Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network. For more
Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to ifagpodcastnetwork dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three eighty seven.
Speaker 2: The pictures are there and you just take them.
Speaker 1: Robert Kappa broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: When we really should be working on that next draft.
Speaker 1: It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
Speaker 1: business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
Speaker 1: screenplay bulletproof.
Speaker 2: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
Speaker 2: episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble
Speaker 2: host Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof
Speaker 2: script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script
Speaker 2: Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are
Speaker 2: and the goals of the project you are, so we
Speaker 2: actually break it down by three categories, micro budget, indie film,
Speaker 2: market and studio film. There's no reason to get coverage
Speaker 2: from a reader that's used to reading tempole movies when
Speaker 2: your movie is gonna be done for one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof
Speaker 2: Script Coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WME, NBC, HBO, Disney,
Speaker 2: Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more.
Speaker 2: So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered
Speaker 2: by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot com.
Speaker 2: Let's start the episode today with the story. Guys, when
Speaker 2: I put out my second film on the corner of
Speaker 2: ego and desire within I'm going to say eight to
Speaker 2: ten hours somewhere along there's those lines. It was already
Speaker 2: pirated and put up illegally on these sites tour in
Speaker 2: sits where you can download and watch my movie for
Speaker 2: free without giving me, the filmmaker, or my producers any
Speaker 2: revenue from I was a little independent film. Seriously, I
Speaker 2: don't think it gets much more little than as far
Speaker 2: as budget is concerned for ego and desire. But I
Speaker 2: was shocked about it. I was like, man, I can't
Speaker 2: believe they went after me. Someone's so small. I'm not
Speaker 2: the Avengers, I'm not a big studio movie. But it's
Speaker 2: pretty remarkable how the ecosystem works, of how these websites
Speaker 2: are making money why they do what they do, how
Speaker 2: they do it, and so on. I wrote a whole
Speaker 2: article about about how that happened, where I found them,
Speaker 2: kind of the ecosystem things like that, and I'll put
Speaker 2: a link to that in the show notes as well.
Speaker 2: But today I wanted to bring a copyright expert on
Speaker 2: the show, and his name is Evan Zeisel, who is
Speaker 2: the owner and operator of an amazing website and service
Speaker 2: called Copyright Slap. Now, what copyright Slap does is allows filmmakers,
Speaker 2: for twenty bucks a month to come in and send
Speaker 2: out as many sees and the cyst orders as they
Speaker 2: want in that thirty day period to as many different
Speaker 2: websites links anywhere they find their movies. They send a
Speaker 2: ceason assist order, and Copyright Slap not only sends them
Speaker 2: the first letter, but if they don't reply, then they
Speaker 2: send it to their website provider and gets their website
Speaker 2: completely taken down. So their rate of takedowns is pretty
Speaker 2: remarkable and easily the most affordable and effective service doing
Speaker 2: this online today. And Evan and I get into the
Speaker 2: weeds of what these pirates are doing, why they're doing it,
Speaker 2: how they make their money, what kind of ecosystem is
Speaker 2: set up for this world and how we as independent
Speaker 2: filmmakers can fight back against the pirates and take back
Speaker 2: the ip the copyrighted material that we own and we
Speaker 2: deserve to make money with. So, without any further ado,
Speaker 2: please enjoy my conversation with Evan Zeiseel. I like to
Speaker 2: welcome to the show, Evan zeisel Man.
Speaker 3: How you doing, Evan, I'm doing great. I'm doing great.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on the show. Man. We're going to
Speaker 2: talk about piracy and copyright infringement and all sorts of sexy, beautiful,
Speaker 2: cool stuff that filmmakers love to talk about.
Speaker 3: But yeah, Johnny Depp being on the internet pretty much right,
Speaker 3: that's what we're talking.
Speaker 2: About, exactly. It's the really, I mean, it's it's it's
Speaker 2: one step above financial breakdowns for future films. No, but
Speaker 2: it all but it's so much fun. But the bottom
Speaker 2: line is it is something that is affecting so many filmmakers,
Speaker 2: not just the Avengers and Game of Thrones.
Speaker 3: But also a lot of money and can afford can
Speaker 3: afford it? Right exactly.
Speaker 2: But then the indies like myself, like I had my
Speaker 2: film Pirate, I think eleven hours after I got put
Speaker 2: up on online. It was already on the pirated boards.
