rawTOP

I don't think it's my place to change the meaning of BBBH. So it'll continue to be Bareback Brotherhood. Except in a year or two when I put out an iPhone app then I'll call that Bareback Bunkhouse. It will be pretty tongue and cheek so everyone will know Bunkhouse is just a joke to get past Apple's censors. It'll be "the app for gay cowboys looking for temporary accommodations". I should be able to say things like "looking to be on the top bunk" without it being considered sexually explicit. Only "family friendly" photos will be in the app, etc. The idea is a bit too kitsch to be the concept for the main site. The reason I really want to use Brotherhood is because of what it embodies. To me #BBBH is a community united through the giving and taking of anal loads. The power of the Brotherhood concept is that you cum inside someone and you become part of them. Then they cum inside someone and pass pass part of your essence on. Or to put it another way, the more you give and take loads the closer you get to what it really means to be part of BBBH. And to be clear, I think the concept has been around since at least the late '90s (and probably pre-HIV/AIDS as well). It's just someone finally gave it a name and an abbreviation. Just like the term "bareback" didn't exist before HIV/AIDS - bareback was just regular sex. IMHO, this really isn't a concept anyone can own. At most a few of us are custodians of the concept, but our job is to keep it true to its fundamentals.

Discussion of the general issues surrounding BBBH is welcomed. iBi did what he did and the discussion of him and his actions should end. But I welcome the discussion of BBBH in general. What does BBBH mean? Who should be entitled to use the term? What are the limits on use? etc. To your point - a collective membership mark is owned by a organization. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_trade_mark In this case there is no legally recognized organization, hence even that kind of trademark doesn't apply. I'm 99% confident that my use of BBBH is 1) legal, and 2) within the bounds of what most in the BBBH community would say is a good, acceptable use. I'm pushing forward with the site as envisioned.

I have reason to think a lot like you do. There are threads on here and blog posts on rawtop.com where I explain why that is. And I was really suspicious of PrEP when it was first announced. BUT at the end of the day there is 17 years of data with people on ARVs. The initial issues with early ARVs are largely no longer found in current ARVs. The ARVs today are pretty safe. And all those years of data tell us one thing - no ARVs = a quick death, taking ARVs too late = and early death, and taking ARVs before you go below 300 t-cells = a pretty normal life. Yes, there's a lot to be suspicious about when it comes to big pharma. But ARVs work. That much is undeniable.

There are a lot of things that are said in this post thar are just flat out wrong. I'm closing this thread. The issue can be discussed over on this thread… https://breeding.zone/threads/24456-iBlastInside-just-threatened-to-sue-me-over-BBBH-com

After what I just paid for bbbh.com, my boyfriend would kill me if I didn't use it

iBlastInside just did a big long post on where he's coming from. https://breeding.zone/threads/24463-iBLASTinside-The-BBBH-Belongs-to-No-One I think he's not representing my point of view correctly. This was my response to this blog post. I'm not sure whether he'll be man enough to publish it on his site, so I'll put it here for the record… To spell it out a little more… The issue is that on a discussion site things like bug chasing and gift giving really stand out. Put the same group of people on a hookup site where people aren't talking about issues - they're just talking about having sex and the bug chasing and gift giving sorta gets lost in the crowd. Sure there are a few profiles here and there that mention it, but the site isn't defined by it. That is the reason why Breeding Zone is a bit of a tainted brand - the fringe stuff is too obvious. I want BBBH.com to be a big tent with lots of people. I don't want to scare people away. Sure there will be a few people who stand out, but they won't define the site. So his whole rant about me being exclusionary just isn't based in fact. I've got a track record with this site. You guys know really well what it takes for me to ban people from the site. Can you see me doing the things Mark says I'll do? And somehow he thinks I'm the one attacking him. He's the one who threatened a lawsuit and then misrepresented what I said. I think I've been pretty fair to his point of view and level headed. But draw your own conclusions. Oh, and I want to thank him for the title of that post - "The BBBH belongs to no one." That'll be useful if he tries to take me to court. Plus, it's exactly what I told him in an e-mail… So if we agree that no one owns it, I'm not quite sure what his issue is. All of this seems like much ado about nothing.

They have nothing to do with my business. One is we're suing the City of New York over our property tax assessment. It's just what you do when they charge you too much and fail to correct a flawed assessment. Another is related to the renovation we did on our place - it's being handled by insurance companies. And the other one is something completely different.

But it's a chemical addiction. People who start out using like you do wind up addicts. It's one of those things where it's best not to throw stones. You may be next.

This is patently not true and, if followed, could kill someone. I've drawn the line and have banned VoiceOfReason permanently.

