UPDATE 6 PM est.
At 3:03 PM, Ed Rieker of PBN posted the following on the PBNation site, in response to internet reaction to the World of TB posting:
ASM Girl thread facts and info
It has come to my attention that certain "paintball" sites are publishing misleading, irresponsible and inaccurate accounts of a recent incident occurring on PbNation this week.
I am posting this to inform the PbNation and general paintball community of some of the facts surrounding this incident and to counter those inevitable rumors and gotcha web sites "reporting" on this issue.
So here are the facts as to the best of my knowledge:
At no time during this issue were ANY pornographic images visible in the ASM Girl thread to ASM members. At no time were pornographic images ever "hosted" on PbNation.
All the purported trading took place on private email accounts or by using the PbN Private Messaging (PM) system for the trading of links to other web sites that were hosting the images. Again no images can be "sent" using the PbNation PM system. Links only.
The PM system is not public and is not monitored by the mods.
The sites that were hosting the pornographic pics mentioned in the thread were third-party picture hosting sites.
There never was or will be any "secret" porn threads or storage of porn on PbNation. As soon as any links to pornographic images are detected in posts on PbNation they are deleted from the site and action is taken against those posting.
This was not an organized group of any kind.
Some of the pictures of scantily clad women that were posted contained urls of web sites that have nude pictures. This is not allowed on PbNation and was missed by the Mods for a period of a few days and is what brought attention to the thread. This is the primary reason behind the disciplining of the majority of the moderators and NOT for posting or trading porn.
The PbN Girl thread are a long-standing traditional thread that is used to post pictures of girl friends, wife's, others in settings such as prom night, myspace pictures and other wallet carrying type photos. They are not "porn" threads. Never have been and never will be.
The thread activity started at the beginning of this month but most of the activity was within the last 10 days.
All the PbN accounts that are listed and have received punishment with perm or temp ban are the only PbN accounts involved.
The action taken by PbNation management was to discipline the users involved for the public perception of trading porn. At no time were any pornographic materials or images visible to PbN staff or users as this material was hosted on other web sites and not PbNation. The perception was that users were sending links to outside websites with unsuitable content.
The users could have been trading pictures of pets for all we know but because they acted like they were trading "porn" we treated it as such.
Now that this is in the public eye we are seeing that some of the images portrayed as "yellow dotz" (porn) by users may have actually been girlfriends in swim suits or lingerie. There are several posts on PbNation from users involved that are making these distinctions. We had no way of knowing the content and we still don’t know. We treated it as a "worst" case scenario.
PbNation could have simply and quietly closed the thread and issued the bans. It is my belief that in making this issue public and taking action in public that the entire community could benefit from what has transpired with this issue.
I have made threads on the site directed at users to try to wake up anyone who thinks that what they do online doesn't have a real bearing on their life. My previous thread discussing and describing the activity that occurred was illustrative at best and meant to deeply embed the possible loss of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in all those who might have been involved and all those who might in the future consider this type of internet activity. I truly hope we woke a few people up and that lessons were learned.
If the purpose of PbNation was to hide this we simply would have deleted the thread and moved on.
My personal belief is that there was absolutely no intent by any parties involved in this issue to aspire to any criminal activity...
My hope is that if you see misinformation and inaccurate accounts of this issue being published or discussed on other web sites you will direct those web sites to this post so that readers can judge for themselves the facts in this issue.
Thanks
Ed
PbNation LLC
At 4:03 PM, Dale Ford, editor of www.68Caliber.com received an email from Ed, in response to a request for commentary (sent at 6 AM) referencing the above posting as his "response"
68Caliber appreciates Mr. Rieker's (late) response. We have followed this email up with additional questions for Mr. Rieker via email and will post those questions that address the seeming inaccuracies in Mr. Rieker's statements if and when we receive a response and have had a chance to conduct a legal review.
Paintball Blogger TB reports on a possible pornography ring amongst moderators and members at PbNation.
Apr 18, 2008, 11:30
The Blog site www.worldoftb.com, written by Lawrence TB Wright, has reported today that numerous members and moderators at the www.pbnation.com webforum site have been engaged in the trading of pornographic images:
"It seems that for some time now there has been a ring of people exchanging photos of women and girls in very sexual poses. There have been mods directly involved as well as knowing about this and doing nothing."