Speaker 3: I was like, that's that's pretty fast. I Mine just
Speaker 3: took under a week.
Speaker 2: My first yeah, mis was eleven hours. I counted. I
Speaker 2: was like, holy cow. So I did a whole episode
Speaker 2: like this is what happened to my film?
Speaker 3: And and there are fake ones too, They're amazing. There
Speaker 3: are fake ones that pop up on films that are
Speaker 3: in festivals that are just up on IMDb, and they
Speaker 3: pull from IMDb the the name and the description and everything,
Speaker 3: and then they say, you know, click to watch, and
Speaker 3: then you have to get a description. And but it's
Speaker 3: all about it's all about the traffic for them. They
Speaker 3: don't care about the actual watching of the film. They
Speaker 3: just want either the ads or the person to show
Speaker 3: up to the site so they can add malware to
Speaker 3: their system and then you know, sell that. Or they've
Speaker 3: got these weird click through things. I mean, it's so many,
Speaker 3: Well we'll get it. They make their money. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I want to get.
Speaker 2: Into the whole piracy business as well. But first of all,
Speaker 2: how did you a mild mannered filmmaker? You know, the
Speaker 2: Clark Kent of filmmakers, So how did you get into
Speaker 2: the copyright you know, piracy game, like how to protect
Speaker 2: filmmakers from up from copyright piracy.
Speaker 3: I feel like I feel like we all as filmmakers
Speaker 3: start off as I would say, instead of Clark camp
Speaker 3: will go young Bruce Wayne even then somebody comes in
Speaker 3: and murders our parents in front of us, and then
Speaker 3: guess what, Batman shows up, and then Batman's never gonna lead,
Speaker 3: and Batman gets angry and Batman tracks people down right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sort of the story of every indie filmmaker. I
Speaker 3: did my first feature film about ten years ago now,
Speaker 3: and we you know, went to festivals, got a distributor,
Speaker 3: and then within a week of going online, I think
Speaker 3: we started on back in the day when Apple TV
Speaker 3: was the big thing. We started on Apple TV, but
Speaker 3: then went to all the other ones. But yeah, within
Speaker 3: a week of being on our first subscription video on
Speaker 3: demand or at whatever I guess it did, it's a
Speaker 3: VOD site. I started popping up on all of these
Speaker 3: piracy sites and they had the film. And with modern technology,
Speaker 3: you know, people just record the Somebody rented it once
Speaker 3: and then recorded the whole thing, so it's pristine quality.
Speaker 3: And instead of people going to our site or even
Speaker 3: when it's on Amazon Prime it's free to watch, so
Speaker 3: but we get money when people watch it. But when
Speaker 3: they go to other sites, it's there. And so I
Speaker 3: I was like, well, I'm going to stop this. So
Speaker 3: I did my research and sort of the positives and
Speaker 3: negatives of the copyright world, especially online, as it all
Speaker 3: goes through this this law, this US law called the DMCA,
Speaker 3: which stands for the Digital Millennial Copyright Act, which is
Speaker 3: an act in nineteen ninety eight. To give you a
Speaker 3: reference for how old it is, back back when people
Speaker 3: were on al aols right copies copyer, Yes, yes exactly,
Speaker 3: so you know it's created then, and it's got this
Speaker 3: sort of double sided blade. So on one side it
Speaker 3: is meant to protect copyright holders from their works being stolen.
Speaker 3: On the other side, it is meant to respect the
Speaker 3: First Amendment and to protect people who don't realize what
Speaker 3: they're doing. Unfortunately, that opens up the door for people
Speaker 3: to essentially run amok. And what the what the DMCA
Speaker 3: says is, UH, if you put somebody's copyright items online
Speaker 3: and you don't know it's copyrighted, uh, and it is
Speaker 3: not illegal until the copyright holder contacts you and says, hey,
Speaker 3: that's mine. That's illegal. If you use it for commercial purposes,
Speaker 3: then they can say, you know, okay, you've you've used it,
Speaker 3: so now you owe me for that benefit. But until
Speaker 3: you're contacted by the copyright holder, it is not illegal.