#1 - I hate lawsuits as well, but there are rules we live by and that's the forum where people can get an answer on how the rules apply to their situation. I've been in enough lawsuits that I'm not afraid of them. #2 - I have asked politely. AFAIK (I've searched the trademark database), he hasn't registered it. His claim is solely based on his role as originator of the hashtag and the term Bareback Brotherhood. He has a site which is essentially a registry of BBBH members, but no one is every logged into it when I look at the site. #3 - The fuck off reaction is my thinking as well. What defines BBBH? Bareback sex and breeding. What am I going to put on BBBH.com? A site that facilitates bareback sex and breeding. I'm exactly within the parameters of the brand. #4 - It's not registered, it's not his to grant a license to. #5 - My thoughts exactly - it's a brotherhood, not Mark's product. I don't claim to be any sort of owner of the term. I see myself as a custodian / a caretaker. #6 - Yeah, it's about the community. I want to attract a certain type of guy to the site - guys who are serious about sex. Breeding Zone has those guys, but it's brand is tarnished by all the bug chasing on the site, so I needed another term for the community. #7 - Agreed, if #BBBH starts to equal stealthing and drug use - then the community will have lost something really important. I want to rescue the brand before it becomes too narrow. The bareback meth heads can keep NKP. They don't need the broader term as well. #8 - I'm not scared of a legal battle. It's publicity and gives a clean division that shows that that BBBH does not equal stealthing, etc. (it may include those things but they're tangential, not fundamental). And a legal battle shouldn't affect users. It'll happen behind the scenes. Honestly, I'm 95+% confident he won't survive a show cause hearing (where he has to prove the basic elements of his case in order to proceed). Any legal battle should be over quickly.

That's not quite how it works. You have to use the term in a specific way and on descriptive terms like Bareback Brotherhood you have to show that people associate the term with your product or service. In this case if you asked 100 guys on this site what BBBH means probably 98+ would say it's a community or a hashtag describing a community. That's not a use that warrants trademark protection since there's no product or service. Even if my hookup site gets to be really big it probably still won't get trademark protection – at least not broad trademark protection (if I understand things correctly) – because BBBH will always primarily define the community, not a product or service. This page explains things in a lot of detail… http://chillingeffects.org/trademark/faq.cgi Bottom line is that terms that label a community don't have trademark protection. Only things that are names of products or services can be trademarks - and then only if they meet certain criteria. The law actually makes a lot of sense in this case. The law essentially says BBBH belongs to the community, not to any individual. A good example is Gilbert Baker, the creator of the rainbow flag. Would rainbow flags be as popular today if it weren't for him? Would they have the meaning they have today if it weren't for him? Absolutely not. But does he own the concept of a rainbow flag? Again – absolutely not. Do other people profit off his idea? Absolutely! If Gilbert had tried to have a strangle hold on the concept of the rainbow flag it would have just died and something else would have replaced it. It's only because he let others use it and profit off it that anyone knows his name today. That's the position Mark's in – is he going to let his baby grow up, or is he going to have a fight with his kid that will result in his kid never talking to him again? He's gotta make a choice and his knee jerk reaction so far seems to be the wrong one. Hopefully that'll change.

You may not care, but the name does make a difference. Hookup sites are a matter of "go big or go home". They need a critical mass of people to be successful. BBBH will help attract that critical mass since most serious barebackers know the term and identify with the term. There are other reasons as well. It's short, which means it's easy to type into a mobile device. And using Bareback Bunkhouse as an alternate brand I can get an app past Apple's censors. But more than anything it makes no sense to me that one person can feel like they own the term that defines the community. Who owns BDSM? Who owns LGBT? Why should Mark own BBBH? The more I research the issue, the more confident I am. At the moment I'm pretty certain I'll fight him hard if he files a lawsuit.

A few days ago when my purchase of BBBH.com was looking pretty final I reached out to iBlastInside (aka Mark Benson) and told him about the purchase and asked how he'd like to be involved in the new site, etc. The initial exchanges were pretty positive - he offered me the use of his member database from bbbh.iblastinside.com for marketing the new site, etc. Everything seemed good… …until today when he deleted the buddy link with me on BBRT and then wrote me an email in which he told me So I tried to clear up any misunderstandings since I thought the issue was that I need to distance myself from him on the issue of stealthing for any BBBH branded site to be successful. Then he responded... Lovely, so now he's escalated things to threats of lawsuits. I'm in the middle of three lawsuits right now. Four, if you count the one where I'm counter suing a 3rd party. Despite that I don't like lawsuits and would rather avoid them. That means I have a couple options here: Fight him if he sues (and I'll fight back hard) Change the branding to Bareback Bunkhouse, but still use bbbh.com Doing what he says and not developing bbbh.com isn't a viable option, IMHO. Personally I think his trademark claim is incredibly weak. It fails a number of litmus tests related to trademarks, so I think his claim would get thrown out pretty quickly. Still, lawsuits are a hassle and best avoided. If I take option 2 it's not very good for the Bareback Brotherhood community. I mean I'll market the site pretty aggressively and in 5 or 10 years BBBH will be synonymous with Bareback Bunkhouse, not Bareback Brotherhood. Is that something you guys really want? Yet, if I'm forced into option 2 that's what will happen. What this sort of comes down to is – does Mark own the name #BBBH / Bareback Brotherhood? Is it reasonable for him to make these demands and threats? You guys are the Bareback Brotherhood. What do you guys think? I've always seen the term being owned by the group, not by any individual. Now that I own bbbh.com I view myself as a custodian of the concept. I want to build a hookup site that reflects the community. How is that a bad thing? BTW, if you're not happy about what Mark's done, let him know - his Twitter handle is @iBlastInside

