Is the Warning page required or optional?

[happyend]

Hi there everybody on CozyCampus.
I'm new to this great board, and to adult biz. (Yeah, I know that I'm like 5 or 10 years after some pro's here, but I'm 100% serious and work hard: 15h/day online.)
There's sooo much information to absord.

So let's startup with a newbie question:

Is it necessary to have the warning page: enter/exit ?
I guess that there are many factors to deal with here: In which country are the Hosting provider: Which country I live in, and where I have a registered company.
Maybe the laws are more strict if I host free galleries on my server, instead of just having outgoing affiliate links? What are the penalties? Where can I read more, any links? Swedish law for this?

So let me guess, correct me if I'm wrong:

I live in Sweden, and have my new company registered here.
My current hosts are: Adult friendly Servage in Germany, as you see in my sponsored sig (we're here to making ca$h, and having fun, aren't we?), and HostGator.

So my TGP with pics and movies on Servage does not need a warning page, and no 2257-text either, (I think that pornsites are legal in Germany ) but my sites on HostGator needs the warning page because that it's hosted in the US?
But it's of course good to have warningpage+2257, but on the other hand; the visitors don't enter these sites "by accident": They're not expecting an ordinary online shopping mall when they see the adult keywords in the URL.

Or is it so, that many Adult Webmasters cross their fingers and hope to not be sued, or simply don't know the rules "because everybody else doesn't have a warning page"?

Have a nice day,

HappyEnd

[balls_deep]

i suggest you contact a local lawyer specializing in this sort of thing. We can give you advices but keep in mind we are not lawyers.

[derrick]

Hey man, I actually have a warning page on my sites and I am in Canada so I actually dont legally need to be following 2257. However things change with laws etc so I thought why not make an effort to look like I care about things. My exit page actually links to one of those Child Protection Internet Programs that keeps kids off Porn Sites.

You will find that most bloggers and TGP owners etc dont have a warning page, even in the USA, but you will also find that most of them dont follow any 2257 rules. In reality if the FBI went after every little blogger then you would probably see a crap load of people redesigning their blogs lol.

I have heard that having a warning page can hurt your search rankings like from google at first until Google has time to learn what you are doing. What I would do on the warning page is spruce it up a little. My Warning pages were pretty formal at first and I think I was losing traffic to my actually site. People come to the warning page, see that it wasnt very exciting and click away. I ended up adding some cool Toons on it to give the surfer something cool to look at and entice him/her to come inside.

Personally I like having a warning page, will I go to jail or fined if I dont have one? I seriously doubt it because I am so small in the world of webmasters. Balls Deep is right though, if you really want to be by the book then a lawyer is the way to go. Everything country and even city may have different laws pertaining your content.

Enough Ramblin

[phuckbunny]

There are quite a bit of posts about this, check the archives. For a paysite, you're probably better off with a warning page. TGPs and blogs hardly ever have them.

[LAJ]

Aside from legalities... look at this at its most basic level. Why would you NOT want to have a warning page? In this biz it's about minimizing risk... why not put up a simple page alerting visitors that adult content is ahead? Sure its simple to click the "let me in" tab, but at the very least it's just being responsible.

[Hammer]

I agree with LAJ. It's like having insurance. Hopefully you'll never need it, but you never know.

[razor]

If done properly you can still monetise your warning page.

[happyend]

Thanks for your input.

It made me think; I will use the warning page. There are so many benefits with that. The only reason to not have it, is the pagerank and search engines, but I'll put some keywords and links there.

I signed up with Dreamhost, and I couldn't dream of a better control panel
They can handle all the functions in the rotator scripts too.

Have a nice day everyone!

...Create Diem...

HappyEnd.

[Patrao]

So my TGP with pics and movies on Servage does not need a warning page, and no 2257-text either, (I think that pornsites are legal in Germany )

Servage is a German company but hosting in Denmark. Don't even think having a pornsite in Germany without adult verification.