Speaker 3: And so what happens is these piracy sites put them
Speaker 3: online and then you, as a copyright holder, have to
Speaker 3: track them down and then figure out how to contact
Speaker 3: them and then send a very specifically worded document that
Speaker 3: matches what it says in the Digital Millennial Copyright Act
Speaker 3: to them, and then when they receive it, they have
Speaker 3: to quote the DMCA a reasonable amount of time, which
Speaker 3: the court has deemed I think between forty eight and
Speaker 3: seventy two hours to comply and if they don't take
Speaker 3: it down, then they are in violation law. But essentially,
Speaker 3: when I was spending I don't know, two hours a
Speaker 3: day finding sites, looking and finding the contact info, filling
Speaker 3: out this form, emailing it to them, and then you know,
Speaker 3: usually they take it down because they don't care about
Speaker 3: my film. They just care about people coming.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: And we got to but I was doing two hours
Speaker 3: a day and I burned out. I mean, as you know,
Speaker 3: us indie filmmakers are not we don't have the Warner
Speaker 3: Brothers army of attorneys. We don't We're often small, if
Speaker 3: not individual kind of productions. And it's just overwhelming. And
Speaker 3: I think that's one of the things that sort of
Speaker 3: the pirates bank on. And so I, with no coding knowledge,
Speaker 3: contacted a college friend of mine who's in it, and
Speaker 3: I was like, Hey, I got this idea. Let's let's
Speaker 3: help indie filmmakers like fight this thing that screws them
Speaker 3: that's mainly focused on these you know, the avengers, the
Speaker 3: big budget films that make all their money in the
Speaker 3: theaters or make them on you know, their HBO, Max's
Speaker 3: or whatever, and it doesn't hurt their bottom line. But
Speaker 3: you know, I remember calculating at one point, if I
Speaker 3: got a ninety nine sense actually I think I calculated
Speaker 3: if I got like fifty cents for every view, I
Speaker 3: would have made back the entire budget easily in the
Speaker 3: first year if and had access. But you know, you
Speaker 3: go to these sites and people like, oh, I don't
Speaker 3: want to pay, and they just and they watch and
Speaker 3: they've got more and more advanced, so they look like
Speaker 3: a Netflix. They look like a professional site until you
Speaker 3: sort of delve into them. But the normal user isn't
Speaker 3: going to delve into them, and they go, oh, this
Speaker 3: looks awesome, Oh I can watch this for free, and
Speaker 3: so yeah, So so my friend and I we created
Speaker 3: copyright slap dot Com that essentially automates the process so
Speaker 3: that it's so much faster to do, so that we
Speaker 3: can send, you know, hundreds of these takedowns and seconds
Speaker 3: so that producers don't get overwhelmed first don't.
Speaker 2: So okay, So the when you're when you're doing copyright infringement,
Speaker 2: so like there's the we're it's a gray area, and
Speaker 2: it seems like the the the pressure is on the
Speaker 2: copyright holder, not the pirate or the person who just
Speaker 2: doesn't know any better. Yeah, because there's there's people who
Speaker 2: upload to YouTube, you know, the Avengers, the entire movie because.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, and well you run into and so one
Speaker 3: of the things that balances out is this idea of
Speaker 3: fair use versus copyright infringement, which I also think fair Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so fair use is if you use a piece
Speaker 3: of uh a copyright material, but it's either a bleep
Speaker 3: transformative or it's used for commentary, uh yeah, or for
Speaker 3: kind of reporting.
Speaker 2: Reported I think is educational even then there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think educational. I think educational. Yeah, is is
Speaker 3: one of the big ones in there. And uh that
Speaker 3: allows you to use it, but you can't upload an
Speaker 3: entire film because you just.
Speaker 2: Put a commentary on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that's not but you know, you know the
Speaker 3: ones that the YouTube channels that do the breakdown of
Speaker 3: the films and sort of like, well, this was wrong,
Speaker 3: this was wrong, this was wrong. They're not using the
Speaker 3: whole film. They're using clips and they're talking specifically about it.
Speaker 3: And it's not people are watching that video not to
Speaker 3: watch the film. They're watching it to watch that video
Speaker 3: that is the commentary.
Speaker 2: Right, and they actually and YouTube has become very ridiculous
Speaker 2: about it now where now these copyright holders like Warner
Speaker 2: Brothers and stuff like that, they'll just start they just
Speaker 2: blanket it to go after anybody that even has a
Speaker 2: second of Avengers and one of these talking points that's
Speaker 2: no one's talking over because I've gotten hit with that.
