Keep Pillaging Pirates Away From Your Booty! It's Feature Friday!

Ahoy, Matey!
September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so get ready to have some fun! We've given your fans the chance to buy funny pirate-themed gifts for you!
 
Protect Your Booty!
Give pirates the old heave-ho by watermarking your content! Scurvy thieves don't stand a chance when you protect your content using MC's built-in watermarking feature. 
Check this awesome feature out here: https://modelcentro.com/watermarking
 
Don't Get Hornswaggled!
To help you batten down the hatches, we created the 2-Step Verification feature! Keep plundering pirates away from your account by enabling it today here https://modelcentro.com/security

Comments

  • edited September 2018
    Does ModelCentro offer any kind of DMCA services?

    FYI: If you are submitting DMCA requests, contact information is required. Never use your real name, and one of the reasons why it's best to choose a porn name that looks like a real name (opposed to something more username-ish). It's something that could pass as a real name. Also why it's nice if you can use a PO box that's outside of your region. Pirates have used personal information from DMCA takedown notices to dox models in the past, and/or blackmail them. Also, the Lumen Database (their intents are pure) can also dox you through their recording of DMCA takedown requests.

    I'm sure by now we all know that a lot of pirate sites are hosted in countries that don't honor Western intellectual property laws. There is the MADRID Protocol, but trademarking through that gets expensive! Therefore, for a lot of pirate sites, DMCA is fairly useless.

    All the major search engines are located in the USA, so they all must comply with USA IP laws. Getting content removed from search engines is insanely simple. I can tell you from personal experience that Google "shoots first and asks questions later". I've been included in mass DMCA takedown requests sent to them from malicious affiliates trying to remove all competitors from the SERPs. Bringing this issue up to decision-makers with a big-box camming site (As it was one of their affiliates and I felt they needed to know, especially since they claimed they were a rep from their company) I was informed that it's been an ongoing issue and they were well aware that this kind of stuff happens. So, yep. Google honors all DMCA notices and puts the burden of appeal on the webmasters themselves.

    Unfortunately, money and traffic talks and there's few traffic companies and affiliate networks who will actually boot non-compliant webmasters, even though they all claim they take intellectual property laws and piracy seriously. Bull-fucking-shit. There are some factors in play trying to change this and the tides are starting to shift. Not going to elaborate on it, but just know some good people are back-channeling and trying to apply pressure to the bad actors enabling this shit.

    Hopefully someday soon, we'll live in a Utopia where you can start hollering at the programs the pirate sites are using for monetization and compromise their income. Pirates aren't doing this as a hobby. This is a very profitable racket, and one that organized criminal syndicates are very much involved in.

    If you see a pirate site that uses a company name in their domain name (for example and completely fictitious a "rippedmodelcentrovids.com") report it to the company and if you shoot me an email at nathan@webcamstartup.com informing me of the same, I might have some major rapport with the company and might have a direct line of communication with the people this needs to be brought to their attention. They can take up a cyber-squatting case against the domain in question, which I believe goes to ICANN, but don't quote me on that. Anyways; long story short, the company with the cyber-squatting case can get awarded the entire domain, take down an entire pirate domain, and due to the major pirate players being offshore, it's usually the easiest way to take down an entire domain.

    Granted; they just get the SQL / files rocking on a new domain and they're back in business, *BUT* they lose all their search rankings and traffic going to the domain that was lost. The real question (and one I'm not expert on) is how is all their former traffic informed of the move to the new domain? That is one piece of the puzzle I haven't solved yet, and that's one place where I would love to apply pressure. Is it social media? If so; that can be compromised. Is it through forums? Chat applications? Not quite as easy. Sorry I can't speak more intelligently on that bit, but you know there's people communicating the shuffle of domains as older ones get compromised.

    If you want to take IP laws one step further, trademark your watermark. That way you have copyright and trademark working in your favor. Also remember that no pirate sites are 2257 compliant. But then again; this is a fairly mute point, as all these sites are in countries that don't honor Western intellectual property laws and sure as shit don't honor 2257 (FSC is getting that shit declared unconstitutional anyway).

    I just recently (like a week ago) had some very interesting dialogues with an affiliate network who was breaking down the role that the big dogs play in the grand scheme of things (We're talking Visa here) and how to report abuse to them. We're talking about actually flexing on the traffic companies and affiliate networks that pirates are using to monetize the projects. A traffic company or affiliate network is about to compromise their means of payment processing and that could be the ultimate flex move against the actual sources of monetization for piracy. I haven't done all the due dilligence on it yet, but this definitely has me interested.

    *SHAMELESS PLUG* it's definitely in need of an update, but we've got comprehensive resources on anti-piracy on our site. Also worth noting that once I do the due dilligence on how to escalate complaints to the big players in payment processing, it will be updated to include that info.

