I'm so tired of w*1dc@rd$!

[Al Gebra]

Is it really necessary to encrypt thread and magazine titles like M*yf*ir Magazine, Blüé Clímáx, ColClim, N*w C*nts, P*nthouse, P*nk, pl@yb0y, S*v*nt**n, S*I*L*W*A, S*x Org*es in Color, S*xy Girls... ? Just to mention a few. Or is it only bad habit? It makes searching VEF a real pain in the a...

And, of course, I'm talking only about stuff that is allowed on VEF!

Update
Nice one: $w@nk X-R@t£d @cti0n :p

[wgnrgeorg]

I a@$^$&&%%*u$#qgree!!!!!!!!!!!

[Al Gebra]

Blüé Clímáx
An insightful moderator renamed the thread to Blue Climax meanwhile. Thanks, hattertim.

[billybunter]

I a#re#!

[Leprechaun]

Aight! Let's do it more professional. ;)

http://img188.imagevenue.com/loc1030/th_08901_irish_hand_sign_alphabet_122_1030lo.jpg (http://img188.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=08901_irish_hand_sign_alphabet_122_1 030lo.jpg)

[Greenman]

Its actually pretty simple and important why you need wildcards. Big websites and companies like M*yf*ir etc use what they call spy bots-these are small clever programs that scour newsgroups, websites, forums and other things looking for instances of their usage and report back with their findings-its then that these companies can swing into litigation mode and threaten the forum, group, newsgroup etc with closure or court cases. By using wildcards you help to confound these bots so they find it harder to find any mentions-of course we(speaking as an ex Mod here) rely on members to read the rules first before posting anything-it is through their co-operation that forums survive-if not well you could kiss goodbye to a lot of material, and I do mean a lot. One forum was completely decimated of pictures, videos etc and had to undertake a much stricter policy of posting. The general rule is please if you are posting anything from any BIG website(a list can be found here somewhere) use stars or other characters to spell out a name. I hope that helps for future use, but remember this you might not like it but without it, this place would be decimated of virtually everything commerical(and by that I mean pics from Sc*re and Pl*yb*y etc) and I am sure you wouldn't want that.

[billybunter]

I understand what you are saying greenman. But some words don't need the '##. And anyone out to shut down a site won't worry about such things. They will use copyrighted material instead. But as you say caution is a good idea.

[Bovon]

I'm not here to diminish what Greenman has written previously - he has much experience of Moderating this Forum (And very well, in my personal opinion). However, (And there are professional photographers on this site who can probably clarify the situation much better than I can), the situation is as far as I can understand it, is that if a Photographer organises a photoshoot, pays the model, get the release forms signed etc, then the Copyright of those photos remain with the Photographer and NOT with whichever magazine publishes them. Therefore, all the major mags with the ****** etc in their names when appearing on this site can kiss our collective ar*ses, they can't claim infringement of their copyright. Now, if a magazine pays for the shoot - Pl*b*y for instance, and then the published pics appear on here (and OBVIOUSLY if a magazine logo is visible), well, you're on a hiding to nothing.
What I'm saying is, and this sort of paranoia appears much worse on other sites, is that let's put in into perspective. Most photographers today are probably Freelance, and would therefore hold the Copyright to their pics rather than a whole boatload of Mags.
Anyway, that's my 2-pennorth worth.

[Greenman]

I don't say they WILL do it, just it could happen and it has happened-anyone who remembers anothersite.co.uk forum will know what I am talking about-I think common sense should prevail-obviously not all sites need stars etc but I think the really big ones should and do need them just to be careful. I have read the comments made and agree with them-this is not scare tactics, just making others aware of what can happen.