Speaker 2: We have a series on an indie film Hustle that
Speaker 2: it's called the Director Series, which is is a commentary
Speaker 2: series about breaking down famous directors and their work, and
Speaker 2: I've been hit with that's constantly. I'm like, dude, it's
Speaker 2: completely fair use. But then the big boys will start
Speaker 2: pushing back on you and just like, well, we don't
Speaker 2: care if you want.
Speaker 3: To, well, but you have technically you have the law
Speaker 3: on your side there. I'm so. I am a big
Speaker 3: supporter of uh protecting those who have the copyright and
Speaker 3: them not getting screwed out of earnings. But I also
Speaker 3: believe fair use is fair use, and there are times
Speaker 3: and places for that that are appropriate. And one of
Speaker 3: the things that we we sort of say to our
Speaker 3: our users is know the difference between copyright infringement and
Speaker 3: fair use. If somebody is doing a commentary on your film,
Speaker 3: people are gonna watch that and then watch your film
Speaker 3: like you want that. That's a positive thing. It's it's
Speaker 3: kind of goes to the uh, you know, the Disney
Speaker 3: copyright thing related to cosplay, where they used to I
Speaker 3: don't know if they still do, but they they don't
Speaker 3: allow people to dress up because they don't want the name,
Speaker 3: you know, injured or whatever. And at the same time,
Speaker 3: if you think about it, everybody watching these cosplay people
Speaker 3: are like, oh, yeah, I love that film. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: go rewatch it. It's free advertising, and it's yeah, it's
Speaker 3: and YouTube is only started doing that because they've been
Speaker 3: losing lawsuits. They would they don't do it on their
Speaker 3: own until they're pushed. It's it's all about the money.
Speaker 2: It's always it seems to be always about the money.
Speaker 2: But that's just as they say, a tale is old
Speaker 2: as time.
Speaker 3: Uh well, I mean that's both sides. Both. The piracy
Speaker 3: is not about them actually caring about your film. It's
Speaker 3: them making money. And YouTube they make their ad sales
Speaker 3: regardless of if it's a copyright infringement or not, until
Speaker 3: some giant copyright holders start suing them.
Speaker 2: Well, and then that's the thing was that before, before
Speaker 2: the Internet, it was just DVDs and people would just
Speaker 2: burn out DVDs or burnout VHS's or copy and then
Speaker 2: sell them on the street. And it was a lot
Speaker 2: harder to kind of break that down, but there also
Speaker 2: was a very limited amount like if you were losing
Speaker 2: it's not like well in China they do that still,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's it's insane. But ever since the
Speaker 2: Internet showed up, now it's like a few hours later
Speaker 2: it's around the world and you're done. It's a second
Speaker 2: it hits. So that's why like all these big movies
Speaker 2: are hitting HBO Max right now, you know, and god
Speaker 2: Zilla versus Kiing Kong, which is a quote unquote theatrical release,
Speaker 2: that's that's been pirated. Moment it hit the online.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's gone. It's like I mean, I mean,
Speaker 3: I remember, I remember back in the day. Well remember
Speaker 3: back in the day the handheld videos in the theater.
Speaker 3: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: There was like there was like a signful episode where
Speaker 2: Jerry accidentally became like the ultimate bootlegg A tour and
Speaker 2: he would just like you know, and it's like how
Speaker 2: he shot it and everything. Yeah, and those are yeah,
Speaker 2: you would just see it, dude. You see people get
Speaker 2: up in the scene and walk around. But those are
Speaker 2: still those are still available, those are still being done
Speaker 2: in in other countries. And then yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean but now unfortunately, with with modern technology and computer
Speaker 3: a lot easier, you can just screen record and it's
Speaker 3: a perfect copy. Unfortunately, I'm not I'm not telling anybody
Speaker 3: anything they don't know. Sure, not telling pirates how to
Speaker 3: do their job. But it's it's easy and really annoying
Speaker 3: because at least when there's somebody standing in the way,
Speaker 3: the viewers like, Okay, maybe this isn't legit, or maybe
Speaker 3: maybe I'll buy the real thing.