    FYI: XBIZ repeatedly hands ExoClick awards (Just did at the 1st annual Europa a few days ago), even though they're the go-to traffic network for not only pirates, but also other bad actors like revenge porn sites. If we want to truly solve this issue, we need to end the complacency within our industry and we definitely need to quit awarding these bad actors. Like I said before; there's some good dialogues going on in the background that are working to end this kind of bullshit, but it's not happening fast enough, and there's this weird "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" mindstate in our industry (at least the mainstream part of it, Camland don't mind getting vocal) that is really preventing it.

    On that note, I do need to give a shoutout to Nate Glass of Take Down Piracy for being one of the few people willing to call bad actors out on this shit. Definitely follow him on Twitter, as he's vocal and could use some retweets.

    Piracy is the biggest issue facing this industry (even bigger than government in my opinion) and we all have a role to play in it's demise. Even if it feels like an endless game of Whack-A-Mole.

    And in closing: I know how frustrating this all can be. Believe me; I've gotten emails from performers ready to put on the Guy Fawkes mask and have quite literally asked me what I know about DDoS and SQL injection. It's to the point where people are willing to break the law to take down these criminal sites. Just know that there are arrows in the quiver that you can use to fight these foreign pirate sites, and that there is players working to shift the entire adult industry landscape to be more proactive. The best thing you can do to fight this is to get vocal to the parties that are enabling the pirates to make money. The complacency needs to stop and with the shift from mainstream producer/studio to indie, Camland has a powerful enough voice to shift the entire industry in that direction.
  • And I get that Centro isn't in a position where it's in their best interests to start calling out bad players like traffic companies or the "Adult PR Mafia" that keeps syndicating the press releases of bad actors like ExoClick. That's why we got people like myself and TakeDownPiracy fighting the good fight. 
  • Arr matei @WebcamStartup
     
    I was wondering when ill see one of your more extensive posts again.

    Love the 2-Step Verification! 
  • Updated the forum settings so I'll start getting notifications on new content. I'm just slammed beyond believe anymore. Piracy is a major issue though. Major. So yeah, definitely took the time.
  • Ahoy!

    Just wanted to update everyone on the DMCA questions. We are currently in the process of integration with one of the quality DMCA companies. 

    What does that mean?

    Stage 1: You will be able to submit URL to the stolen video or even a whole page/domain with stolen content

    Stage 2: Your content will be digitally fingerprinted for further automated tracking and take-downs.

    I'm planning to have Stage 1 fully in place by the end of the year, Stage 2 will take a little more time tho. So I can assure everyone that we are not ignoring nor forgot about all the DMCA complaints we got.


  • You're a rockstar, Paul! Definitely some great news. May I ask what agency Centro is partnering with?
  • @WebcamStartup

    Not sure if I should announce anything officially just yet :) But we will announce it ASAP.
  • Assuming if I keep tabs on the #FeatureFriday emails, I won't miss the news?
  • Hi @WebcamStartup! yes, #FeatureFriday mailers with tips and tricks are organized every Friday, so you won't miss this update :) 
  • edited October 2018
    Nice post WebcamStartup thanks for info - I've already seen a couple of my scenes pirated sadly and know this is a major issue for industry.  Good to hear Paul that your looking at integrating with a quality DMCA company! I've also noticed when googling my website address there seems be a pirate website listing logins / passwords to model centro sites which is not good at all! Not clicked on link as looks well dodgy from description but it is listed under google results - worrying!
  • Masterpassx.com and sexpasswords.co are two websites that appear in google results as listing passwords for model centro sites mine anyway - dont know if anything can be done to prevent these sites gaining passwords? As very worrying
  • Hello @Big Johnny !

    I’ve checked both sites and can assure you that there is nothing to worry about. All these generated passwords are not valid. So, only users who purchase a membership on your site have access to your premium content.
    Such tricks are used by affiliates for promotion as all links contain affiliates’ link codes.
  • So they are affiliate websites pretending give away passwords then? As long as they not giving away free passwords then thats fine as it would defeat the whole object of having an affiliate website if people could just join for free as sure you know! Thanks for checking and the heads up :-)
  • @Big Johnny,

    Yes, they are affiliates who use this trick to get more joins :) 

    There is no reason to worry!
  • Paul Mosk said:
    Ahoy!

    Just wanted to update everyone on the DMCA questions. We are currently in the process of integration with one of the quality DMCA companies. 


    Hi, Paul - are there any updates on this? I contacted ModelCentro support about a pirated video in December, and was advised to contact the offending website myself, or fill out the Google DMCA form with my personal info... The support person didn't mention any way MC would be able to help, so this kind of DMCA service sounds like a relief! 

  • Paul Mosk said:
    @WebcamStartup

    Not sure if I should announce anything officially just yet :) But we will announce it ASAP.
    Hi again, Paul. I'm going to assume that this partnership fell through due to the lack of updates posted about it. Are there any plans for ModelCentro to partner with a different DMCA service? 
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