Mandatory accounts

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65

That’s good, but the FAQ on thehandy.com is still pointing at RTS though.

Where can I find scripts for my Handy™?

There are available scripts via third party providers such as https://realtouchscripts.com/ and others. We are currently preparing a guide on handyfeeling.com where you can find new scripts and also a subreddit for the same purpose.

66

Thats something @handyAlexander should have a look at.

68

Note that I have no official affiliation with any paid sites or anything. I’m only losing money on this site lol.

My (short) opinion is that a free market of scripts is a positive thing. Creating scripts is skilled labor. If people want to be compensated for their labor, then more power to them. If people want to pay for scripts, then they should be allowed to. Having money involved is actually a very simple indicator of factors like demand, quality, and market size. Plus it sounds like scripters are open to taking requests and commissions, so I feel like this wouldn’t be super harmful to variety. Additionally, if scripters are compensated for their time, this encourages more people and time spent on scripting.

I don’t forsee more paid scripting killing off free scripting, if that were true it would have already happened imo.

For privacy, I would defer to community opinion. I don’t have a super strong opinion myself.

For IP, I believe that script creators should have full control over what they create. Unfortunately, like video, there’s very little way to stop bad actors from pirating your scripts. Unless someone invents DRM for scripts or something, I don’t know how this can be prevented. And even then, DRM gets cracked all the time.

69

Here is my take on this:

Commercial scripting is a good thing. I don’t think we should be worried about community members becoming paid scripters. If someone feels that money will help him script more we should all be happy about that - otherwise there wouldn’t probably be even an option to get scripts for some of the videos.

As to diversity - it might also become a problem from oversaturation. Let’s say someone is interseted in cock heroes, but then he finds out that amount of free scripts is so big that there is no reason to create a new ones. Same with VR scripts, 2D, hentai etc. Right now we have literally thousands of free scripts for various genres. It’s crazy to even think about it - it’s years of stroking.

Privacy is something that everyone should be concerned about no matter the type of site they are members of. RTS was running for years and everyone could see your username, your opinions. Let’s not forget that we are not the only perverts in the internet and there are more numerous communities focusing on porn related content that are open. Before the site goes public there should be a clear sign that your username and posts will become visible for wider audience so anyone who is concerned about what they share here will be able to prepare for it. Looking at the number of people eager to discuss opening the site we can assume that most just don’t care.

I don’t really think account creation is something that bonds you to the community. If someone just want to get scripts from the site account won’t make him commit to the cause. As you put it if anyone feels the need to contribute free scripts to justify downloading other’s free scripts then account is something neccessary. The accounts also have they own perks - ability to request scripts, to talk about scripting in general, to ask for help.

It never feels right if someone share your content without your permission, but giving that we are living in digital age piracy is something inevitable. It already happened a few times even though our community is not big and eventually will happen again. Learning from mistakes of RTS eroscripts actually have a decent amount of mods who are able to react for such behaviour. Of course it doesn’t protect from content shared outside of the site, but it at least make it harder to get to pirated content.

From what I saw people who become paid scripters and want to sell they past work once avaliable for free rework their scripts. I can see that some of my older content could get some more love, but honestly I would just start making fresh content that I would sell exclusively. It’s always good to have representative content to show quality of your work. No regrets here, but of course it’s only my opinion.

On the other side if you remove your free content and start selling it, after some time new community members who were not able to get those scripts for free earlier will have to pay for them anyway assuming they are decent enough to not get it from illegal source.

70

I have asked the marketing team to update the FAQ. Thanks for the input.

71

I’ve seen a couple points here and I think I should give my two cents.

When it comes to community engagement/privacy. I don’t think making an account will prevent lurkers or asshats trying to doxx someone. When I first joined, I used a disposable identity to get feel for the place. I found I liked it and wanted to contribute so I PMed @hugecat to change my username to what I usually use for my anonymous identity.

Im generally careful I don’t reveal any information about myself or relations to other pseudonyms I have. Privacy is really on the user, not the forum.