Speaker 2: But the thing is too I think one of the
Speaker 2: things that I found that piracy what the studios have done,
Speaker 2: and I think indiaan and filmmakers need to do as well,
Speaker 2: is they've made it so easy to consume the content
Speaker 2: that it's harder now to go out and bootleg something
Speaker 2: for the most part, like go and go, find the file,
Speaker 2: download the file, get that file to play either on
Speaker 2: your computer or try to figure out a way to
Speaker 2: play it out on your TV. There's a technical process there.
Speaker 2: Most every day people aren't going to do. This is
Speaker 2: just my opinion is to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm biting my tongue on this one. What do
Speaker 3: you think I think on certain things, And I don't
Speaker 3: want to tell people how to pirate of course movies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean you're sort of talking about torrants, which are
Speaker 3: one of the aspects of it. But these days, unfortunately
Speaker 3: the streaming websites.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I saw my movie. Oh yeah, I saw
Speaker 2: my movie.
Speaker 3: There's my partner will kill me? So when I or
Speaker 3: when I sort of say this, so I'm going to
Speaker 3: be very careful of how I say it. There are
Speaker 3: three levels to piracy. The first one is streaming content,
Speaker 3: which is the most easily accessible. The second level is torrance,
Speaker 3: which is the second level of accessibility. And then there's
Speaker 3: a third one which I'm not allowed to talk about
Speaker 3: because it is very hard to access. But many hackers
Speaker 3: are the ones to access it, and so if I
Speaker 3: bring that up, I get in trouble.
Speaker 2: So that's fair enough.
Speaker 3: But well, so there's nothing returns. I think the torrents,
Speaker 3: you know, it takes a little bit of know how
Speaker 3: to do, but to go online and just search for
Speaker 3: a movie, unfortunately, is really easy and it'll pop up
Speaker 3: a lot of sites. I know, Google just recently, because
Speaker 3: of a lawsuit, change their search engine, so they should
Speaker 3: the illegal sites show up less because.
Speaker 2: Before you could literally just Google and you know, you
Speaker 2: google my name of my movie and boom does some
Speaker 2: site and in Malaysia pops up and it's like with
Speaker 2: my poster with all my IMDb information in there, and
Speaker 2: then I press play. I'm like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 2: Like it's there. I'm like, if I'm honored that you
Speaker 2: thought of my little film. But it's it was just
Speaker 2: pretty eye opening. It was like wow, like I get Avengers,
Speaker 2: I get Game of Thrones, I get that. That's there's big.
Speaker 2: There's big numbers. Big people are interested in them, but
Speaker 2: like to go after the indies like it's yeah.
Speaker 3: So the thing is the the streaming slash online piracy
Speaker 3: industry is a multi billion dollar industry. It's not a
Speaker 3: multi hundred thousand dollars, it's not a couple of million.
Speaker 3: It's a multi billion dollar industry.
Speaker 2: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: Because they've got so many different ways to make money
Speaker 3: when people show up, so that all they care about
Speaker 3: is traffic.
Speaker 2: So how so how do you make how what's the business?
Speaker 2: The piracy business model?
Speaker 3: Piracy business? So there's there's a bunch of different approaches.
Speaker 3: So one there's the subscription model. They they what is me?
Speaker 3: But it's you know, the thing they say is like
Speaker 3: pay ten dollars and you get every movie ever right
Speaker 3: per month?
Speaker 2: And so's I legally, but obviously those servers are not
Speaker 2: here in the US there, yeah, oh.
Speaker 3: They're yeah, they're not. It's not legal at all yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: like people don't, but they set them up so it
Speaker 3: looks like a Netflix, it looks like a Hulu. So
Speaker 3: it's so professional. The average you know, person who's searching
Speaker 3: online for movies doesn't know. So so one route is
Speaker 3: a subscription, second route is Google Ads. Right, the more traffic,
Speaker 3: the more ads are worth on sites. So if they
Speaker 3: can get millions of people to come by their web
Speaker 3: website every day, then the ads that they are making
Speaker 3: money that are posting on their site are worth more.
Speaker 2: So how is Google allowing us? How's Google and allowing this?
Speaker 3: Because Google doesn't have a no fly list for websites.
