This post started like most of my posts do. I spotted an interesting image somewhere online, probably on a tumblr site, and saved it for a future post. I initially like the shot below for the two expressions, her focus on the book and his focus on her. He reminded me a little of a dog sitting patiently, staring at its owner. That sense of rapt attention and the hope that just maybe there’s a treat in store. It wasn’t until I came back to look at it later that I noticed she was treading on his cock. For some people that’s probably the focal point of the picture, but for me that was just a nice bonus.
However, when I came to post the picture I had bit of a shock. It’s clearly from the Young Goddess site, but as I went to create the attribution link I discovered the site no longer exists. It has been around for years, and has produced some interesting and enjoyable content. I’ve featured it in pasts post, for example here and here, but sadly it’s now gone. Instead, there’s just a message thanking its members and a statement about the evils of stealing content and reposting it on forum sites. As someone about to repost one of their images, that was an unpleasant and disturbing thing to read.
I always try and operated on the principle of ‘do no harm’. Ideally I drive traffic and value to content providers, but at a minimum I shouldn’t cost them anything. I don’t feel I’m in any kind of competition with content producers, as this really isn’t a blog designed to get people off. If that happens then great, but I envision the images I post as more of an amuse-bouche for the libido rather a full meal. Hopefully it inspires people to go and look at the sites of the original creators, rather than heading off to the torrent and file sharing sites. But I might just be fooling myself about that.
Tumblr sites, which I list and promote, operate in even more murky waters. They carry a huge amount of copyright material (often minus the attribution) and most, outside the curation and aggregation of the pictures, don’t add a huge amount of extra value. Arguably that whole tumblr ecosystem is in very direct competition with content producers. If someone wants to masturbate to a particular type of porn, odds are they’ll find a number of tumblr sites dedicated to whatever they’re lusting for. For mainly video producers (like kink.com) I suspect it doesn’t matter, but for professional artists like Sardax and Nanshakh, I do wonder what impact it has.
Unfortunately there are no easy answers here (although there are certainly some bad ones). In the meantime I’d encourage all my readers to support original content producers and purchase the porn they enjoy. Otherwise they may find that one day it just doesn’t exist anymore.
Hi Paltego:
That is a sad tale. Like you I am very careful to give credit where credit is due and post links to the image originators in the hopes of pushing more traffic to their sites. I also try not to overuse any one source. There is a fine line between free promotion and giving away the store. The tumblr sites are a very murky area. They are much like the file sharing sites that illegally pirate music and movies. They benefit the hungry Internet lurker in the short term but they are bad for the industry as a whole. Great picture. Always liked that one.
Hi hmp,
Yes, you’re one of the most scrupulous people about maintaining this kind of information. I almost quoted you as an example in this post :).
I wouldn’t go quite as far as saying tumblrs are the same as the file sharing sites. In those cases you got the entire thing. No need to ever pay for the original. The bit torrents sites of today are much like that. I think the fact tumblr is mostly images makes it not quite so terrible. Most content producers rely on video to make money and there aren’t many image only sites left. However, there are some (like Sardax) that I think must be impacted. And there are no doubt people who would have paid for content but are now content to just surf tumblrs for free, so that’s revenue lost as well. Definitely a very murky area.
In fact the whole thing is basically a big moral quagmire. I’m mostly at ease with my conscience, and I’ve only ever had positive feedback from content owners, but I still worry about what the right thing to do is.
-paltego
Properly used, Tumblrs are *supposed* to retain the link to the original source, so that reblogging is just a way for that one picture to get more exposure. The problems are from people who download a picture, then re-upload – breaking the chain.
If I use a Tumblr pic on my own WordPress blog, I link to the post, instead of downloading the pic, and then uploading it to WordPress. Just as I’ve found some of my own stories posted elsewhere on the internet (without credit, grrr!), I imagine that photographers must be frustrated by the people reposting photos without credit.
I find that tumblr works brilliantly in preserving links within its ecosystem, but it seems to suck at preserving stuff across boundaries. Or at least I’ve only seen a handful of cases in thousands of posts where people have maintained links. I’ve often seen runs of images on a tumblr from my blog (which is fine as I was only reposting them to start with), but they always lose the original source attribution (that I’ve normally provided).
I’m not sure what you mean by the linking across your wordpress and tumblr blogs. Looking at this for example:
http://vanillaedge.tumblr.com/post/6872823243/curveappeal-ashley-graham-for-elomi-36-inch
You have the image hosted separately on your wordpress blog (http://vanillaedge.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/asheley_graham.jpg) and then blogged separately on your tumblr (reblogged from curvyisthenewblack).
They don’t seem linked together, or am I missing something? Genuinely curious here if there’s a wordpress/tumblr linkage mechanism I’m missing.
Whut the…
Okay, I’m doing something wrong. It’s not automatic – I have to manually edit the posts to include the Tumblr link. It appears that *some* of my pictures link back to Tumblr, but some don’t.
Thanks for pointing that out – I don’t know what I did differently, but I’ll look into it.
Grrr.