What is the future for vintage porn?

Webmaster Discussion
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#1

‘Vintage’ is right up there along with ‘homemade’ and ‘amateur’ when combined with ‘porn’ to form popular search terms. But while there are countless ‘homemade porn’ and ‘amateur porn’ pay sites, blogs and tube sites, ‘vintage porn’ is more difficult to cater for.

There’s an obvious reason, new porn can’t be produced that is genuinely vintage, but what about vintage images that weren’t porn but still include nudity?

We have just launched RealMilitary.com (full announcement post here) and a fair amount of the site is built up of, and will continue to update with, vintage military photos with German soldiers from WW2 in various states of undress in 100% real, grainy black and white images.

Is delving into history one way to breathe new life into a porn industry saturated with seen-one-seen-them-all photos and videos from the last ten years?

Last night I sent out a mailer, which included some of these vintage images, to our members and ex-members from our other sites. The high number of sales (though it has to said from a high quality sample of paying subscribers) fills me with some optimism that ‘vintage’ is an area worth considering.

Thoughts?

#2

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

Like a lot of other “reality” type sites, I can’t help but wonder where these images come from and who sells them. I have moral objections to making money off of images of deceased people who never gave their permission to have their likeness and their naked bodies spread around the world for guys to jerk off over.

No one can really think that these men ever gave permission for this, and people are making money off of it.

You can believe what you want to believe, but I personally find it abhorrent.

#3

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

What he said.

#4

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

Most of those pics are found on various yahoo groups and blogs…and have been seen before all over the web :slight_smile:

#5

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

So because they can be seen all over the web anyway, that’s okay?

So by that logic, you wont mind if I were to set up a site selling memberships to stolen StraightRentBoys videos, as long as I can show you where they are on five tube sites or file sharing sites?

So anything is free to be used and sold if it’s on enough sites already?

I think this is that same old excuse of “other people are sharing it, so it’s okay (as long as it’s not mine)” :wink:

#6

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

[QUOTE=conran;128622]So because they can be seen all over the web anyway, that’s okay?

So by that logic, you wont mind if I were to set up a site selling memberships to stolen StraightRentBoys videos, as long as I can show you where they are on five tube sites or file sharing sites?

So anything is free to be used and sold if it’s on enough sites already?

I think this is that same old excuse of “other people are sharing it, so it’s okay (as long as it’s not mine)” ;)[/QUOTE]

No…please don’t misunderstand…I actually agree with you…I’m just pointing out that the content came from yahoo groups and various blogs :slight_smile: I’m just a bit taken back that someone would actually take that footage and make a membership site…???

#7

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

Oh okay, in that case I’ll let you off :wink:

I have no doubt it’s just gathered content from out there on the net, because who would own the rights to sell that kind of content to a site (that’s a whole other issue).

This has actually made me pretty angry. To boast about selling pics of WW2 soldiers is just mind boggling to me. It makes me wonder what kind of Human brain thinks about this as a business and decides to go ahead with it.

#8

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

[QUOTE=conran;128624]Oh okay, in that case I’ll let you off :wink:

I have no doubt it’s just gathered content from out there on the net, because who would own the rights to sell that kind of content to a site (that’s a whole other issue).

This has actually made me pretty angry. To boast about selling pics of WW2 soldiers is just mind boggling to me. It makes me wonder what kind of Human brain thinks about this as a business and decides to go ahead with it.[/QUOTE]

I saw a documentary about people who sell nothing but old family photos at flea markets. There was one gay guy interviewed that has spent years collected old photos of cute guys. By your standards, the flea market vendor should not sell those photos (clothed or not) and the buyers shouldn’t ever re-sell them at a profit. By your standards, an artist should not be allowed to re-purpose those photos into a collage, a book or even show them in the documentary I was watching because none of them had permission to use them.

If an Army buddy takes a candid picture of his friend in the shower during WWII, does the photographer own the picture or does the subject? The subject probably never gave permission for the photographer to even print it, so the problem began 70 years ago.

The rule of thumb for photographers is if you are in a public place (i.e. outdoors) and visible to anyone on the street, a photographer has the right to take your picture. If are in a home, place of business, theater, restaurant, etc. you need permission. That’s why paparazzi hang outside looking for celebrities instead of inside.

As many of you know, I have a large collection of vintage porn. In the bad old days, porn producers were forced to be anonymous, so nothing had copyright notices or contact information in order to stay out of jail. It was commercially made intended to make a quick buck and move on. A lot of the films never got put on VHS, yet alone DVD, so I feel like I am curating lost artworks by putting it on websites and DVD.

