Adult business model evaluation

[friendlyfox]

What would be the legal implications of a website that pooled online amateur adult content found on the web and charged subscribers a fee to access that content. The content would be all of legal age, no obscene material. What sort of safeguards would have to be in place to ensure that people featured in the content can contact the site and request to be removed?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

What exactly are you doing? At this point when you say "pooled" it sounds like unauthorized sharing of copyrighted materials.

 

[friendlyfox]

Thank you for the reply. No commercial content would be hosted, i.e. no professional porn content. There are a lot of videos that can be found all over the net where amateurs film each other that's what we would host. It would evolve into a site where users can upload their own content. Would that fall under the same regulations as youtube?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Your model sounds more like the metacafe type than youtube but they are similar. Will you take down any content that seems to be not created by the uploaders? Youtube allows users to upload anything, their own creations and stuff they don't create.

 

[friendlyfox]

Well once we have enough videos we will charge a subscription based access to the web site so that is different from both meta cafe or youtube. We will first moderate all submissions in order to prevent illegal content such as child porn, beastiality, obscenity, commercial content. If we are contacted with a request to remove content we will comply. Are there any other legal implications we should be aware of with regards to this business model?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Yes... there are laws you will need to comply with for user generated content, especially if you're looking at charging money for a membership fee. You've got a challenge with regard to the potential for copyright infringement issues - what happens if a content owner contacts you claiming that you've got 10 videos up on your site which a user can only access after he pays you a membership fee? If you're going down this path I'd advise you to speak to a lawyer early in the game. With the site that I helped run it got/gets 4 billion annual page views and thus attracted attention. You'll be doing the same as well once you get to a reasonable size and, unless you've followed provisions of law to protect you, you'll encounter trouble. Best to get a lawyer and do it the right way. Best of luck.

 

[friendlyfox]

Thank you for your advice! We will contact a lawyer I think the internet is such a vast space there should be a way to make this a legally sound business. Thanks again