Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The real spammers we refer to are actually companies like mediasentry and webshe
rriff that besides knowing better keep harassing us and tons of other isps by au
tomatically sending email (lots of it too ;)
trying megavideo and the other streaming sites, indeed makes hell a lot more sen
se, as that's where the streams come from in the end,
most of our clients in this field simply link there, and most of the video-strea
m hosters actually DO comply with the dmca and dmca-like regulations.
The annoying thing is companies like disney inc (most recently ;) trying to forc
e us to cut off the piratebay (by trying to punch holes and undermining provider
immunity), dispite the fact that the piratebay itself does not "distribute" any
thing, it merely connects people that want to exchange files, regardless of whic
h kind of file, in the end it's the end users that publish content.
I can see you went for the conventional model of DVD distribution, however, cons
idering the profit margin on that, why not just sell your movie online on your o
wn website in the 50 cent-2 euro price range, surely the profit margin on that i
s a LOT higher than having the entire distribution chain of distributors, truck
drivers, shops, etc taking the profits away, and the market is global.
If you simply make it possible to download your movie from your website, maybe t
he itunes store, or amazon (i think they do that too), nobody in his right mind
would go for a crappy flash based stuttering low-resolution watch-movies-online
kinda thing if they can have a fast download of the full HD version, without hav
ing to spend hours in going to a shop, parkign the car, buying a dvd (if its in
stock), going home, putting the thing in the player, etc (its a lot more work ;)
.
In our years of conducting business online (we used to do mass domain registrati
on and mass shared webhosting, nowadays that would be called cloud computing), w
e found that people will gladly become your customer if you simply make it EASY
enough for them to register and pay online with instant delivery of the services
, I guess the same goes for music and movies as otherwise the itunes store would
not be there ;)
We actually wrote something very simular to the itunes store. way before they (a
pple inc) did (1998-1999) which now is at www.huge.nl, it's dysfunctional becaus
e its ugly and the payment processors aren't linked anymore, but something like
that could well become a central spill in the distribution of movies and music (
or maybe we can keep the itunes store around once they learn to make it possible
for ANYONE to sell their products there, not just their RIAA friends ;)
Now, primary problem I see with movie sites is that they don't have a license (t
he ones that actually distribute the content that is).
This is due to the berne convention, which was pushed by the recording and print
ing industry of it's days (1933).
GEMA, BUMA, STEMRA, etc are all in existance today because back in 1933 it was a
pretty good idea to have the "rights' managed by an organisation -per country-
(after all, back in 1933 you still had several fairly small markets, its not lik
e you had 5 billion books printed in korea and then shipped to your customers, t
here was no internet, satellite tv wasn't invented yet, etc)
The result of this is that disney could not give a license to a movie site to pu
t disney movies in full hd/3d for a global audience (worldwide distribution) if
they wanted to (which, they btw, do not, otherwise they would not be trying to s
ue US for routing the piratebay all the time ;)
But then again, they have been part of the 'usual suspects' that kept lobbying f
or such regulations that now (also) get in their own way, deratifying treaties i
sn't quite so easy as creating them ;)
This is also a reason why southpark, for example, doesn't make their episodes av
ailable on one central worldwide site anymore, but rather has sites per country
now, eventhough it's their -own- created content.
(southpark studios also just includes the advertisements themselves and makes th
eir streams high quality, as opposed to third party streaming sites which usuall
y are captured from tv airings)
I'm quite sure you'll still earn your investment back on the DVDs as a lot of pe
ople (still) buy those, and TV stations are (still) around and still get paid to
put 'something" between advertisements (which in the end makes the cash, also o
nline, in most cases, except for direct sales).
Now as far as I understand, these movie sites, get paid by their advertisers, de
pending on how popular their site is in the "alexa ratings". Why don't you just
set up your own movie site, together with some colleguas, that does exactly the
same, watch the movie in low-res streaming with advertisements for free, or down
load it in full-hd and pay for it, I bet a lot of those movie link sites like th
e one you were complaining about would simply link to your site and therefore al
so generate advertisement income for you.
I cannot interfere in what my customers do, If some guy just buys your DVD and c
opies it and ships it with deutsche post, you can't expect the mailman to open t
he package, see whats inside, refuse to deliver from or to specific addresses, e
tc, the same applies to data and telecommunications (and that's a good thing or
we'd have EVERYONE who could possibly have a problem with something at our door
every second ;)
I cannot force him to remove it (which this specific customer probably won't do
anyway, but the streaming video providers he links to may do it if you ask -them
-)
We just deliver traffic, indistriminately of what it carries, even if we know wh
at it carries, we are protected from liability, even if what it carries is SEVER
ELY criminal (there are a lot things worse than copyright violations ;) and that
's a good thing, not just for us, but for everyone
Your movie (i've watched the trailer) i'm suer would raise some eyebrows in most
islamic countries for example, you don't want your isp to remove it because the
y could possibly have objections to it :P
Why don't you get some of your colleguas together and set up a central distribut
ion company for independant movie productions, which doesn't 'enforce copyright'
but rather just makes it easy to obtain high-quality copies at a reasonable pri
ce and low-quality streaming with advertisement income, so a lot of it is on one
central, easy to find, well promoted, website, online ordering of an actual DVD
/blue ray disk should be possible too ofcourse.