[NathalieDW]

Aight! Let's do it more professional. ;)

http://img188.imagevenue.com/loc1030/th_08901_irish_hand_sign_alphabet_122_1030lo.jpg (http://img188.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=08901_irish_hand_sign_alphabet_122_1 030lo.jpg)



http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d72/NathalieDW/Fme.jpg

I had to say it :), pfffffff. (So who can translate my naughty words)

[hartwig]

uhm..... LOL :D

[louiscar]

I'm not here to diminish what Greenman has written previously - he has much experience of Moderating this Forum (And very well, in my personal opinion). However, (And there are professional photographers on this site who can probably clarify the situation much better than I can), the situation is as far as I can understand it, is that if a Photographer organises a photoshoot, pays the model, get the release forms signed etc, then the Copyright of those photos remain with the Photographer and NOT with whichever magazine publishes them. Therefore, all the major mags with the ****** etc in their names when appearing on this site can kiss our collective ar*ses, they can't claim infringement of their copyright. Now, if a magazine pays for the shoot - Pl*b*y for instance, and then the published pics appear on here (and OBVIOUSLY if a magazine logo is visible), well, you're on a hiding to nothing.
What I'm saying is, and this sort of paranoia appears much worse on other sites, is that let's put in into perspective. Most photographers today are probably Freelance, and would therefore hold the Copyright to their pics rather than a whole boatload of Mags.
Anyway, that's my 2-pennorth worth.

You are right. If you are commissioned to take photographs then they do not belong to you but the commssioner.

However, there are some companies that will persue you to the ends of the earth as we know for infringement of copyright and they not only know their rights but will exercise them to the fullest as some people have found out to their cost. These include Color Climax and Private who's legal department and internet searching are constantly at work and rabidly single minded about stopping any copyright material from being published.

I've always known that wild cards or deliberate misspellings are to thwart the search engines and it serves to protect sites like this. Pictures or videos may be treated differently that is why VEF allows CC pictures and not videos - presumably. And I'd bet that the ban on vids was as direct result of a 'cease and desiste' email or letter from the owners solicitors.

[mrfixit]

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d72/NathalieDW/Fme.jpg

I had to say it :), pfffffff. (So who can translate my naughty words)


I can :D :p :D

[Aubrey]

Better to be safe, really (though it does make searching difficult - though on the other hand I often come across stuff that I wasn't expecting).

[Alvin Lucifer]

I thought if the photographer was on the payroll of a publishing company and the publishing company gave him or her an assignment to shoot Model X, then the copyrights for the photos of Model X belong to the publishing company and not the photographer. Some publications might pay independent contractors for rights, but I assume all the major adult publications hire the photographer, not the photograph, which makes more busines sense. If I took the first ever photographs of Model X and Model X went on to be a major star, I could turn around and sell the First Ever Model X photo shoot to ALL the publishing companies for big bucks, but if PB or LFP owns exclusive rights, then THEY make the big bucks. For instance, if you sign a release form to send photos for consideration in H*stler's B#ever H*nt section, you sign away your rights to those photographs. Even if LFP doesn't publish the pics, they become permanent property of LFP to do with what the company pleases whenever it pleases them. Thus, if you sent your college girlfriend's nudies to Larry and he didn't publish them, just filed them away, then 10 years later your girlfriend wins American Idol, Larry can say, "Hey, look what I've got!"

I would definitely use ## or ** if you upload photos of Model X originally published in Magazine Z because you are reproducing copyrighted images. If you are just discussing Magazine Y or Magazine Z, then you're not reproducing any copyrighted material, so you've got no worries printing the full name. However, on a forum like this where members both discuss publications and upload material from publications, I'd still err on the side of caution and not print the full name.

That's my best guess. I'm not a lawyer.

[FlyStrat]

1n73r3571ng thr3ad 1nd33d!

[spoonfedmonkey]

While I'm in full agreement with those who recommend playing it safe, it would be helpful if we would generally stick to using the same wild-cards consistently throughout the forum so we can use the search engine better.

Obviously that would involve too much work. Still, it would be helpful.

[knobby109]

I don't think they help much against search engines.One reason is that search engines can look for wildcards too.But if entry to a forum is by a user/pass combination that should defeat a search engine.
What more usually happens is that an interested party stumbles on a forum like ours.From then on widcards are no use for material from the relevant site because someone will be checking the forum for it.

[the real McCoy]

I agree with this:

Big websites and companies like M*yf*ir etc use what they call spy bots-these are small clever programs that scour newsgroups, websites, forums and other things looking for instances of their usage and report back with their findings-its then that these companies can swing into litigation mode and threaten the forum, group, newsgroup etc with closure or court cases.

