VAN NUYS—I’ve been writing about the porn industry since 1999, and have seen a lot of shady practices, ranging from outright theft on a massive scale to billing fraud whose targets are both webmasters and consumers, but the most common infraction that I have encountered is simple lying. The lying in this industry is off the scale, and during my time has only gotten worse. For me, the most egregious kind of lying in a business context is when a company becomes completely opaque, obscuring anything that is going on inside and any deals that the company is making.
That is Manwin, which from the beginning of its existence has made it all but impossible for anyone
to cover the company. Time and again, they have prevaricated in their dealings with me and with AVN, and I presume others, and have never even tried to answer any of our queries with anything resembling a complete answer.
Now they appear to have been caught red-handed stealing content for one of their pay sites, which, I might add, is also in willful violation 18 USC 2257, just as they are will their tube site properties that claim Section 230 safe harbor.
The apparent evidence, and I say apparent because it isn’t quite definitive, of their theft is here, in a thread posted to gfy.com. In the thread, the poster, who had originally claimed that his content had been stolen, reported back that Manwin had pulled the pilfered images. Caught red-handed. The Manwin site’s 2257 page is here, minus the required information, Oops!
Nothing will come of this. The industry, if that is what we must call it, is wired to protect people like this. I know this for a fact. I have worked inside the system and have seen it first-hand. A thousand excuses will be made to explain away why it is not important to pay attention to the worst sort of business practices. Business is war.
Sadly, I can only write about this stuff here. Even minus any reflection on my years in the business, but were I to only write about the fact of Manwin being caught red-handed, I could never get away with publishing it on my current employer’s website. That makes me very sad, indeed, but it is also making me increasingly intolerant of my situation.
UPDATE
Manwin principle Fabian Thylmann posted up (#66) the following comment in the same thread a few hours ago, in response to the thread starter’s post (#65) complaining that the stolen content was still on the site: “Otaku, I agree, considering I doubt our designer knows what’s your content, and it bring the weekend, blocking the whole site is safer which is what we are (or should be) doing.”
I could just access the site, but it appears to be up and down.
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