Speaker 2: And even then if even if you close one, fifteen
Speaker 2: pop up in its place.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a tangent on the Google
Speaker 3: Ads one which I find really interesting and I only
Speaker 3: know about because I had sort of a tutorial shown
Speaker 3: to me by one of the sort of copyright alliances
Speaker 3: that's also helping fight this. And what happens is you
Speaker 3: go to a website and in the background, another window
Speaker 3: automatically is open up without you knowing it. Andy, it
Speaker 3: scrolls up and down, and then a little pointer comes
Speaker 3: and clicks on an AD and so it looks like
Speaker 3: you're browsing a site and clicking through an ad, which
Speaker 3: is higher dollar pay to the web. Click throughs are
Speaker 3: much more than just traffic, so they have that. And
Speaker 3: then there is the sort of last route, which a
Speaker 3: lot of people unless you have virus software on your system,
Speaker 3: that's pretty good. Then you go to any of these
Speaker 3: piracy sites. The last one is malware, so these sites
Speaker 3: also try and put malware on your system while you're watching.
Speaker 3: When you go oh, click to view, yes, you click,
Speaker 3: which is also an acceptance of whatever permissions, they add
Speaker 3: a little trojan horse, you know, backdoor thing on your
Speaker 3: computer and then they sell in bulk bundles of essentially
Speaker 3: zombie computers to nefarious people who want to use them.
Speaker 3: And that's one way that you know, these people can
Speaker 3: do U what is it a d uh D d
Speaker 3: o s the when you brute force attack a website
Speaker 3: with a lot of different computers at once. Essentially they're
Speaker 3: buying these packages of all these computers that people don't
Speaker 3: know and it's very small, that's you know, that's happening
Speaker 3: in the background, so that people don't even know their
Speaker 3: computers are being used, and they can make money off
Speaker 3: of that, yeah and so and so if you look
Speaker 3: at how they make their money, the actual content doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: People to the site, so they go, they go, oh,
Speaker 3: I've created a bot that can scrape all of IMDb
Speaker 3: and then it finds if they find one thing, one
Speaker 3: version of the movie, quote it up and boom done done.
Speaker 2: And this in the same system goes with any kind
Speaker 2: of content, whether it's piracy of software, piracy of music,
Speaker 2: piracy of porn, and any anything that people are interested
Speaker 2: in to download or watch. It's just so movies are
Speaker 2: just one of many forms of media that are being
Speaker 2: being used for this business model.
Speaker 3: Just I just like to say, if anybody is in
Speaker 3: the porn industry listening, porn is also a movie. So
Speaker 3: that is not a separate category. You are a filmmaker too,
Speaker 3: just a very particular subgenre.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a very particular subgenre, so so much of.
Speaker 3: A subgenre that in a deeper voice for this, we
Speaker 3: should be talking in particular.
Speaker 2: There should be it's a very particular subgenre. But oh oh,
Speaker 2: I think a pizza A pizza man just knocked on my.
Speaker 3: Door, give me a second, no joke, but actually, uh,
Speaker 3: piracy online piracy is a big issue for the porn industry,
Speaker 3: Oh she goes. You know again, they make a lot
Speaker 3: of their money on either I believe subscription services for
Speaker 3: like a porn in start or their particular production company,
Speaker 3: or coming to their specific site, and they make the
Speaker 3: content for their site, right. I mean it's kind of
Speaker 3: like a social media influencer you gain by people coming
Speaker 3: to your site and you or your your page, your handle, whatever.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of porn sites it's going to
Speaker 3: those sites and viewing the content because they make their
Speaker 3: money quote unquote legitimately via Google ad sales or things
Speaker 3: like that, but they you know, probably particularize their content
Speaker 3: for their the niche group that is going to those sites.
Speaker 3: But when it's when it's pulled away, there's just another
Speaker 3: piracy to site.
Speaker 2: So let me ask you a question, what is the
Speaker 2: actual effect of online piracy to an independent filmmaker? Like,
Speaker 2: I mean, look, were the people that were watching it
Speaker 2: on a pirated site actually ever like were they really
Speaker 2: ever going to be a customer?