TB apparently has some inside dope. A huge portion of today’s blog entry is devoted to reproducing, in its entirety, a post attributed to Ed Rieker, who is the owner of PBNation. The post is located in a private section of PBN - "Here is a post by Ed, don't bother to look it is in the private section..." (TB). In it, Ed seems to acknowledge the activity by moderators and members and warns the posters of the possible legal implications:
E. Rieker - "All I just finished spending about 6 hours reading every post in the ASM Girl Thread V2 that is now in the evidence forum...I am still amazed at the shear stupidity of the participants in this thread, Mods and ASMers alike."
~
"Many of these posters are old enough and should have enough life experience to have taken a step back and stopped this from spiraling into the eventual pornography trading ring that it became."
SIX hours!?!
Mr. Rieker then goes on to state that all of the participants have been banned from PBN forums - either temporarily or permanently.
Talk in the moderators forums at PBN - http://www.pbnation.com/forumdisplay.php?f=14 - lends credence to TB's reportage, such as the following:
asm girl thread - 4/17/08
http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=2649507
Taytoechip: "i realize that the hammer has been brought down upon the asm's and mods that posted in this thread. Im guilty of that, however im wondering why my account p8ntball1987 was perm banned along with a couple others, while most of the people only got a temp, even the main contributers to the thread.
im not denying the fact that i didnt do anything, however i was just under the influence that since the thread had been going for months, and the fact that so man mods were involved with it, that it was ok."
Mega-Mod: "Several moderators that were actively involved have also been permanently banned."
Note: "...the thread has been going for months..."
Asm girl thread ban - 4/17/08
http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=2649593
*SFAR785: "Hey, this is SBC785 and i understand that most of us in the ASM Girl thread were banned, being it temporary or permanent. I already have applied for the ASM unban, the only issue i'm having is this....i'm being accused of sending naked pictures of "underage" girls, that's total bull****. I simply copy and pasted from a well known ADULT web-site where all the models are 18 years of age or older, i will be pretty pissed off if i'm falsely accused of this action. As far as sending the PM's to "underage" users, i only sent the pictures to a handful of people and most of them were Mods who sent pics first and other guys that all said they were 18 (yes i asked). I'm sorry to hear that you had Mods banned and what not, but they sported the blue name and told us that as long as we stuck to PMs, that we can trade pics."
John: "How do you know all of the users were over 18? You don't. That means you could have been sending porn to a minor. I am sorry that any mods led you astray. They did not come out of this unscathed either."
As of 6 am on 4/18/08, Ed Rieker of PBN was sent an email by www.68caliber.com requesting comment. It's still too early to be expecting a response. If and when one is received, it will be posted here immediately.
The blog entry on WorldofTB follows a bit of a 'tiff' between TB and PBN. In previous weeks, TB had accused PBN of inflating both their membership numbers and the number of postings on the site, and using such tactics to increase their advertising revenue.
"So PB Nation has 43,377,879 total posts. That's since it started. That includes spam, violations and more; see because they never purge their records. That's right of those 393,166 users that also include all those people who created multiple accounts, banned accounts and more. Again, they never purge, so all their statistics are not accurate..."
http://worldoftb.com/index.php?blog=1&m=2008&w=14
That particular blog entry originally appeared a week previously and was taken down according to TB - "Because of the pressure that Ed put on my sponsors." Following a lack of reconciliation at the Living Legends Scenario game "Well Ed, you cried and cried to my sponsors and got me to move comments about your site. However part of the deal was that you and Tony were supposed to sit down and talk with me, however that didn't happen." TB reposted it
Interestingly, the current brouhaha also seems to shed some light on this issue as well. A list of recently banned members can be found at http://www.pbnation.com/banlogdisplay.php, with 25 new bans for "inappropriate content" dated 4/17/08 - presumably for the pornographic activity and an additional 30 some odd bans that have:
"Please come to the Talk to Mods Admins forum and explain why you have so many accounts if they are for a legitimate use", next to them.
Clicking on the link next to each name that has been directed to talk to the mods causes the following to appear in the link bar at the bottom of the screen:
"http://www.pbnation.com/NA - no posts made, but dozens of accounts"
Apparently, at least up until 4/17/08, multiple members on PBN had "dozens of accounts". Whether these bans are due to TB's calling out of PBN or came to light as a result of the trading of inappropriate content remains to be seen.
*Going back to the quotes from the threads in the PBN moderator's section, note the following: "SFAR785: "Hey, this is SBC785…"
As more information becomes available, we'll post it here. In the meantime, keep an eye on www.worldoftb.com.
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