I'm giggling at the thought of this set up the same way as the [censored] sites, just so you know.  XD 

I do know "Gaia", which is php based, has several sorts of bot-moniters.  If you don't know how Gaia works, they give you "virtual gold" for every page you go to.  This is rife for people to abuse, obviously.  So they have bots to catch the bots, as it were.   

I don't think we need a two tier system and I don't think we need a rating system.  I have textures up here that have been downloaded over 2,000 times (or at least looked at that often) I have had people tell me how good they are and how they appreciate them but they haven't rated them. I don't mind that because I do not normally rate things either. And I think a lot of people don't really want to rate things here or at other sites. force ratings and you may get a lot of ones and not much else

 What the site does need is a team of people who are knowledgeable enough to know when something is a copyright problem and a system to stop cheats.

If you only use the number of downloads how does that help with some of the items that are not for downloading. Maybe a daily limit per person on uploading might be an idea because then people might put more than one texture in a download.

 Taking things down if they haven't been downloaded for 90 days is not a good idea either - unless the site is short of space and no-one has said that is the problem. I know that quite often I will browse for some thing for a model that is really old and probably not very popular but just for one image I need it and again I am sure there are many like me.

But if a session id is provided ala php (done some php programming myself) all you have to do is enter the code once on the first download, then setup your bot, and viola - tons of bogus downloads.  Once the session id is provided it remains until it's scheduled to time out or as long as the bot stays online generating hits.

This is *not* an issue. Experienced programmers knows this problem and how to solve it. In this case: A user history identifies anbody downloading "to mutch". There are several solutions to decide if a downloader is a bot (some based on statistics).

As I sayed before:  Details should be discussed from people involved and equiped with enough know-how. Anything other is just killing time.

They need to ask themselves first of all what it is that they want with this site. Generally if you know where you're going, you also know wich road to take. Personally I'm happy allready with free file hosting, wich is also a form of payment but I guess some might disagree with that.

This is internet and it's very young. I know, people think it's been around forever but I also know there are boys&girls out here who have seen it born. Internet, as it is today, is as leak as a sieve. Esspecially with copyright issue's and I've had this discussion before with people. You can implement all you want but the only real enforcement you have to your disposal is to throw/ban them from your site in wich they will create a whole new identity and rejoin. The same goes for security. People need to be a little bit more realistic, this is cyberspace, a two-dimensional world in wich anybody can be anybody.

A firm and strict policy wouldn't be so wrong. Internet is a bit like the wild wild west of the 21th century and all the diffrent laws can not be enforced for the simple reason that you don't really know who is behind the keyboard. You assume you know. On my own Forum I check personally who I "throw" out and believe me, that's not be cruel. That's protecting myself and the ones who really want to be there. It's alot of work, that's why it's not a big Forum...

Jake, this is your baby, this your site. Not ours. It's nice that you think of it as a communtiy and trust me, I do want to believe that. But it the back of my head I will stay on guard what I put down onto the web. That's why my social security number is a huge no-no because then I'm open to identity-theft since everything in my country is connected with that number. Over here if you have someone's social security number, you have their entire identity. But even a communtiy has a leader and sometimes they have to be strict and you are fully in your right to operate this site the way you see fit. That is with or without revenue.

If it's with revenue, pay per download would be a good idea. Maybe you need to make the site a little smaller, a little less in what you want to offer. Do you want to focus only on 3D or do you want to include 2D aswell? Art, is that really what you want? I'm just asking some questions here, not suggesting that you throw everything away. It's like I said in the beginning. What exactly do you want this site to be? If you would have a shop....what kind of a shop would you have? Something chique and fancy specialized in one thing or more like a supermarket? Diffrent goals ask for diffrent approaches. If you want to specialize in only 3D content it's going to narrow it down alot and the smaller something is the easier it is to maintain control and oversight. If you want it all then you have to accept the fact that the masses will come in and they can't be controled that easily.

I also read "login to download" and I agree with that one. It's not fullproof but it's better then nothing. You also might want to get in some real specialists when it comes to security.

Greetz from Pommerlis.

I do know "Gaia", which is php based, has several sorts of bot-moniters.  If you don't know how Gaia works, they give you "virtual gold" for every page you go to.  This is rife for people to abuse, obviously.  So they have bots to catch the bots, as it were.

I'm talking about seriously driven, big sites (Hustler in US, "Beate Uhse" in Germany for example) in a multi-billion business. Only the small ones are using a standard script made by amateurs (no deep knowledge about specific problems).

This industry has spend a whole lot of money to develop strategies and software. 

Lol.. yes, there are some techniques that can be employed, by experienced programmers but then again there are always experienced programmers on the other side of the coin looking for holes in your system, which is why I generally don't recommend any solution that is entirely software based.

