Originally Posted by
Luna66
Hey, I'm someone who absolutely hates piracy and does everything they possibly can to avoid it and fight it. I absolutely agree with the people above that you cannot 100% guarantee that you'll avoid it, but you can minimise the risk of it, and you can make the best of it when it happens. I have been a pretty popular, regular cammer for 3+ years, making very good money, and I have never, ever had my cam feed pirated. My videos get pirated a lot (they're much harder to protect), but I have literally never found a pirated cam show of mine (and I search very, very frequently). So here are my tips:
In order to make the best of it if/when it happens:
Always watermark your cam feed. I just have my name in the bottom left of the screen. I've never run into any problems having this on my feed (most websites won't let you use a website or a Twitter handle as a watermark, but just your name is fine). And this means if/when you do get pirated, at least the people watching will know who you are and they can look you up. Like someone above said, pirates do sometimes cover up or crop out your watermark. But you should at least try. I use ManyCam, but I'm sure there's lots of different apps available to watermark your cam feed.
In order to minimise your risk:
Most pirates are pirating your content to make money. Some of them just do it for shits and giggles (I have no idea why), but most of them are doing it for money. There are multiple ways they do this, the most common one is by putting the videos on websites with lots of ads on them and collecting the ad revenue. Now, one of the most important aspects of running a business is to reduce costs. So they're looking to get the content for free, or as close to free as possible. So what do they pirate? Girls doing things in free chat. That's why token sites are so much more vulnerable, the entire concept of those sites is to do things in free chat. The next best thing is girls doing things for tips in free chat on PPM (pay-per-minute) sites like Streamate, or doing GOLD shows on Streamate (which generally cost $2-4 for 6-10 minutes). I have seen a lot of GOLD shows get pirated.
So if you are deadset on not getting pirated, don't work on token sites, don't do things for tips in free chat on PPM sites, and don't do very cheap shows like GOLD shows. I follow these rules and I've never been pirated. I don't work token sites, my main site is Streamate (I also work on a couple of other PPM sites and I do Skype work). I don't do anything explicit for tips in free chat on PPM sites. I'll flash my ass (in my panties), I'll say flirty things, I'll show people outfits/shoes (by holding them up, not by wearing them). I DON'T flash my boobs, my bare ass, my feet, try on outfits/shoes, dirty talk explicitly for prolonged periods of times, suck dildos etc. And I definitely don't do GOLD shows.
The only type of cam show you can get from me is a private one-on-one show (I don't do group shows for other, unrelated reasons), and they aren't cheap, I charge what I would call a medium-high rate. If a pirate sees that the only way to get content from you is to pay several dollars a minute, he isn't going to bother. Not when there's literally thousands of girls doing explicit things in free chat on MFC and Chaturbate, and thousands more girls doing $2-4 GOLD shows.
Now, this might impact your income, of course. Luckily for me, exclusive one-on-one shows have always been my biggest moneymaker, and I've never struggled financially due to not doing GOLD shows, or not flashing in free chat, or not working token sites. If your personality is much better suited to token sites, and you've always struggled doing exclusive one-on-one shows, then you're going to have to figure out if not getting pirated is more important to you than making as much money as you can. Luckily, my natural camming tendencies completely line up with what works for avoiding piracy, but obviously not everyone is fortunate enough to have the same experience! If that's the case for you, you'll just have to make a judgement call.
I want to be very clear, by the way, that this comment is NOT bashing people who do these things, nor is it saying they deserve to get pirated, no-one does. I'm just giving out tips that work for me.