There are several more issues with copyright as a concept, one of them being the
fact that i already managed to have my 386 "compose" all musical patterns (shee
t music) in digital form back in 1996 up to 30 seconds in lenght (the requiremen
t for copyright), and i mean -all- of the possible combinations of musical notes
in any order ;)
Technically, that means i could sue each and everyone of those artists and their
labels out there not to release any bit of music anymore as i own the rights to
-everything- already, as it will always contain a sequence out of my billions o
f composed patterns, no matter what they compose ;)
now that was in 1996... computers are at least 1000 times faster and bigger now,
and we own quite a few of them, i'm quite sure we could do the same for let's s
ay all english words in any possible combination (copyrighting all possible book
texts before anyone else gets the chance) etc.
they could claim it's not a "work of art", which is a requirement for copyright,
but then again, they compose using computers themselves, it's all just a matter
of interpretation of how many manual interventions one makes in the process ;)
I don't consider copying "theft" either, as nothing really gets stolen, and it's
all rather vague.. it's all common knowledge...
now breaking into someone's house or his computer, stealing his data and making
it public, ofcourse is theft
breaking into a factory, stealing the plans for their next model car, is theft,
breaking into a bunker, stealing the nuclear launch codes, is theft (not to ment
ion espionage ;)
making something which is already public knowledge more poblic, isn't theft at a
ll.
Me, using copyright to stop all artists from composing any music because my comp
uter (or me) "did it first" WOULD however be 'theft', but it would be 100% legal
for me to enforce that by the exact same law they promote.
(germany itself for example uses copyright to -prevent- distribution of mein kam
pf, despite not having the intention of distributing it itself).
So no, I don't see any future whatsoever in copyright, you can probably still ge
t away with the old business model of selling dvds for the next few years, you'l
l definately make your investment back, one way or the other, but don't expect t
hat all to still work in let's say 10 years from now.
When i started working in the internet industry at xs4all, they actually never g
ave people contracts that lasted longer than 3 months because they weren't sure
the internet, as an industry would survive that long, now, xs4all ofcourse is on
e of the biggest dutch ISPs out there, I'd say "easy money", including copyright
, should always be treated that way... don't expect it to work/bring profits 3 m
onths from now even if it does now, always cover your ass, just as with any othe
r investment...
Now for companies like disney, there actually is no excuse ;)
they should simply give people a disney tv with a disney-disc player that only p
lays disney movies and doesn't connect to anything else and can't be filmed with
conventional cameras (refreshing the screen the other way around, bottom to top
, already solves that ;) and call it a day :P
see, your camera would not work in a cinema, if the screen refresh of the cinema
would work significantly different than the way your camera ccd/vidicon scans i
t's image. it would have black bars all over the image all the time, or even jus
t random dots instead of an image, and as long as your hardware doesn't have any
standardised output, good luck on simply connecting it to a vcr or digitizer ;)
Disney however, despite having the cash and resources, would rather wait for oth
er people to distribute their movies for them, and then sue them or third partie
s afterwards :P instead of actually taking steps to protect their content, in wh
ich they claim to take so much interest :P
(which is why we put a bunch of attorneys on disney, as they were becoming a bit
too much of a pain in the ass, and them trying to undermine european commission
desicisions that protect providers from having to commit censorship is complete
ly inacceptable ;)
Now as with making your investment back, i'm can't help you with that, should yo
u decide to do the video streaming/download thingy yourself or with some friends
, we do offer guaranteed port-speed (100/1000base) dedicated servers, and i'm qu
ite sure that we can find one of our companies to provide management services an
d software-development services with that (although cb3rob ltd. & co. kg just of
fers the actual internet capacity and the hardware ;)... however, we own quite a
bit more companies in the consulting, hardware and software development field a
nd research field that can supply "what goes on the server" and manage the thing
s for you, google is expected to make the vp8 video codec open source in the com
ing weeks, which should work hell a lot better than that flash crap too, and wil
l be supported by all html5 browsers (also all browsers, without plugins ;)
the fact that we don't run the sites for customers doesn't mean we can't ;), we
have some quite capable people around that can put this together in no time... (
the cyberbunker group actually exists of 20 or so active companies registered ar
ound the world, most of them in the isp/telco and research and development field
s, it's pretty much more of a cult than they are normal companies ;)
(once again, we were around before google and we've seen it all ;)
(And despite disneys efforts, we will be around long after disney has evaporated
into oblivion ;)
I -wrote- audio and video streaming protocols long before most of those moviesit
e kiddies knew what a computer was haha :P
(now besides accidentially having the odd patent here and there and copyright o
n a lot of program code, most of which is internal-use only and therefore not op
en source ;) as well as -all- possible musical patterns, we never make claims t
o any 'intellectual property' simply because we don't
believe its a wise thing to do, it's better if people take your ideas after
you show them that it works and can be done and improve on it)
there even are some people running away with our "trademarks"
I found a "cyberbunker ltd." as a registrant to ip space that has nothing to do
with us for example, there is a cyberbunker.com.au somewhere in australia runnin
g an internet cafe and a golf course, etc, oh well, just let them, if that makes
them happy, who cares, people will know where to find the "real" one anyway :P
people always claim intellectual property laws would "promote" innovation...
question: where would the world be if motorized vehicles using 4 wheels were pat
ented and nobody else would be allowed to build simular products ;)
anyway, it's quite easy to keep control over what you've made if you really want
to and monetise on it by keeping control and limiting its distribution.