I said this earlier, an easy way to drive away cheaters and frauds is to require verifiable tax information. IE: EIN, SSN, or ITIN. If these are faked, it is a federal and international law violation and has prison time attached. Since this is a site that has been generating 'royalty payments' for people, they really should be collecting tax information anyways. This would establish the second tier member system that want to paid for their 'quality' items and would easily scare away the fakes. Then, also require members to log in before being allowed to download. Views on images and video clips would have to be dealt with in a different way.

If someone in another country really wants to be paid for work 'sold' (and let's not kid ourselves, you are being paid for it) in the USA they would be required to get the proper tax information anyways. Those people would just have to learn how to deal with it. This is a US based company and they need to protect themselves. The IRS can be a mean mother f**ker when they want to be.

Well, I suppose it would be possible to implement a revenue share per download system, but personally I think you'd be better off placing most of the burden for increased security on the Admin end (and those that volunteer) than you would be on the user end.

Take myself for example.. pretty much average joe blow internet guy.  I'm out bouncing around another board when I come across some freebies offered on another website.

First few I click all take me here to sharecg - a site I'd never heard of before and one that I had no knowledge of whatsoever.  So I get curious, start poking around and viola!  Feel like I hit the jackpot as far as 3d freebies are concerned.

Now.. lets back that up a bit and say that I get here to sharecg and it asks me to register before I download anything.  This is getting much more common out there and believe me, from a user perspective it's getting to be a huge pain in the keester.

Alright, sure, if I'm leaving messages on a message base or becoming part of the community I can see you asking me for some personal information, that's all well and good.  But hell I didn't come here to fill out a bunch of damn forms, I just wanted one freebie and now I feel irritated.  Another site that's wanting me to fill out paperwork and give out information I don't like giving out, and yes my email address is something I don't like giving out till I've had a chance to get to see the site and see if it's worth giving my email address too.

I'm went through several yahoo email addresses this last year, I use them to keep my actual email address safe.  I've had to close mulitple yahoo accounts because I do a lot on the web, and after giving those addresses out to only a handful of sites they get spammed to death.  I had one account that was averaging almost 10 megs worth of email a day, and all I wanted from the site in question was a simple tutorial.

Point being, if sharecg had asked me to login and register for that first download, I'm not entirely certain I would have done it.  Granted, looking back now that I know a bit about sharecg I would consider it a no brainer, I'd sign up in a heartbeat.  But the very first time I ended up at sharecg by following a download link, I had no idea what sharecg was or what it had to offer.  I was just a guy looking for a prop file for a particular scene and I didn't want to take the time to create it myself.

Granted, ultimately this is someone elses site and they must decide how best to protect it from scammers.  But this thread was started to ask for suggestions and that's just what I did, gave them what I considered to be the best solution to the problem. 

My solution isn't perfect, no solution is, but I pretty much am following the KISS line to get here.

You need something that puts the burden on the site admins and a group of volunteers rather than something that puts a burden on the site's visitors.  It is the visitors, after all, who generate the revenue.  The easier and more friendly your site is to navigate and use, the more visitors who will come and the more who will come back.

Throw in a ton of bot verification and download security steps and you'll lose a lot of interest, which also means you lose a lot of revenue.  So, I think the proper place to put the burden for increase security is on the admin side, not on the user side. 

Now, no automated approach on the admin side is going to stop the scammers.  Unless you place the burden on the users this isn't going to happen.  You'll need to have things like bot checks and or only registered users downloading to prevent scams if the security system is to be automated, which places the burden for the additional security on the users. 

If you want to place that burden on the admin side, your going to need people to police the site.  Rating systems are great but again you run into multiple problems relying on a rating system, most of which have already been listed, but bottom line on a rating system is that it can be manipulated by the unscrupulous.

So your back to square one, which is having people police the site.  This leaves you really with two options, either verify everthing that is uploaded (such as renderosity does now) or go to a multi-tiered system.

Verfying all uploads is tough - first theres the time commitment and then theres the judgement call made on each and every item.  But eventually no matter what such a system will bottleneck your uploads and again choke off your revenue. 

No matter what sharecg decides to do I for one will remain a part of the community.  But I think any system making it more difficult for people to download content is a bad direction to go in, IMHO.  As someone else mentioned, storage space on the internet is getting less and less expensive every day.

My choice of sharecg as a hosting site was based primarily on the fact that you didn't have to sign up for an account in order to download anything.  I didn't want people who were coming here from other sites directed by me to be hassled with filling out a lot of forms.  As always, just my 2 cents worth.

Lol.. yes, there are some techniques that can be employed, by experienced programmers but then again there are always experienced programmers on the other side of the coin looking for holes in your system, which is why I generally don't recommend any solution that is entirely software based.

Experienced programmers from the other side do not spend mutch time and effort to earn a handfull dollars. There are more interesting targets out there.  If there is more than a handfull dollars in this game, the siteowner has enough money to arm his system with better weapons - up to hire real people watching and inspecting the show. To shot the script kiddies is enough for the first step back to business.

A business site shouldn't look for the best solution at all, but for the best solution solving the actual problem. From a business point of view. To mutch is wasting money, to less is dangerous for the whole business.