Warts around your dick or ass = HPV. You're like me - you had one outbreak and that was sort of the end of it. I think the wart itself is what the person has to come in contact with. So not sure if you can transmit it unless you have a wart somewhere and don't know it.

Something like 40% of gay guys have HPV. You get them burned or frozen off and that's usually the end of it - at least for a while. I know I had some years ago, had one or two treatments at that time and they've never returned. AFAIK the sex doesn't have to be unprotected to transmit HPV. You could get HPV from frottage which is completely safe. The other issue is that once you have HPV you always have it - it's inside you. Which means sex with other HPV+ guys isn't really a big deal. And HPV- guys can get vaccinated - there's no reason for anyone to get HPV these days. So I'd say, relax. Who really cares how you got it? Unless it's causing a continuing problem (like a friend of mine who has it in his urethra) then don't worry about it.

Basically you're very close to the point where, if you don't take your meds, HIV will start doing real, permanent damage to your body and you'll probably die in 5 years +/-. Don't fuck around with HIV or think you can beat it - it will win. But to answer your question - soon you'll start getting opportunistic infections (OI). They're pretty miserable. You'll probably wind up in the hospital for some of them. If you reject ARVs, the meds they'll use to treat the OIs will be pretty draconian - talk about real damage to your body. It's not pretty and those of us who saw loved ones die of AIDS never want to go back to that time. Just take your meds. It's time.

It won't be integrated like Raunchy Fuckers, but I might do a one-time dump of guys with >100 posts who have been active in the past month.

Separate. Part of the same network of sites, but separate. #BBBH, as I understand it, isn't for a particular site. It signifies the group, not a site.

I'll put a comment on this thread when it's ready for signups. It'll be a few days. It's currently at Moniker which is a rather difficult registrar to transfer away from. Will probably take 4 or 5 days to get it to eNom (my primary registrar). Then I have to get an SSL cert for it. That'll probably take another day to coordinate with my hosting provider. Then I need to install the software and do basic configuration - so that's another day or two. And in the middle of all that is Christmas Eve, Christmas, etc. But the real question is how long it takes Moniker to release the domain. Could be an hour or could be a week. #BBBH, of course. I know that's a little confusing. For more clarity I guess you just write out the URL, so TBD, I guess.

There has never been a site on BBBH.com. Maybe you're thinking of BBBH.org.

I've got rather big news… I've purchased BBBH.com. It wasn't cheap and it took me 4 months to make it happen, but it's done now. What this means is that The Bareback Brotherhood is getting a hookup site! And hopefully before too long there will be critical mass on BBBH.com and you guys will have another viable option to use when you wanna hookup with other barebackers. Admittedly things will be rough at first. I'm using some "dating" software as a starting point which I'll then need to modify rather heavily. That means some rather basic features will be missing initially – like Quick Connect / Hookup Now, and sex party listings. But I'll do what I can to get those features implemented as quickly as possible. Please be patient in the meantime. I've got a lot of plans for the site. If you have specific questions, just ask and I'll fill you in. But as general goals I want the site to be very mobile friendly and very social and community oriented. It won't be like that on day 1, but it'll get there. And a unified chat solution will be coming for both BBBH and Breeding Zone. I'm currently transferring the domain to my primary registrar. Hopefully I'll have the basics set up on the site before Christmas. There won't be much there initially, but you guys will want to sign up to reserve your desired screen name.

I won't be at MAL this year. I'm locking this thread to avoid confusion.

Any chance they ran through a cruisy park and your son took loads from more than his boyfriend?

The moral of the story is don't be like VoR and his ex - get tested regularly for HIV - even if you think you don't have it. As the example of his ex demonstrates - bad things can happen when you go too long between tests. IMHO, you should get tested at least every year, if not more frequently. And never go more than two years between tests. Ever. HIV is a pain in the ass, but these days the problems VoR describes can largely be avoided by timely treatment. There's no reason for people to go through experiences like the one he describes.

Five minutes can feel like a long time. I've had pump-n-dump hookups that were shorter. So I know what you mean.