I am sorry to read that some of you have taken this negatively, but put yourself on the other side of the fence. If you made a product, a good one, and someone simply steals it with arrogance and thinks nothing of it, to a degree that costs you substantially, wouldn't you be inclined to do something about it? Please understand, this was not targeted to the majority, just one particular individual who knows who he is.
I am simply trying to protect my assets and if that bothers you, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to apologize for that. Granted, perhaps my presentation of it wasn't the best and for that I apologize, the customer has always and will always be my #1 priority. I don't mind a simple advertisement here and there, but when it involves credit card fraud of innocent people, theft and a sigifniciant loss to not just myself but others too, I'm definately going to act and if it were you...I'm sure you would do the same.
Why do you believe those who see your clips for free do so "with arrogance?" Further, why wouldn't you distinguish between the people who PROVIDE the clips for free and those who WATCH them for free? Anybody with a youtube or dailymotion account has, at some time, viewed material that was protected by copyright. If you've watched a music video that wasn't officially sponsored, if you've ever looked at whatever tickle clips on dailymotion, you've done exactly what is being criticized here as some kind of immoral assault on the world. Hell, if, back in the old days, you used a VCR to record a movie or a cassette to record a mixtape off the radio, that's exactly the same thing.
That's why it comes off as attacking a majority: because everyone who has ever been to youtube has (I guarantee) violated someone's copyright. I can't say for certain, but I would guess that at some point I probably have come across some of your work on places like dailymotion. Does that, in your mind, make me a criminal or deserving of the public shaming to which you alluded? I would suggest it doesn't.
I also think you have to consider the fact that a lot of the people who are looking for free content are people who aren't in a position to attain it licitly at all (namely, anyone under the age of 18 or without a credit card). The internet wasn't so robust in my teenage years, but I would have been after whatever free content I could find. And, again, in this situation you aren't losing any money because those people couldn't buy from you if they wanted to. When you get lawyers involved, though, it will be the parents of those kids who end up on the hook (because they're the ones who are paying for the internet). Can you even imagine the kind of damage done to say, a 13 year old kid who has his fetish disclosed to the world while his parents get sued for thousands of dollars, just because he found some free clips and decided to download them? Is it worth it?
So I think there are distinctions that should, morally-speaking, be made here, and it's not clear from your posts whether you're making them. If you're going after the people who UPLOAD your content, fine. If you're going after people who fraudulently purchase your content (through ID theft or whatever else), fine.
But if your position is that every person who downloads or even sees your commercial content without paying you is subject to litigation and public shaming, then there's a real problem there, and it's the same problem that has cost other industries billions of dollars.
So my advice (which you didn't ask for, admittedly), is to go after the dealers and leave the junkies alone. The junkies are your customers too, and trying to recoup thousands of dollars and ruining their public lives because they watched $20 worth of your content for free is a put off to people (like me) who would otherwise be loyal customers.
. If that's up your alley, you might want to check this out! Comments are very much appreciated.
