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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.
This is a complex issue that I, personally, am still trying to internalise. What I have written is hypothetical and does not represent my firm-fixed-belief, but I hope that by writing my thoughts down it helps others to consider and reflect on the issues at hand. This isn’t just about the single issue of access without membership, it has forced me to think through the scripting in general.
The main issues that occurred to me:
Commercial Scripting
Privacy
Intellectual property
Commercial Scripting
Scripts are a market opportunity.
It sounds like this site basically has the monopoly on scripts, the majority of which do not make a profit by making scripts and are unaffiliated to any production studios. Thus far the production studios themselves have not seen the value in making scripts to any great degree.
A minority of members have exploited this market opportunity to make money, one would assume that if they are marketable their scripts are of a higher quality (and therefore worth paying for).
Increasing ease of access to the site should increase the profile of scripting generally, and one would hope that studios would eventually monetise this potential and availability will increase as the ecosystem evolves (more videos, more toys, more scripts). Those site members that should benefit the most are those that monetised their scripts.
I can imagine that there will be some reluctance from those who do not commercially produce scripts, with perceived inequality between those that make scripts for money benefitting from those that release them for free.
Conversely, I can see that those who produce free scripts have no investment in the wider sharing of them.
I can see the tension arise where there is feeling that commercial scripters are not releasing enough free scripts in comparison to “wild” scripters and yet reaping the rewards. This is ultimately jealousy – it shouldn’t be like that but my suspicious nature tells me that it would be.
I can also see the synergy between studios and this scripting community, the support of studios for what is essentially disruptive technology in its infancy.
It should be remembered that most of the software used to produce scripts is free.
There is much commercially supported higher level work that goes on to bring us to the point where scripting is even an option.
Ultimately though I think it is likely that paid scripting will move deeper into the commercial zone with the community benefit of experienced scripters posting for free being lost.
The question really becomes whether this would be a demotivating factor in people learning how to script. I know that I feel the need to contribute free scripts to justify downloading other’s free scripts – I’m not sure I would feel the same if the majority of quality scripts were price gated.
Would the site go this way eventually anyway? As more mechanisms arise where people can sell their scripts?
Second to that, as the market evolves it becomes a possibility that it is market forces that drive which videos are scripted, and simple naturel selection would mean a reduction in diversity of available (quality) scripts. This should not be under-rated; this site is a way for people with niche interests to share scripts (irrespective of which kink you happen to be into).
This leads nicely onto the second issue – privacy.
Privacy
Having to be a site member is a commitment in some form or fashion, it declares that you are becoming part of that community (no matter how ephemeral an online community is) and knowing that by becoming part of that community you are engaging with people of similar vulnerability, or at least hoping that there will be others of that community that share you interests. Increasing site access exposes your interest to the wider internet. This may mean nothing, or it may mean that your particular flavour of script withers under the weight of mainstream opinion (either though “judgementmentalism” or through naturel selection.
Your niche interest could either be shared more widely and bring in others, or it could expose something personnel. Either way it is a distinct decision point.
Intellectual Property
Lastly IP. The hardest part of any discussion about content on the internet.
Everybody wants to own or benefit from their contribution and it is difficult to do that with scripts.
It can be the case that videos are not from legitimate sources. I am not accusing anyone but this isn’t exactly an area that lends itself to regulation, although this community does a great job of self-regulation. To be fair, I’m not sure there would have been as much evolution of scripts without some video access that you didn’t have to pay for, however I for one do not wish the site to be smacked with the hammer of piracy and imagine others feel the same way. Forced membership offers a measure of protection from this.
Scripts are impossible to protect, in the same way videos have been. We really only have the goodwill of the members as a kind of “honour-system”. If we take a step towards mainstream access then I think that a bottom-up regulatory system becomes a possibility (I would be speculating on how far off this might be) – either that or scripts become more chaotic (there can be several different scripts of the same video, neither the user nor the author has anyway of knowing who’s is who’s is, or which one is any good). This is comparatively easy to regulate in a closed community but in essence increasing access is a step towards a larger population.
Lastly, moving back to commercial scripting and IP relating to script content; currently all scripts can currently be pulled from the site at the request of the creator and I suspect anyone who harbours ambitions of commercially scripting has thought about this in order to then sell those scripts.
Without some other method of protecting content this is the only way to preserve your invested value, as the potentially logarithmic expansion of copies from open downloads would ultimately mean that you loose the opportunity to move to a commercial platform (or at least loose the foundation of being able to promote yourself as a having “stock” to sell as you reset to owning zero content and are reliant henceforth only on what you produce in the future).
So I guess in summary the questions can be distilled into:
Are you happy to lose control of your content?
Are you happy to be exposed to the scrutiny of the wider internet?
Will scripting be maintained in the present form going once through (inevitable) change?
Is it inevitable that scripting goes through this change in order to thrive?
How much personal invested time are you willing lose in order to engender generalised gain?
Or I could be overthinking things. Writing this has taken time that could have been spent scripting…
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.
I have asked the marketing team to update the FAQ. Thanks for the input.
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.
Here are my current thoughts, and let’s continue the conversation
I assume this means everything is visible, but they need an account to DL or post?
edited my above answer
I think I’m okay with making files downloadable by people without an account as well
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.
can you expand on why you think downloads should require an account?
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.)
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.
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?
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.
I’d vouch for guest access
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.
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.
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.