Reluctantly, silenced.
Posted at 23:09 on 28 May 2013 by Pandora Blake
Well, the censorship saga with payment processor CCBill and my female-gaze porn site Dreams of Spanking got much, much worse. I wrote last week about the ridiculous wording changes they required, including censoring discussions of consensual and ethical production on the blog. I did as I was told. Unfortunately, that was far from the end of it.
To explain why I CCBill sent me another email last Friday detailing an entirely new set of changes and deletions I needed to make, I have to explain a tedious technical thing. I have a client account with CCBill, of which the website www.dreamsofspanking.com is a subaccount. I can run as many websites as I want, each with its own subaccount. Every time you create a new subaccount, that site has to go through the approval process with the CCBill policy review team.
When I launched Dreams, www.dreamsofspanking.com was up and running as a pre-launch site containing a blog and other previews. Alongside that, prior to launch the main paysite existed at dev.dreamsofspanking.com while D and I were building it. We put all the content on the dev site, submitted that and got it approved; only then were we able to set up and test the credit card billing, which we needed to do before we could launch. So we launched, and went to change the subaccount URL to www.dreamsofspanking.com ... and found out we couldn't. If you want a new URL, you need to setup a new subaccount. I put it on my to do list to do at some point when I had time, and meanwhile just carried on accepting payments to dev.dreamsofspanking.com.
Anyway, when they did their review last week, they pointed this out as something that needed changing - which of course it did, I just had never got round to it. So I spent half a day setting up a new subaccount for www.dreamsofspanking.com (as if I wasn't already busy enough, dear lord), and submitted it for approval.
Which is when it all kicked off.
The whole story has been pretty well chronicled on Twitter, so I'm just going to link to this storify - read it if you want all the details. Short version: they said I needed to remove all the age play scenes, all the sword-fighting scenes, all scenes showing red/purple marks, and any use of the word "force". This amounted to a lot of content. Never mind that none of this was picked up on in their review last week, and their requirements are repeatedly arbitrary and inconsistent. Never mind that it means taking content offline that members have already paid for. It all needed to go.
After sitting on this over the weekend, thinking and constructing contingency plans, I took the advice of industry friends and called CCBill this evening to speak to a human. One of their policy advisors went through the listed offences one by one and she helped me work out how I could meet their requirements in the least destructive way. She was pleasant and helpful, and we worked out some places where I could limit the damage, but it became clear that I was still going to have to make a fuckton of changes, and delete at least three scenes in their entirety.
I am furious that after all my efforts to create a site that shows the enthusiastic consent and ethical production behind the porn I make as clearly, accessibly and transparently as possible, I am still being fucked over. This has nothing to do with the UK extreme porn legislation, and little to do with Visa's requirements - far more severe sites accept credit cards perfectly happily. This is about CCBill covering their asses, and fuck all my efforts to do things right; every blogpost, every comment from happy performers, every behind the scenes video, all for nothing. They have zero legal standing for refusing to process payments for content that is legal, but they have me and every other producer by the short hairs, and so they get away with it. If you're rich enough to work for free you can do what you want, but if you're a self-funded start-up relying on income from sales to keep producing, you are fucked, because you have to do what you're told or you can't get paid.
So that's how I've spent the last five hours. And I am exhausted. I have spent my evening changing wording, editing blog posts, deleting images, swapping out thumbnails, photoshopping blood drops out of photos and deleting scenes. Every deleted scene means a blog post (or two, or three) and a hosted affiliate gallery that needs taking down or editing as well; broken links and images that mean fixing. But as Ms Naughty said on my last post, when CCBill says jump, you ask how high.
I've backed up all the original content, much good though it will do me. And every change I've made has been a wrench. Dreams of Spanking is a heartfelt expression of my personal kink and sexuality and I am passionate about defending every word of it. These changes feel like compromising my values, selling out, giving up some part of myself. The whole process has left me feeling emotionally wrung out.
Anyway, I can't write all this on the Dreams of Spanking blog for obvious reasons, but so you know exactly what was so offensive, and as a panacea to my wounded self-expression, I'm going to record as much of the deleted content as I can. So here we go.
