I'm sure the shaving came first, but ever since the Internet took hold of popular culture, it seems like everyone is removing pubic hair. The adult Internet is chock full of shaven sites as well as hirsute sites. With shaving, you got your bare fans, landing-strip lovers and even your ball-shavers. If you're into hairy porn, you're a bear-lover. Whatever you want, whatever you're into, it's out there.

In the adult Internet, we have a sales system of affiliates and sponsors. Sponsors are usually medium-to-large companies who run paysites or sell adult entertainment products. Affiliates are -most times- individual webmasters who market/sell for the sponsor. An affiliate will sign up for the sponsor's program,. They are then given a referrer ID, which is often embedded in a little cookie-based script. The affiliate adds that script to banners and text links that lead to the sponsor's pay services.

Hopefully, the surfer will be so teased and tantalized by the advertising that they buy something from the sponsor. Because the affiliate was responsible for sending that sale to the sponsor, he/she is paid a pre-determined commission on the sale.

In a perfect cyberworld, an affiliate who follows the rules should be credited for each and every paying member they send to the sponsor through the referrer ID code. There are extenuating circumstances in which the average affiliate webmaster will lose a sale legitimately. Some surfers go to an affiliate-linked site, they bookmark the main site and come back later, after they've cleared their cookies. No cookie, no referrer ID. No sale for the webmaster. This stuff happens.

When a sponsor deliberately drops credited sales, in adult webmasterland, it's called shaving.

Our industry saw a big instance of sponsor shaving happen this week. A webmaster posted a screencap of the admin page of a fairly well-known sponsor on an adult wemaster forum. The admin page is where the person who runs the sponsor program maintains and manages their affiliate accounts. In this screen shot, the numbers showed that the sponsor was clearly shaving credited sales from affiliate accounts. If the image was real, these bastids had stolen around 15,000.00 from affiliates. Over four hundred replies and 16,000 views later, that company responded with only one lame reply .

This company is pretty much over as an adult sponsor. Though they'll probably continue to sell memberships to their paysites. Some believe that affiliates don't generate that much profit for the sponsor anyway.

While you live your lives, sip your coffee and check your email, adult webmasters are fighting for your rights. At this very time, there are bad people who want to restrict your access to the Internet. They claim to own the patents for the concept of streaming video and audio. Not the technology. Not the hardware or the software. The concept.

These nefarious patentees began their campaign by going after adult websites. They told potential stockholders we were "low-hanging fruit". They explained that our industry wasn't really an industry at all, but rather a disjointed collection of small companies, too small to afford a fight in the courts. As well, investors were told about how operators in our field were a constant source of income. After all, the adult web is one of the very few sectors on the net that is making a profit. This company of attorneys planned to collect license fees and set legal precedent by going after Internet pornographers.

Why not? We're just dirty smutmongers. What's so wrong with making us pay a license fee for legitimate patents?

First off, let me address the subject of their supposedly legitimate patents. What happened was, there was this technologist who actually created a technology, or at least part of a technology.

There was this guy who helped to develop the process of breaking up video/audio into little pieces so the whole would travel faster over a network. The video/audio would then be delivered to the viewer, bit by bit, so smoothly it would stream. This original guy was granted a patent for his idea. The thing was, this patent wasn't a complete technology. The patent only partially covered the process. So the guy sold his patent to Acacia Research Corporation.

Acacia took the original patent and then applied for a whole bunch of other patents to fill in the holes left by patent number one. When they were done, they ended up with a total of 22 patents, which -when added together- covered the entire notion of streaming video/audio over a network. Acacia didn't actually invent or develop anything. They may have Research in their company name but research isn't really what they do. What they really do is sue others for patent infringement.

In an admittedly clever move on Acacia's part, they decided to start their litigious crusade by attacking small entities first. They knew if they began by suing MSN, or AOL or Real Networks, they'd either be bought out lose in court against the expensive legal teams of these monoliths. Acacia looked around for small timers who were making money from the web. They went after folks who would find it easier to settle and pay the license fees. They looked for operators with a lowly social reputation. They hunted down adult webmasters.

One by one last year, adult Internet professionals began to get their Acacia letters. At first, they contacted content providers and paysites. The first group (harassed by Acacia) was served with actual court appearance dates. Instead of settling, some of this original group banded together to fight.

