- Mon Jun 11, 2012 2:27 pm
#180
I'll declare my hand up front since right now nobody here really knows who anyone else really is. My name is David. I'm not involved in the site. I'm not a regular poster. I'm not even a paying member. I'm just - like 99.99% of the others who visited the VoyeurWeb - another regular joe who clicked on that little "VoyeurWeb" link in my bookmarks once every day or so. It's been part of my web life for longer than I can remember. Just one of those things that became reflex. While everything else changed around it, the VoyeurWeb stood static as a beacon of comfort. Sure it has evolved, like many of us who started clicking that link as young singles and who now have a spouse and children of our own, but fundamentally it was always the same. The welcome page, the familiar links down the left hand side of the page, and the idea that it was all the creation of a man called Igor.
A few days ago that naive perception changed forever. Suddenly we were all asked is Igor the cowboy in the white hat or the evil villain in the black hat? We were challenged with questions we never even considered. Questions like who actually does own the site? Who owns the content? Who owns the server that the content runs on? More importantly for some who has been pocketing the money that they have been paying. Suddenly its not a cute little homespun site anymore. It's not the hobby of a chap named Igor, it's a business, a series of domain names, a clash of visions, a clash of mysterious figures we know little or nothing about, and a battle over the ownership of what we once thought was ours.
You see that is what it comes down to. We didn't think Igor owned the ship we thought he steered it. It looks like we were wrong. We didn't think of VoyeurWeb as a possession, or a series of linked possessions which were owned by companies and which had value as a commercial enterprise. We, rather naively, believed that VoyeurWeb was owned by its contributors, it's viewers. Rightly or wrongly we all felt it belonged to us.
So what now? Which side to join? Who is telling the truth? Who owns what and legally who really owns all those pictures that have been posted over the years? Are they all simply a business asset? Are two sides fighting for possession of images that were gifted to them by people who thought they were giving to a site they loved and owned, not merely a business who would profit from and fight over them. It can only get nastier and, if the assets fall across both sides, neither will be left with a viable business model in the short term. Can you imagine if Igor owns the servers but the company which now is VoyeurWeb owns the content on them? Neither can use what they have. If VC reposts the pictures it has then it is breaking the copyright given to VoyeurWeb, but how can VoyeurWeb set up and make money if the content is lost to them in a country where they cannot reclaim it? Content which could be deleted by one malicious click of a button and sent to a computer graveyard far beyond any sort of legal recovery. How could they charge for a pay section with no content to begin with? And how could they make the VoyeurWeb section free if they have no income from that paid content? Will we see the emergence of advertising all over the site? Will we see complex legal battles? And does anyone actually know where the money went? Think about it. Both sides are using freebie bulletin board software! One side is using gmail as its official email address - are these the acts of people who have access to all the money generated by the old websites? Surely whoever had that money would have got a website back by now. If you had that sort of resource couldn't you do better than a free bulletin board hobbled together in a few hours and a free email address from google? No - there has to be more to this that meets the eye. It's likely that both sides are struggling. If any of them had the financial muscle then they would have done a lot more legally by now, and more importantly they would have been able to pay programmers and coders to return the site to a vaguely usable condition. It's almost like both sides have no money to quickly establish a new site with workable features, or to legally prevent the other making false claims. After all some of the things claimed by both sides so far have been little short of ludicrous legally, not to mention most fail the "common sense" test. How could that happen to people who owned one of the internet's most visited and valuable domain names? Who actually has the money that the site must have raised over the years?
The sad truth is that the old VoyeurWeb is dead. It might be replaced here in name. It might be replaced at VC in content and Igor, but it'll never be what it was. It will now always be on the minds of those who post and contribute that they are merely transferring an asset they own to a company they know nothing about. No more friendly staff. No more cheery Igor. No more the homespun site we all helped create and we all in some small way "own". All that is left are two sets of people fighting over assets, and we are simply part of those assets.