As well I don’t particularly mind lurkers. They don’t hurt anyone. I’m a parttime lurker. I think the way it’s open now is fine. But for copyright stuff it does make sense to gate that off from web crawlers like google.

72

Here are my current thoughts, and let’s continue the conversation

  • Make the entire site publicly visible
  • I think I’m okay with making files downloadable by people without an account as well
  • I may be able to prevent google from indexing some categories if needed?
  • set a specific date for when we will go public. If anyone wants to change their username, they can do so before then.
73

I assume this means everything is visible, but they need an account to DL or post?

74

edited my above answer
I think I’m okay with making files downloadable by people without an account as well

75

I think everything but download should be available. Or at least make it so webcrawlers can’t find copyrighted material. I never hosted discourse so not sure what the robots.txt would look like, or if it does some database stuff to protect that.

76

can you expand on why you think downloads should require an account?

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Doesn’t technically need to restrict downloads. Just make it difficult to webcrawl for content. Usually best way to do that is with blobbed video feeds, but it’s not hosted here so put it behind an access token seems like the best idea. (obviously as a side effect that means needing an account.)

78

If you read end user agreements from most studios you are not allowed to use their screenshots, banners etc. for videos. Take VRBangers for instance:

5.1 Ownership of Website. The Website and its entire contents, features, and functionality (including all information, software, text, displays, images, video, audio, and audiovisual combinations and the design, selection, and arrangement of it) are owned by the Company, its licensors, or other providers of the material and are protected by copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, and other intellectual property or proprietary rights laws.

So not all copyright holders might see through the fingers on the use of their images here in script release posts. A freely accessible download area might be subject to robots looking for copyright infringements. Ultimately I think that is something you as the site owner need to decide upon.

79

So that means I’d better get rid of all the gifs, thumbnails and video previous? Even though I never made a script from a professional studio, that could apply to any content creator, right?

80

From a legal point of view it’s in the content owners right to control how their images etc. are used. However, most IP (intellectual property) owners aren’t so strict. Some movie and game companies have shown that they hammer down on the tiniest intrusion on their IP if they don’t like the context.

All this is ordinary copyright even if you haven’t signed anything by creating an account. Most don’t care as long as their IP isn’t clearly misused. Trying to earn money using their IP might be such a case. However, most don’t have the resources to check themselves and 3rd party companies may use bots to crawl the web in search for IP owned by their clients. I just wanted our site owner to be aware of it since ultimately it will be DMCA take-down requests sent to the site if some IP owner do care. We know that e.g. Wankz has an account here and they haven’t complained yet so this might be an issue for most studios.

It’s mostly the script section that contain images that are owned by studios so that’s why it could be a reason to require an account to prevent bots from looking there. Some users also link to external sites like mega that could be an issue.

81

I’d vouch for guest access

82

I think for now just start with the same layout as you did earlier - so Scripts, Script Requests and #script-creator-portfolios requiring access + create represenative post in the General. Just so you can think about it without rush.

I’m really curious how other sites are dealing with posting images for porn videos. For example realysnc uses a lot of pictures and gifs for their stuff and they technically making money partially because previews encourage people to buy scripts. And the google doesn’t have the problem to find those links. Just to be clear these are not any accusations or anything, I’m just curious how this work in that case. Maybe someone can shed a light a little bit just to make you a little bit more confident.

83

I think I have control over what search engine crawlers can see. Anything on top of that I’m not sure about.

But the reason I’m in favor of having no restrictions is that if anyone wanted to scrape this site, creating an account is really not a difficult barrier to cross. If there are ‘bad actors’, they could easily do that today.

84

That’s your choice. It’s worth mentioning even with those settings, it’s up to the search engine to choose to follow those settings. robots.txt is more of an honor system than a technical limitation.
I agree about the bad actor thing. My concern is mostly about copyright bots trying to find material.

85

Doing another bump on this topic. Hoping to finalize a decision soon.

I’m between having the site totally open (possibly with some crawler restrictions) and restriction visibility to the Scripts and Script Requests categories unless logged in. I’m in favor of the former, but I’m open to doing the latter and seeing how that feels for a while.

Any thoughts?