That's when things really got ugly. Acacia didn't expect us to circle the wagons and defend ourselves. Recently, Acacia sent out over 10,000 glossy extortion packages to anyone they found worked in adult. They sent packets to site designers, affiliate webmasters and even adult webmaster resource sites. Who cared that many of these people don't EVEN deal in audio/video? The packets weren't really actual legal documents, just threats in an envelope.

What's so wrong with Acacia's DMT patent claim? Well, the patent claim isn't really the problem. The problem is the license agreement. According to Acacia, if your site has video/audio on it, they get 4% of your gross profits. The license states they get to look through your books whenever they want. The license goes on to say that it doesn't matter if you host one video or one hundred. It doesn't matter if your streams make you money or not. If you serve so much as one stream, you owe Acacia 4% of your gross.

What's more, it doesn't matter if your site serves/hosts zero streams. Acacia wants to collect fees for sites that link to streaming content. Acacia wants to collect fees for all streaming content and they want the power to look at your business records to see if any of your associates are making a profit. That would mean housewife Brenda -with her cat video and her Barnes and Noble banners- would have to pay money to Acacia.

Well it's sort of a Christmas story. It took place towards the end of December in 1978. It was almost two years after John Hinckley first saw Taxi Driver and one year before he bought his first gun. It took place in Lubbock Texas, where Hinckley was living at the time.

I was a cast member in a play my college had entered in the American College Theater Festival. This was the regional level of the competition and the event was held at the Texas Tech University Theatre. Our contest production was Marat/Sade.

"The Persecution and Assassination of Jean Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade" is an amazing play by Peter Weiss. But I'm not going to tell you about Marat/Sade right now. If you get a chance, get a copy of the audio version of the Royal Shakespeare Company Production. Don't rent the video or DVD of the film. It's just not as good. Better yet, look for a live production near you. If you've seen the movie Quills, you'll find Marat/Sade familiar. Of the two I prefer Marat/Sade. "It's about...today."

This semi-Christmas story is not about our play. This story is about the production performed by our hosts, the Tech Tech Theater Department.

Tech's play was a student-written piece entitled The Equestrian Assassination of Billy the Kid. The play was a two-fold story about a fellow named Billy who liked to pop his toy gun as well as a companion tale about Lee Harvey Oswald, His wife, his mother and his brother George. In the play, Billy believes his wife has fallen in love with another man. This other man is very important and coming to town. The Billy/Oswald character decides he will kill the other man -as he drives through the center of the town- in order to win back the love of his wife.

Now stick with me here. At the time, 1978, Texas Tech Library possessed a copy of the Zapruder Kennedy Assassination film. Back then, most of us had not seen the Zapruder Film as a moving image. We had seen it broken into frames and printed as still images in the pages of LIFE magazine. In that issue of Life, the frames where the President's head is shot were left out. To summarize, this play assumes that Oswald shot Kennedy in order to impress Marina. The play is presented at TexasTech University. Texas Tech is in Lubbock, Texas. John Hinckley is living in Lubbock, Texas at the time this play was rehearsed and performed. Texas Tech Library has a copy of the Zapruder film in their archives.

Now comes the last scene of the first act of The Equestrian Assassination of Billy the Kid. In this scene the actors assemble on the stage as if there is a parade. Mrs. Oswald and George stand to the side as observers. Billy lurks in the background. His wife takes her place center stage with the important man as if they're in an automobile. On the back wall of the stage is a large screen. As the actors on stage reenact the Kennedy assassination, the screen is filled with the Zapruder film of the actual assassination. When the film reaches the point where the bullet blows out JFK's brains, the projectionist stops the film, backs it up and replays the blow, backs it up and replays it again and again and again. Thus ends act one of the play.

Of the approximately 200 hundred people who watched the first act, I was one of maybe ten that returned for act two. My fellow cast members and I yelled about it on the bus all the way back home.

"Nobody would try to kill the President just to impress a girl! That's insane! Why did they show that film like that? How could they do a thing like that?

I tried to respond. "It was about the media! It was about how we're all being desensitized to this violence! It was about the fact that yes, there are people crazy enough to kill someone just to get famous!"

My defense of the show fell on deaf ears. Even my best friend wouldn't listen. I never forgot that play and when Hinckley shot Reagan because he thought it would impress Jodie Foster, I felt ill.