Who owns the servers?
Who owns the content?
Who owns the domains?
None of it matters. Right now both sides are competing for the most valuable asset of all.
Who owns YOU and ME?
From now on that is all I will think of when I make my decision on where to go. Wherever we all end up, the VoyeurWeb that we loved has gone to Internet heaven.
R.I.P VoyeurWeb - I'll miss you old friend
A few days ago that naive perception changed forever. Suddenly we were all asked is Igor the cowboy in the white hat or the evil villain in the black hat? We were challenged with questions we never even considered. Questions like who actually does own the site? Who owns the content? Who owns the server that the content runs on? More importantly for some who has been pocketing the money that they have been paying. Suddenly its not a cute little homespun site anymore. It's not the hobby of a chap named Igor, it's a business, a series of domain names, a clash of visions, a clash of mysterious figures we know little or nothing about, and a battle over the ownership of what we once thought was ours.
You see that is what it comes down to. We didn't think Igor owned the ship we thought he steered it. It looks like we were wrong. We didn't think of VoyeurWeb as a possession, or a series of linked possessions which were owned by companies and which had value as a commercial enterprise. We, rather naively, believed that VoyeurWeb was owned by its contributors, it's viewers. Rightly or wrongly we all felt it belonged to us.
So what now? Which side to join? Who is telling the truth? Who owns what and legally who really owns all those pictures that have been posted over the years? Are they all simply a business asset? Are two sides fighting for possession of images that were gifted to them by people who thought they were giving to a site they loved and owned, not merely a business who would profit from and fight over them. It can only get nastier and, if the assets fall across both sides, neither will be left with a viable business model in the short term. Can you imagine if Igor owns the servers but the company which now is VoyeurWeb owns the content on them? Neither can use what they have. If VC reposts the pictures it has then it is breaking the copyright given to VoyeurWeb, but how can VoyeurWeb set up and make money if the content is lost to them in a country where they cannot reclaim it? Content which could be deleted by one malicious click of a button and sent to a computer graveyard far beyond any sort of legal recovery. How could they charge for a pay section with no content to begin with? And how could they make the VoyeurWeb section free if they have no income from that paid content? Will we see the emergence of advertising all over the site? Will we see complex legal battles? And does anyone actually know where the money went? Think about it. Both sides are using freebie bulletin board software! One side is using gmail as its official email address - are these the acts of people who have access to all the money generated by the old websites? Surely whoever had that money would have got a website back by now. If you had that sort of resource couldn't you do better than a free bulletin board hobbled together in a few hours and a free email address from google? No - there has to be more to this that meets the eye. It's likely that both sides are struggling. If any of them had the financial muscle then they would have done a lot more legally by now, and more importantly they would have been able to pay programmers and coders to return the site to a vaguely usable condition. It's almost like both sides have no money to quickly establish a new site with workable features, or to legally prevent the other making false claims. After all some of the things claimed by both sides so far have been little short of ludicrous legally, not to mention most fail the "common sense" test. How could that happen to people who owned one of the internet's most visited and valuable domain names? Who actually has the money that the site must have raised over the years?
The sad truth is that the old VoyeurWeb is dead. It might be replaced here in name. It might be replaced at VC in content and Igor, but it'll never be what it was. It will now always be on the minds of those who post and contribute that they are merely transferring an asset they own to a company they know nothing about. No more friendly staff. No more cheery Igor. No more the homespun site we all helped create and we all in some small way "own". All that is left are two sets of people fighting over assets, and we are simply part of those assets.
Who owns the servers?
Who owns the content?
Who owns the domains?
None of it matters. Right now both sides are competing for the most valuable asset of all.
Who owns YOU and ME?
From now on that is all I will think of when I make my decision on where to go. Wherever we all end up, the VoyeurWeb that we loved has gone to Internet heaven.
R.I.P VoyeurWeb - I'll miss you old friend