#9

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

[QUOTE=LavenderLounge;128627]
As many of you know, I have a large collection of vintage porn. In the bad old days, porn producers were forced to be anonymous, so nothing had copyright notices or contact information in order to stay out of jail. It was commercially made intended to make a quick buck and move on. A lot of the films never got put on VHS, yet alone DVD, so I feel like I am curating lost artworks by putting it on websites and DVD.[/QUOTE]

Mark,

We discussed this in great length at one Phoenix Forum. What you are doing is vastly different than what Wayne is doing. You are actually going out and purchasing magazines and preserving a part of history in a digital format. You are doing the same with older reels as well. You also have a pretty big bill to pay to accomplish that, not counting the time that you spend. When we were talking at the Forum I was doing the math in the back of my head just on the conversion to a digital format alone. I applaud you for your efforts.

Compare this to what Wayne is doing. Every image on the front page of his tour is in a somewhat popular paysite that is just the good old fashion newsgroup photos broken down into categories. I don’t know if he actually went there and scraped the photos or he actually took time to find them in multiple places. This to me is not preservation but merely scraping content from the web to make a profit.

And let’s get real here. Since when did a self shot image of a guy with a camera phone become vintage?

In another thread it was mentioned that the cost of being an affiliate is very low in this business. All you need is a free blogger account and sponsor content and you are in business. It’s not that much more for paysites now, especially if you are a EU webmaster and can avoid the VISA fees. A $10 hosting account and scraped content and you are in business.

#10

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

@ LavenderLounge
Your situation and what you do is a bit different… seems to me, like you are not understanding what people have objections with.

@ RateTheseGuys Wayne
Just looking at those sites, it’s l ike browsing through Tumblr…

#11

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

[QUOTE=LavenderLounge;128627]
As many of you know, I have a large collection of vintage porn. In the bad old days, porn producers were forced to be anonymous, so nothing had copyright notices or contact information in order to stay out of jail. It was commercially made intended to make a quick buck and move on. A lot of the films never got put on VHS, yet alone DVD, so I feel like I am curating lost artworks by putting it on websites and DVD.[/QUOTE]

The key word here is “porn”.

The guys involved in that knew what they were doing, they expected their image to be used in this way. The guys of AMG were under no illusions about how their image would be enjoyed and appreciated.

Even an image of a military guy today with his cock out isn’t a big deal, because he at least understands that the image could be on the internet within hours. He has the knowledge to be able to make that decision for himself and not appear naked in front of people with cameras.

Naked guys from the 1940’s, who did not give their permission, and who had no idea how their image would be bought and sold by lazy webmasters who can’t be bothered to invest and develop a viable, moral business, had no option to disagree with it.

That’s the crux of it for me. If guys knew and willingly participated, then fine. But a lot of those guys didn’t. They couldn’t possibly have foreseen how their image would be used by others, or that other unscrupulous people would be making money from it.

#12

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

[QUOTE=conran;128662]

Naked guys from the 1940’s, who did not give their permission, and who had no idea how their image would be bought and sold by lazy webmasters who can’t be bothered to invest and develop a viable, moral business, had no option to disagree with it.

That’s the crux of it for me. If guys knew and willingly participated, then fine. But a lot of those guys didn’t. They couldn’t possibly have foreseen how their image would be used by others, or that other unscrupulous people would be making money from it.[/QUOTE]

Preservation of history to me is very important. From a legal perspective copyrights have most likely expired on those particular images, even if they existed in the first place. That is part of history. The questions to me is… Is this something that I would ever want to personally preserve. The answer to that is no. Or at least not in a porn setting. Sure. There are images of group physicals where all the guys are naked. If one wants to preserve that for history’s sake then do it the right way; give some editorial value with it. It’s obvious that these guys expected privacy in these images, but history preservation is still very important imho. But like you, I don’t feel that slapping these images on a porn site with self shot images of guys with camera phones is the way to go.

But the bottom line is this - we are going back to the old AVS days. Grab something from newsgroups, or possibly in this case one particular site, and call it a paysite. It’s sad…

#13

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

I dont see anything wrong with archiving and publishing images like this if its done properly. I rather like pouring through boxes of anonymous old photographs at flea markets, I even have a small collection of curious ones that Ive bought. Sometimes you can glean some really interesting stories about the people in them and from a curio standpoint they are fun to collect. But these are sold as found objects, not images for consumption and reproduction. Its a bit different.

Taschen put out an amazing vintage erotica book of the Rottenberg collection of photographs, from the 1940’s going back to the 1860’s. Its a fascinating book. But this it was done with an editorial edge, and with a historian’s sensibility, not mixing any contemporary with the vintage, and certainly not presented as a pornographic work. Copyright notwithstanding, the subjects in the photos are all certainly deceased by now, but here is another twist: the essay in the book donesnt gloss over the fact that some of the Victorian era photos depict nonconsensual sex (back then some of the pornographers snuck people out of sanitariums when sex workers were scarce, and you can tell in some of their expressions that they have no idea what is going on). This fact brings up that some vintage material depicts people who by today’s standards would not be of age. Case in point, there are some old loops (one of them hardcore) out there of Joe Dellasandro performing in porn at 15 years of age. You have to be careful with these things as the industry was underground and completely unregulated. From a historical perspective it falls in the cannon of queer history, by a porn standard, its unattributed undocumented content whose legitimacy can not be determined.