This is what software companies in the 80s did when it got 'really expensive' (n
ovell netware, autocad), you simply only make the software work with a specific
piece of hardware of which the inner workings are non disclosed plugged into the
printer port ;)
It doesn't matter if peope copy the software from their neighbor and can buy the
ir computers at every street corner, the software still won't work without your
custom hardware, which only you know how to build :P
it's even easier to just distribute it and monetise on it by means of built-in a
dvertisements, paid -easy, high quality, fast- downloads or other unique marketi
ng aspects other parties cannot offer (or not that easy anyway).
there are tons of companies in the world offering internet hosting, it's not abo
ut wether you ask 3 euros or 100 euros, its about how easy you make it to buy it
from -you- rather than your neighbor, that's what brings in the customers.
(we have btw left the mass hosting market, so the whole online registration and
payment stuff has been removed from our website, but the concept still applies e
qually well to any market).
and having to go outside, and buy a disk, and then take it out of the box, and p
ut it into some player (usually the computer anyway ;) just isn't the easiest wa
y for the user to obtain his entertainment, which, still, is compensated by the
higher quality, but that can't possibly take much longer anymore (users nowadays
have 50-100mbit at home, that is quite common in the netherlands and germany an
yway (vdsl, cable, fiber to the home (ftth)), so the quality aspect of dvds vs d
ownloads/online watching will soon disappear, the movie industry would better ad
just to that, as sueing isps will only lead to the isps sueing them back, and th
ats a fight the isps will win in the end, the same goes for lobbying, funding po
litical parties and politicians, etc :P
and no, we will not keep them artificially alive by stuff like "a tax for "cultu
re" on internet connections" as -they- choose to invest in movies, people have m
ade music and danced etc since the stoneage, we really don't need disney to prov
ide the world with "culture" :P
nobody asked them to invest millions into movies
If i invest millions into restoring an oldtimer car, and i drive it in the stree
t, and people take pictures of it, i can't charge them for my millions either, t
he same goes for movies, nobody asked them to make them, nor to make them public
, so they can't really complain if once they are public knowledge, people watch
them without paying back their investment.
nothing to do with your investment, i'm qutie sure you'll still make that back a
nd a profit on it too, with or without low-res video streams on the internet
oh btw, in case of european providers, don't even mention 'dmca' :P
the dmca is a strictly american thing that can, if the provider chooses to avoid
a court case, provide him with limited immunity (unlike european regulations) u
nder the safe harbor protection, which basically means: remove the content, and
let the customer protest against it ;)
which even if we were an american company, we would never do, but most american
companies don't have the balls to simply take that corrupt piece of shit through
the court process and win (maybe there is something severely wrong with the ame
rican court process in the first place ;)
anyway,
enough of that for now :P
l8r
<penpen> C3P0, der elektrische Westerwelle
Dear Sven,
I'm not a spammer actually. I have done every step of this all by myself, day a
fter day....trying, in good faith, to contact the correct person to ask that the
infringing content be removed.
I am an independent filmmaker who has put her life savings into a project and no
w see it uploaded illegally on the web before the DVD is even released. I am no
t a studio, but my partner and I work out of xoxoxoxo
and are teachers and independent filmmakers who have produced a small, niche fea
ture film "And Then Came Lola." It's scheduled to be released on DVD in late Ma
y. We have NO theatrical release of the film.
I wish I had money to pay someone to do this, but no sir. I'm going step by ste
p, investigating and doing my best to stop these pirates one by one. I'm sorry
if you are offended by my email. What recourse do I have but to try my best to
get these illegal files removed from the various sites they've populated.
I am happy to say that my notifications have been pretty successful. A number o
f sites, like Megashare, Rapidshare, and Blogger have quickly removed the files
from their various sites per my request. How is it wrong to ask that other not
monetize our product?
Please feel free to follow up with me further if you'd like. I am a firm believ
er in free speech, but as someone who has spent the past 3 years working on this
little indie film and poured every penny I have into it, it seems I have no rec
ourse. Can you appreciate that.
I'm sorry if one email to your email box proved to be such an irritant. Seeing o
ur film streamed throughout the web via illegal uploads is equally irritating.
It amounts to theft basically.
Thanks for your time and your thoughtful feedback. Should you want to check out
information about the film, please go here: www.andthencamelola.com