Speaker 3: Is the question I'm asking. That is a very good
Speaker 3: quest question And when I've thought about a lot, and
Speaker 3: I think is always asked, and I think there are tiers. Right, Uh,
Speaker 3: there's the people who will never pay for anything, and
Speaker 3: those people might not go to watch content. However, if
Speaker 3: that content is on YouTube with ads, if that content
Speaker 3: is on Amazon Prime, uh, on tube yeah, two b TV. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know a Roku channel that IMDb TV is coming
Speaker 3: out and it has you know, ad based content that's
Speaker 3: free to watch. Uh, So would they go to those
Speaker 3: which are also free? The then there are those that
Speaker 3: it's easy to find. They search online if it if
Speaker 3: the first one was a two b tv, uh, you
Speaker 3: know Amazon Prime, they click it, but it's not. So
Speaker 3: The idea essentially is if you can whack a mole
Speaker 3: enough of these sites so that your your main content
Speaker 3: that you want people to go to is on that
Speaker 3: first search page or the first or second search page,
Speaker 3: the chance is that somebody's going to click one of those,
Speaker 3: you know, AVOD ad based video on demand streaming sites,
Speaker 3: which they don't have to pay for, but you do
Speaker 3: make money off of the percentage chance of them clicking
Speaker 3: on that goes up dramatically. I mean, yeah, how much.
Speaker 3: That is a good question. So I think the number
Speaker 3: of people who watch online is an insane number. I
Speaker 3: had some statistics.
Speaker 2: I think, well, I remember what I'm going to cut
Speaker 2: you off. But I remember when Game of Thrones was,
Speaker 2: which was the number one pirated show I think in history,
Speaker 2: I think ever something like that, but it was one
Speaker 2: year specifically that it just dominated, and the producers of
Speaker 2: the show said publicly that they're very thankful for the
Speaker 2: piracy because it wouldn't have been as popular of a
Speaker 2: show without the piracy, and so many people would either
Speaker 2: pirate seize or two and then to get the latest thing.
Speaker 2: Instead of pirates fired in each episode, they just went
Speaker 2: ahead and got a subscription to HBO go or whatever
Speaker 2: it was at the time. They said it was extremely
Speaker 2: it was extremely helpful to building the brand because so
Speaker 2: many people bootlegged it and so many people watched it
Speaker 2: that at the end of the day, it actually helped them. Now,
Speaker 2: again that's a very specific case. I'm not saying copy
Speaker 2: you know pirates. Here's here's my my my asterisk. If
Speaker 2: we're gonna have Ferry bonds it, yeah, very much.
Speaker 3: My asteris is HBO makes a lot of money on merchandise,
Speaker 3: that Kama Thrones makes a lot of money on merchandise.
Speaker 3: That their bottom line is the more people they get
Speaker 3: to watch, the more people are gonna buy the dragon
Speaker 3: egg mug or the you know whatever that they make
Speaker 3: a lot of money on that. So part of their
Speaker 3: pitch is the most number of eyes and hbos and
Speaker 3: HBO's model has very often been and they've sort of
Speaker 3: figured it out in a nice, in a smart way.
Speaker 3: It's not about the greater audience. It's about a niche audience.
Speaker 3: And if we can get a viewer, he says, Oh,
Speaker 3: I got to see this show and it's nowhere else
Speaker 3: really other than I mean, I guess on piracy. But
Speaker 3: they want to see it in the moment, then they
Speaker 3: can do it and they'll get subspidify. But I've also
Speaker 3: I mean back in the day, I remember talking to
Speaker 3: a friend and I think I was watching Game of
Speaker 3: Thrones and you know, they were in another country and
Speaker 3: it wasn't as easily accessible, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: did you see that episode of Like oh, well, we're
Speaker 3: you know, we're ten minutes behind because we got to
Speaker 3: watch it on a piracy site. I was like, you
Speaker 3: know they're recording. They're like, oh no, was lying and
Speaker 3: putting it online pretty much immediately.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
Speaker 2: and now back to the show. Yeah, And that's and
Speaker 2: that's another thing as well that I've I've mentioned. I
Speaker 2: mentioned that in my book and I mentioned it elsewhere,
Speaker 2: that if you can use your movie as a lead
Speaker 2: generator for other revenue streams, the actual exploitation of the
Speaker 2: film is not the business. That's not the main business.
