I’ve been reading about some U.S. state laws coming on the books that will require adult sites (maybe all sites?) to include Terms of Service/Use and Privacy Statements to let visitors know how their information is collected and used. My blogs have not had this information so I thought I should look into adding it.
I naturally wanted to see what some of the larger gay blogs do and to my surprise most do not have them posted. In fact, GayDemon seems to be the only major gay porn blog with the two docs. Sites without include WayBig, QueerMeNow, QueerClick, TheSword… I could go on.
So if most of the heavy hitters in gay blogging don’t think including a TOS/Privacy statements is important, should I not be concerned about this either?
Re: Terms of Service & Privacy Statements: Not important?
I wouldn’t be concerned from a Legal standpoint, really legally you only need to display things about cookies which obviously is easiest to include in your Privacy Policy.
TOS > only really a problem if you are providing users the option to hold an account at your blog, because otherwise they can do anything like spamming ect and you cant go “oi that’s not allowed its in the TOS”, although TOS is a good place to “exclude liability” for certain things if you provide information accidently that’s not true, but saying that Its mainly untested how far TOS will save your ass in the long run anyway in this industry under those conditions.
WHAT I WOULD SAY IS IMPORTANT > Having TOS + Privacy are good signals for SEO and are widely debated google ranking factors, although I am sure they don’t carry the weight of other more important ones, having them gives you a little thumbs up in the SEO world.
Disclaimer : I spend too much time optimising SEO and researching it, so you might not worry about google signals as I know some here don’t but I always make sure I put TOS + Privacy on my blogs before I take them off our development server. But I also include a DMCA + 2257 pages on all (even though there is no user generated content) and I also tag my pages with RTA tags (even though I am sure its depreciated) so i’m a little bit of a stickler with certain things.
If you want a standard privacy text / TOS and are not planning on getting a lawyer to write it give me a PM and I can give you the one I use and you just need to amend to meet your needs
Re: Terms of Service & Privacy Statements: Not important?
if you have legal concerns, you should talk to an adult industry lawyer. the people on this board come from a variety of countries, all with different laws, so the advice you get may not apply to your country at all. some people will tell you things they believe are true, and sometimes it will be but sometimes it won’t.
Re: Terms of Service & Privacy Statements: Not important?
f you have legal concerns, you should talk to an adult industry lawyer.
I only posted this question as I and others here do all the time, just to get a feel for what other bloggers have already done or are doing. I don’t see the need to re-invent the wheel if professional adult bloggers (who have more money than me and can afford attorneys) have already looked into this and are willing to share what they do.
As I said, the laws I referred to are U.S. state laws so if for no other reason I also thought it would be helpful to mention these laws here in case people were not aware of them. I believe California and Utah are two states with these TOS/Privacy laws. If you run a blog that is available for viewing in these states you could be held responsible for complying.
Re: Terms of Service & Privacy Statements: Not important?
Not sure. I paid to have some written up (quite expensive) and it just gives me some peace of mind. I think cookie and privacy police is far more important than terms of service. Simply because new EU regulations could potentially expose you to some big fines if you have nothing. Its very unlikely anything would happen but if you at least have those two its something you could refer too.
Just copy a larger non porn site and change the text a bit. I would use mine because its probably not suitable to your own site. Cookies is trickier you need to figure out which ones are set and by what applications.