I don't agree with this part:
Its actually pretty simple and important why you need wildcards.
By using wildcards you help to confound these bots so they find it harder to find any mentions-of course we(speaking as an ex Mod here) rely on members to read the rules first before posting anything-it is through their co-operation that forums survive-if not well you could kiss goodbye to a lot of material, and I do mean a lot.

Writing regular expressions that match the wildcards are trivial and will not slow down detection that much.

The '*' is by now a well established sign meaning "Hey-look-over-here-we-are-posting-interesting-stuff-here-that-might-or-might-not-infringe-somebody's-copyright".

It's almost a sure sign something illicit is going on.

The use of the wildcard '*' makes it easier to find suspicious posts.

One could write just one regular expression rule that match the '*' itself, and then manually leaf through the result. Even if the result would be 100 threads or a thousand threads it would not take long for somebody to sort out the interesting ones.

To set up a forum on the Internet takes hours/days.
To remove a forum by using the legal system takes weeks/months or even years.

But it does happen.

Perhaps the model name should be put in an JPEG image? Or maybe we should start mentioning Mayfair and such in each post we make, and thus creating a lot of false positives.

Cheers,
/trm

[paddyo]

My 1.5 cent on copyright.

If you pay a photographer to do some shoot, these pictures belong to you as long as you have paid the photographer what was stated in the contract.
This seems obvious but it happens very frequently as it was the case recently between Galitsin and Hegre.

When the photographer is an employee, then the company owns all the rights (it is up to the photographer who is engaged to negociate a good contract).

Whew they deal with a freelance, companies will usually buy a licence (the rights for a limited period of time, territory and a limited use) because buyouts (non limited time and territory and usage) would be much too expansive.
Let's say they sign a contract for a 24-month exclusivity, commercial use, for Europe, for a specific type of magazine.
Meanwhile if the phographer wants to use the picture in an exhibition, anything that is free, outside Europe and not in magazines, he can do it.

Many known photographers have assistants that go through the Web looking for illegal use of their pictures or even imitations of their pictures and then they gladly sue.

This is true for fashion or mainstream photography.
With porn, specially vintage porn, I am pretty sure photographers were giving up all their rights (they did not have that many people to sell their pictures to). As it is the case for actors and actresses who don't receive anything for the zillions of compilations producers do with their scenes.

As far as CC and others, I would think that what belongs to them is their logo, not the pictures. That's why we can post the same pictures and sets if their logo in not on the pictures.

And if their logo is not on the pics it's because, after some years, in a last attempt to make money with these sets, they sold them (for cheap) to other distributors without the logo on it so these distributors can use them and re-use them and sell them to others...
That's usually what happened when we see some 15-year old sets popping up all over the net.

Mind you this is just speculation, I may be wrong on everything.

[deepsepia]

Just to be boring and pedantic . . . most of these "munged" spellings are more properly considered "Leet-speak" than "wildcards"

[Staffsyeoman]

Trouble is... a uniform encoding will unlock the rest if some party is searching for it (to remove it), and we all lose.

[henryf]

I can understand the reasoning behind the wildcards, but can somebody please explain this to me. What is the point in using a complete set of asterisks in a web address e.g. www.*******.co.uk, as sees to happen all too frequently. I can manage to fill in the gaps in something like M*f**r, but how the hell are you supposed to work out ******?

[rotobott]

That means it's a site you're not allowed to link to, the forum does it automatically, you should delete them if it happens in your post.

[henryf]

That means it's a site you're not allowed to link to, the forum does it automatically, you should delete them if it happens in your post.

Thanks for that. It has not happened to me, but I have found it in quite a number of other posts.

[Numerous One]

Aight! Let's do it more professional. ;)

http://img188.imagevenue.com/loc1030/th_08901_irish_hand_sign_alphabet_122_1030lo.jpg (http://img188.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=08901_irish_hand_sign_alphabet_122_1 030lo.jpg)

Leprechaun, help please. I did everything exactly as you said, but I could never make the "J" sign using just one hand. Am I supposed to break and twirl my thumb together with my radius bone, or there are some other ways to do it?

Now, since that happens to be the problem that concerns me solely, and maybe Leprechaun if he is in his "good mode", I'd get back on topic.