- Ludwig and Kaelah's severe caning scene "The Final Test". The majority of this caning was deemed too physically severe - despite the fact that the film was an exercise in representing positive, consensual severity, with a sensitive storyline focused on the empowerment of Kaelah's character, and two extended behind the scenes documentaries including interviews with Kaelah and showing the way the scene was filmed. I was given the option of hacking the film up to remove most of the cane strokes and deleting over half of the screengrabs, but I have no desire to mutilate a film into which Kaelah poured so much energy and creativity. It's been deleted from Dreams of Spanking in its entirety.
That's not the end of the story for this film, though. More details at the end of this post.
- The two scenes which included a sword fight or duel as part of the set-up for the spanking scene both needed similarly gutting. Any images or video sequences in which a sword was pointed directly at a model were forbidden. Even though in our comedic nautical romp 'The Pirates of the Jolly Kraken', the swords in question were rubber LARP swords.
I showed the policy advisor the full size photos and she said they were still realistic-looking enough to count. Really? Okay.
Likewise the wooden bokken in 'The Avenger's Return', and Amelia's fencing foil with its capped end. They both counted. It all had to go.
Both 'The Pirates of the Jolly Kraken' and 'The Avenger's Return' have been deleted.
- Little Ten. The original scene description was "Ten comes home from work cranky, but Pandora knows what she needs. She tells Ten to change into her little girl clothes, and gives her a long, firm bare bottom spanking until she's sore and sorry." This age play scene has been renamed, and all uses of the words "little girl" have been removed from the scene page and the corresponding blogpost.
- The Captain and the Tavern Wench. Four photos were picked out as showing excessively severe welts. Here they are:
They've been deleted from the scene page.
- The Undergardener's Birching. Birches have a tendency to break the skin, especially when applied from cold. A single drop of blood in an otherwise relatively moderate punishment was deemed too extreme. I offered to edit the droplet out of the offending images. In that case, they said, the photos would be acceptable - so that's what I did. Here are the unedited originals.
- All blogposts and affiliate FHGs related to the above scenes have been edited to match. Blogposts and FHGs connected to the deleted scenes have been removed entirely.
- All instances of the word "force" to describe someone being made to do something have been removed from the site. There were a LOT of these. I've mostly managed to change wording rather than deleting anything - for instance in this blogpost about The Tailor's Apprentice (part 2), "He forces Sebastian to bend over and endure an embarrassing bare bottom spanking" becomes "Sebastian is obliged to bend over".
That isn't an exhaustive list of everything on the site which might arguably meet their criteria for removal. But (with the exception of the word "force" which I could find with a site search) I've only addressed the instances which CCBill mentioned in their email. If they want to perform a more exhaustive search, they might well come up with other instances which they considered offensive. But I'm not going to pre-emptively self-censor myself; I'll just do what I'm told.
Anyway, about those deleted scenes. I've decided what I'm going to do. I'm going to create a new mini-site - I've already bought the domain - and publish them there. For free. So these requirements are handed down to CCBill from Visa; all other billing agents are the same? Fuck capitalism: I'll give it all away. Full length video downloads, image galleries, behind the scenes documentaries, associated writings, everything. Plus the comments, the blog posts, the performer bios, all the surrounding context that demonstrates the ethical production and enthusiastic content that went into the making of those scenes, because without that, it's not representative of what I'm doing.
Free range porn, released into the wild! It's an exhilarating, liberating prospect. Free economics: the last line of defence against the capitalist censors. If I'm not charging, there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
Edit 29/05/13: Since some people have asked how they can support me, here is a donate button. Putting together the free site is going to involve taking time away from paying work - any contributions will help a lot in getting these scenes back online as quickly as possible.
Edit 11/6/2013: Aaaaaaand Paypal froze my account for violation of their AUP. Fucksake. Thanks so much to people who donated, I managed to withdraw some in time but I can't access anything sent in the last week. I appreciate it though - so much. Edit 14/06/2013: The free site is now online, as promised, and includes a new donate button hosted by Clips4Sale. More details here.
Comments
Barclays PingIt integration, perhaps? Not sure what their merchant terms are but it's worth considering for UK subscribers - it's not a Barclays-only service, anyone with a UK bank account can use it, and it's extremely popular in lieu of card payments at the LFF and LAM.
What a big pile of bollocks.
The good thing about having a custom CMS written by my boyfriend is that it's very flexible and I can do things like delete scenes from the site while still saving a copy of them on the server. The bad thing is that if I want to try out a new payment option, I have to pay him for his time writing the scripts to integrate the site with its API. He's a senior developer and his time isn't cheap. I'd have to be damn sure that a payment processor was appropriate for my needs and wasn't going to throw up the same problems all over again before spending upwards of a grand on integration.