In the past year, Ive seen a disturbing trend of people using stolen amateur content to fill members’ areas on pay sites, as well as people watermarking stolen content to virally promote sites. Communities will always share videos that they didnt make, and talking from personal experience, its a pain in the ass to police, but running a service is way different than being a producer.That said: actively exploiting people …er I mean DMCA, and 2257 loopholes to put this content behind a pay-wall, I think is pretty morally reprehensible.

#14

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

[QUOTE=RateTheseGuys Wayne;128615]‘Vintage’ is right up there along with ‘homemade’ and ‘amateur’ when combined with ‘porn’ to form popular search terms. But while there are countless ‘homemade porn’ and ‘amateur porn’ pay sites, blogs and tube sites, ‘vintage porn’ is more difficult to cater for.

There’s an obvious reason, new porn can’t be produced that is genuinely vintage, but what about vintage images that weren’t porn but still include nudity?

Thoughts?[/QUOTE]

To me this seems predatory and uncreative. You can also go to Greece, find and bring home a bunch of “vintage urns” - place them in your museum and charge admission. Is there a future in that?

Like LavenderLoungeMark, I’m confused by what you keep calling vintage. In fact, you yourself add to this confusion by putting the word in quotation marks (“vintage”). Are you quoting someone who is saying this word?

Now there is certainly significant opportunity in selling old things. I sell Catalina 80s gay porn all day on my website. I make money, and the owners of the work - e.g. Chi Chi LaRue - makes money. Nothing is misrepresented.

There’s a market in anything as long as the owner’s rights are protected and the products are not misrepresented. If you can legally copy World War II German military photographs and put them on your website, anyone can. Thus, there will at some point be an oversupply of this and you’ll not be able to sell it at a profit.

Simon brings up a good example of how someone had taken old images - the Taschen book of old erotica - and they’ve curated it in some way to make it interesting, thus giving it value. Anyone can piecemeal trade those same old photographs. But there’s a market for someone to take time and thought into publishing it together with interesting information.

So on the question of what is the future for vintage porn, I’d say that it depends – are you producing a creative work by curating public domain images and giving them a value? Or are you misrepresenting your products? I’d be careful labeling everything “real”.

Steve

#15

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

I don’t have an issue with that either. In fact I feel it is very important that all aspects of history be preserved. But the key point there is “done properly”.

Every image that is on the tour of Wayne’s new site has already been archived at allcandid.net. How many times do we need to archive this content. Here -

Photo from allcandid.net

Photo from Wayne’s tour -

If someone is going to archive something for history’s sake I feel they should do more work than removing watermarks.

Every single image on that tour I can find in allcandid.net.

This is what I have a problem with.

AllCandid0083.jpg

rm.jpg

#16

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

I’m not sure what the continued repetition of the same accusations are meant to achieve.

Yes, we have not produced any of the images on the tour page for the site. We are shooting new content for the site, but have launched with images (some which are very old, some which aren’t) that we have found on a variety of message boards, groups, and free collections, while we build up our own exclusive content, until we have enough to fill the site with just exclusive content. Our two biggest sites RateTheseGuys.com and TheHardOrder.com are clearly all 100% our own productions.

I full respect that some of you totally disagree with doing this, and I also respect your right to have your opinion and voice it.

Not really sure what else there is to say on it. It is what it is.

#17

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

[QUOTE=RateTheseGuys Wayne;128702]

Not really sure what else there is to say on it. It is what it is.[/QUOTE]

That pretty much sums it up. It’s sad that this industry has come to this point. There was a time not that long ago when someone launched a new site they either filmed content or at least paid for content if they chose not to film it. Now, its’ all about scraping… Damn shame some have to stoop that low that just to make a quick buck.

#18

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

^^ Agreed. Stop the scraping! Oh the humanity!

But, seriously, scraping AND having sites registered in Pennsylvania is likely a recipe for disaster.

#19

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

Seriously. Not only is content being scraped, but it is being given out to affiliates to use to promote the site. This really baffles me…

http://crownaffiliates.com/realmilitary.htm

#20

Re: What is the future for vintage porn?

Now that I saw the actual link to the site in question, I understand the concerns. I withdraw my support.

One of the first things I saw on that site was a section of naked guys at Burning Man. That was a red flag for me because they are very strict about privacy of participants. Their photo policy says, “Don’t be that guy” that takes pics of every naked person and distributes them.

http://www.burningman.com/press/photo_guide.html