Wildcards or whatever name we choose for all those strange characters are not at all "bullet-proof" protection. Big companies invest their money in their investments and profit security. As we all know, they are on a constant lookout throughout major file hosting servers, checking uploaded material, comparing details, and I do mean details (not just file names - we've learned that much as not to post sensitive files/archives with their original file names, and other details that simply lure closer inspection - they check accurate file sizes, checksum, or hash sum... and all that digital absurdity). That's how sometimes even the files with encrypted names get deleted (and we are completely positive (like we can ever be certain about anything) we caused no emotional harm to some fellow forum member by the ways of our diligent work, and can exclude the report to "officials", as a final act of grumpiness of such fictional character, as the main reason for deletion).
If anyone (fictional, again) is uncertain about the status of our favourite forum, and is still harboring the illusion (more than welcome sometimes) that we do keep the low profile, try the google test. Type in the name of any given model, and VEF should be somewhere near the top. On the other hand, google is a monster of a company. We are all somehow indexed and filed inside google databases (I'm doing my best in avoiding excessive paranoia). Not every company possesses the resources (financial, intellectual...) this super-global phenomenon does. They can't check that infinite ocean of data, so they are attempting to use some form of filtered searches.

What choice do we have? It's better than nothing. A skilled burglar can break into any house, but that wouldn't stop anyone from locking the door, wouldn't it? (OK, not the best suited metaphor in this case, since the roles are pretty mixed up, and the situation fairly fuzzy, but the best I can come up with right now). Greenman touched a nerve by mentioning anothersite.co.uk forum. So many treasures lost for good literally over the night. And it's not only the posted material one might regret. Some forums have that great cosy, friendly atmosphere, and members tend to have fun, that is simply a pleasure to participate. Some others don't. I hardly got over the death of such a great community and members migration (along with their files :)) throughout harsh and unpredictable spaces of the www. Until I found VEF. By far the best, and I'm very serious now, and the most serious forum out there on the net, as much as I know (bearing in mind the efforts of all the members, especially the more distinguished ones, to maintain the quality and offer exotic and rare stuff that could be found nowhere else in the world - literally).

In conclusion, yes, wildcards, and any other means of precaution and protection, can sometimes be annoying (same goes for anonymizers, archive passwords, etc.). They can make searching a specific stuff an impossible task sometimes. From time to time I do not search for something specific, I visit a section, for an example, Vintage Erotica Talk. More often than not, I get surprised with precious things I find that way, as someone already noticed. And if I'm forced to choose between wildcards that can make searching my favourite forum a rather frustrating experience occasionally, or having no forum to look at, I'd always vote for w*1dc@rd$!
I apologize to all of you for the verbosity. And maybe all I said is just plain nonsense.
Cheers, NO.

[hartwig]

I used to use wildcards a lot to prevent bots from finding my posts... after all I joined the VEF because of a google search :D
And anybody else + bots google these days (and more than 2 days ago), right? And I wanted to keep my posts to humans.

But anyway you are right and I want to compensate. But somehow there doesn't seem to be a way to change the title of a post/thread once submitted. Or am I wrong?

Thanks!
hartwig

[Al Gebra]

But somehow there doesn't seem to be a way to change the title of a post/thread once submitted. Or am I wrong?
You can change post titles by using the http://vintage-erotica-forum.com/images/buttons/edit.gif button. Send me a PM with links to the thread titles you want to change, and I'll see what I can do. ;)

[deepsepia]

Trouble is... a uniform encoding will unlock the rest if some party is searching for it (to remove it), and we all lose.

So that raises an intestine cryptography proplem: is there a way to encode a filename or link, in such a way that you can find it, but someone who's using a robot can't?

You can think of various implementations of hashs that would address that issue, i haven't seen them used online for this purpose, though.

[Rapidshare does use hashs to uniquely identify infringing files -- that's why a re upload of an identical file is detected and the file immediately deleted]

[hartwig]

I used to use wildcards a lot to prevent bots from finding my posts... after all I joined the VEF because of a google search :D
And anybody else + bots google these days (and more than 2 days ago), right? And I wanted to keep my posts to humans.

But anyway you are right and I want to compensate. But somehow there doesn't seem to be a way to change the title of a post/thread once submitted. Or am I wrong?

Thanks!
hartwig

I fixed all of my own posts as far as i found them.
I realized that you could change the title only when going advanced in edit mode.

cheers,
hartwig