Hooray for the free range porn, and for going "fuck capitalism!". You are being mightily awesome about it all.
Much love,
The Fool
Pandora, my wife and I are beyond furious over this. You have one of the classiest sites that I have ever seen. Both of us feel that this has to be some kind of attack leveled against you for being so damn good!
We applaud your solution to the problem, but you deserve some form of compensation for your art. You and your friends deserve that and far more.
If anyone wants to support me at this time, buying a membership to Dreams of Spanking is still the best way to do it - they start at £10 and there are still over 100 spanking scenes available to download. Alternate payment options are available for those who don't wish to use CCBill, and every little bit really does help.
Permanent marking of the skin.
Blood marking, or evidence that the skin had been broken, every time a tattoo was given.
Consensual activity by adults ove 18.
As opposed to a CP based website which covers:-
Non-permanent marking to the skin
Extremely rare instances where the skin has been broken
Consensual activity (even in 'non-consensual' play) by adults over 18
A completely bonkers and over the top reaction from CBill in my view. However we will all continue to support your work Pandora, in any way that we can.
Oh and don't forget to remove that reference to 'cupcakes' from the last Dreams video - all sorts of possible dodgy connotations there.
You have my sympathy and also admiration for deciding to go the free content route. I'll continue to support your paysite and the mind-meltingly hot porn you produce.
You may be interested to learn that the free site is now online - I hope you enjoy it.
Have you considered Zombaio? I have several links through them, and they provide excellent affiliate service (as I have also gotten from ccBill as an affiliate) so I assume Zombaio also serves producers in a quality manner.
Mitch
I have to admit that a part of me is flattered, though. I, personified Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, have done something that someone deems worth censoring! In a strange way that's pretty cool. Especially taking into account that neither Ludwig's film for Mood nor the one for Lupus was censored. Instead our clip for the "notorious" producer Pandora Blake and her site Dreams of Spanking was...
On a serious note, I really hope that you will find a good way of dealing with these problems in the future. And maybe the free clips will bring you new customers as well!
I'm excited about the free site. It's a much more appealing option to me than adulterating my content. And it means more people will get to see your fantastic film, too!
Corporations can not by definition censor. And no one here is preventing you from publishing your material.
The way to battle corporate prudishness is not, in my opinion, by giving material away. Your only weapon against corporate blocking of your ability to monetize your material is to take your business elsewhere. (But, stay away from BitCoin, it's a ponzi scheme.)
I have been saying for years that erotica writers/porn producers need to band together and boycott the organizations that employ these kinds of tactics but still make thousands of dollars off our labor. I refuse to use PayPal for just this reason but editor after editor after author after author continues to use that system to exchange funds for explicit material. PayPal has no reason to change it's tune if there's no financial penalty. Ditto CCBill.
There are only two ways to bring about corporate change: 1) legislatively, which is almost impossible given that legislators throughout the world are owned by corporations; and 2) financially. Boycotts are effective, but only if participation is high.
If you and your colleagues move your business elsewhere and support only corporations that have reasonable terms of service, CCBill, PayPal, and others will change their tune.
We had to strip the site of all images and film containing... wait for it... Fake Blood!!!
'kidnapping' was also a rude word
and person to person watersports too.
This is definitely coming from the billing companies, I had it explained to me a few months ago when I was having another sub account approved.
This time it just happened to collide with the introduction of Mastercard's new $500 charge for content deemed high-risk.
Luckily for us it came at a time where Maria is about to re-export all the videos as mp4 as she will be able to make the edits to her films at the same time.
Fake blood! for crying out loud.
It's all very frustrating.
best,
Rachel
On the issue of alternative billing providers: have you considered i-net? Either for your whole site or for your 'censored material' site?
http://www.inet-cash.com/
They happily provide billing for cruelamazons which is in a whole different galaxy to the material you have had censored.
My experience running sites was that cc-bill is the most trusted by customers, particularly for US customers, so switching the whole site to a less well known billing provider could see some reduction in sign-ups. (but then again, so will having your content censored)
All the best - John
Giving it away is much simpler and more reliable, really. And as someone with a long background in the open source community, I'm interested in the "free economics" experiment, to find out whether people are willing to make donations to support a free porn site. If so, giving things away might be the most practical porn model for the future. Exciting times!
