catalog every page on the net, as well as images and since they neither produced the content, nor knowingly posted it in an attempt to gain financially, they would not be considered secondary producers.

What we all need to remember is that the proposed changes to 2257 were penned by John Asscraft and his witch hunt gang and have nothing to do with protecting children, but everything to do with eliminating porn on the internet, and they are not just out to eliminate the extreme stuff, but all of it.

Google a honeypot for the NSA/FBI etc.? :unsure: