Skim bypass fee?

[BigJohn]

Originally posted by KCat
Selling copyrighted images is stealing. I don't see where I said that at all. As someone who shoots her own content, you can be assured that content theft is important to me.

Glad to hear that KCat, and sorry if I read more into your last statement than was there.

But charging to turn off a skim should be sending MORE traffic to your galleries, rather than sending them to trade partners. I don't see how this is any different than using affiliate content from within a members area or AVS.

The difference is that if you are an affiliate, you are a partner of sorts. You are offering YOUR member (which you attracted with YOUR content) a chance to look at something different. If your paysite or AVS ONLY contained gallery images from other people sites and you don't have permission, then you are charging for copyrighted images and that is what's illegal.

Once you allow someone to use your images on a site that charges to turn off skim you are opening the door for someone to set their skim to 85, 90 or even 100 percent, which virtually guarantees that NOBODY will see your gallery unless they pay. A little wording on the front end to entice purchases before they even get inside and poof... now YOUR content is being SOLD. Granted, your link might still remain on the gallery and you might get sales off of it, but now that you've allowed someone to sell access to your content the doors are wide open for abuse. How far is it from this, to someone deciding that it's okay to use your images they found in a newsgroup, afterall... they have your URL stamped on them so someone could visit your site and purchase?

And at the end of the day, if you didn't want your galleries listed on a site that had some kind of subscription fee, you wouldn't submit there. End of story.

It's true, I don't have to submit my galleries but that doesn't stop someone from using them.... submit to al4a and see how many different TGPs you end up on.