Having read your difficulties with CCbill it comes as no surprise to me. Everyone is crapping themselves over censorship. We are heading for a Victorian world where censorship is going to be king. David Cameron was talking only the other day that ISPs are going to have an automatic opt out clause and you will have to accept that you want to look at any type of porn. One or two people watching hardcore porn involving extreme violence against women act out their fantasies in real life and kill an innocent person and that is justification on clamping down on any form of pornographic image no matter how consensual.
Your site shows images that unfortunately no matter how consensual are going to run into difficulties as time goes on. Blogger have issued a notice about adult sites that link in someway to paid porn sites are going to be taken down. This means that for some people years of hard work down the drain. It is another form of control. What is being targeted by the extreme right is to take down all porn sites and anything that has to do with violence against women. You and I know that your site is consensual and that can be proved through testimony but if sites are running into trouble for using fake blood and in your case fake swords, what next?
I have always supported you and admired your work and how you push yourself in your films and stills, but not everyone sees this as positive towards women, silly billies that they are. What goes on behind locked doors is a different thing, but once you let those thoughts and ideas out into the open you run into trouble. In this days and age there is (for some reason) a feeling that there needs to be more control. Governments have more control than ever and if we thought that we had free speech in this country, think again, you were fooling yourself.
Speak out about the government and reforms for change and your site will disappear over night. A film called "Spanking the Government" with a David Cameron look a like being caned, would have your site gone in a flash.
So CCbill are just trying to make sure that they are seen to be above the rules and regulations to a point where everything gets silly. They don't want to have a finger pointed at them to say that they were responsible for the death of anyone because a mad person had been looking at a site that they were affiliated to. But anyone looking at any site that confirms their warped way of looking at life, have sort out that site and are looking at it to fuel their needs and if it gets taken to the point that they then go on to harm or kill someone it is not the responsibility of the site to own up and say "yes we were directly responsible" but third parties involved with pay site are guarding their backs. Strange and difficult times we are living in aren't we?
Irrespective of the wording of the text that appears alongside your clips and photos, it is clear that all of the actors involved do so of their own free will; it is nonsensical to censor the actions of consenting adults where no one is harmed, and they are provided purely to other mature viewers.
I love the idea of the free site (The Avenger's Return is one of my favourite of your films), and I'll contribute when I can.
All the best
Tim
It once again confirms something I have believed for some time, i.e. that the censorship of corporations like Google or CCBill is more sweeping, and therefore more insidious and dangerous, than the censorship by (Western, democratic) governments. For all the protests against government censorship, I think it's overdue for people, in this day and age, to also start paying attention to and worrying about corporate censorship. The best way to fight it would be to boycot the corporations in question (that's the only argument they care about), but I can see how that might not be possible for a small startup website.
I can't say that I'm furious at the news, despite the fact that it also concerns the heartfelt work Kaelah and I poured into the "The Final Test" video. I'm afraid I am far too cynical, and have been for years, to still get even mildly angry at people behaving stupidly, unfairly or cowardly. It is to be expected. In a contest between ignorance and hysteria on the one hand and reason and nuanced argument on the other hand, ignorance and hysteria win 9 times out of 10. What else is new?
Actually, from a purely personal standpoint (and if I may for a moment selfishly ignore the trouble you went through), I find it kind of cool that Kaelah's and my video was deemed "too severe for CCBill". It warms the heart of my inner adolescent who enjoys being "evil".
(I guess I can write "adolescent" here. Of course, I would not dream of using such a vile and easily misinterpreted term on a site using CCBill.)
Anyway, releasing your film and the other two banned scenes into the wild has been a soothing balm to my soul. Giving stuff away is remarkably therapeutic. If only I could afford to do it all the time!
Don't let it burn you out. Maybe take a break and rethink things. I am really hoping there will come a day when we can mention Pandora Blake in an everyday casual conversation :)
*Hugs*
Andrew
I hope your close friends are giving you strength and confidence to keep on with this. And I hope that you have also inspired other porn entrepreneurs to produce porn more like yours.
*big hugs*
Andrew
I've found the process of building the free site remarkably therapeutic and empowering. Giving porn away feels great, especially when it holds such a positive message as the severe caning film and accompanying behind the scenes documentary starring Kaelah and Ludwig. All I really want is to share spanking porn with the world, and keep making more - charging for access is an unfortunate necessity if I want to do the latter!
Darker Dreams is now online, so do check it out, I'd love to hear your opinion.