Speaker 2: Because all the studios have done that. Disney's main business
Speaker 2: is not making movies. It's everything else that they have
Speaker 2: in their ecosystem. It's now HBO and Warner Brothers is
Speaker 2: kind of picking up on that. Disney is still the
Speaker 2: king of that. And their system is so instant, their
Speaker 2: foundation and infrastructure is so well put together that I
Speaker 2: think I think it's Disney, Warner Brothers, and maybe Universal,
Speaker 2: and I think that's pretty much it. Then the other
Speaker 2: guys are still trying to catch up. Paramount still trying
Speaker 2: to catch up. They don't they don't have the infrastructure
Speaker 2: that Disney does. But you know, sure they make everyone say, oh,
Speaker 2: you made a billion dollars off or two billion dollars
Speaker 2: off of Avengers or whatever the hell it was. That's
Speaker 2: nice money, but it's nothing compared to what they sell
Speaker 2: and merch it's nothing to compare. It's nothing compared to
Speaker 2: the parks, rides and all the million of other things
Speaker 2: that they sell. My buddy worked at Disney as an animator,
Speaker 2: and they brought him in, brought the whole team in
Speaker 2: to tell them how they made their money. And they said,
Speaker 2: Frozen okay, which made a billion dollars at the box office.
Speaker 2: A billion dollars at the box office. The dresses, the
Speaker 2: Anna and what's her name is what I forgot her name?
Speaker 3: Elsa?
Speaker 2: Thank you, Elsa?
Speaker 3: How dare you?
Speaker 2: How dare me? I know? I'm sorry Elsa. And Anna's
Speaker 2: dresses alone, the ones that my daughter bought. My daughter's
Speaker 2: brought like seven times because they kept growing and breaking
Speaker 2: and ripping them off because the wouldn't take them off.
Speaker 2: A billion on the dresses alone, Oh I bet, I.
Speaker 3: Bet there's some some digital dress that you can buy
Speaker 3: on some game that is an a dress or an
Speaker 3: else address that they've also made a billion dollars off
Speaker 3: of that. It costs just the coding. I mean to
Speaker 3: make a nod to that little guy over your shoulder, Yes,
Speaker 3: I mean Star Wars and Lucas were the first to
Speaker 3: do it. It was he said, you know, it's not
Speaker 3: about it's not about the movie. Pouts of merchandising.
Speaker 2: It's about the lunchpots as idiots.
Speaker 3: That's I mean, that's what mel Brooks in Spaceball write,
Speaker 3: Oh you got to come to the you know, the
Speaker 3: whole thing. And it's because that's the truth.
Speaker 2: Spaceballs a flamethrower. I still want that. I still want flame.
Speaker 2: I still want Spaceball's a flamethrower. It's with the kids.
Speaker 2: They love it. You know the deal? Do you know
Speaker 2: what the deal was with the Spaceballs? How George Lucas
Speaker 2: gave him rights to do it because he asked, do
Speaker 2: you know the whole star? I'mious on a side note, everybody,
Speaker 2: so Spaceballs. If you haven't seen Spaceball, go watch Spaceballs
Speaker 2: because it's amazing. But he called George Lucas, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: make this parody film on on Star Wars and I
Speaker 2: don't want to get sued. So what do we need
Speaker 2: to do here? Because he could arguably make it. But
Speaker 2: he goes, you can make it, but you can't sell
Speaker 2: any merchandise. That's why you can't. You never see Spaceball's
Speaker 2: merchandise anywhere. And that's that was the deal. So that's
Speaker 2: why you and that that he completely made a joke
Speaker 2: of it because all those cool things that you saw
Speaker 2: in the movie, all that merch I would have who
Speaker 2: wouldn't have killed against? I think there's some stuff now
Speaker 2: that comes out everyone. I'm sure.
Speaker 3: I'm sure if I look on Etsy, I could find that.
Speaker 2: Oh you can find something, but no mass. No mass at.
Speaker 3: The time of the release, searching Etsy for flamethrowers exactly.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure somebody has made this make small flamethrower.
Speaker 3: I can only get it if it's attached to a drone.
Speaker 2: Obviously, you know how that goes, all right, So with
Speaker 2: so we've we've obviously told everybody the world is coming
Speaker 2: to an end. Well, we'll never make any money online anymore.
Speaker 2: I get all the way.
Speaker 3: So no, but I do, I do agree way I
Speaker 3: want to just I just want to pause and just
Speaker 3: jump back to something that you said, which you was
Speaker 3: talking about the bigger industry. But I also think it
Speaker 3: applies to indie filmmakers, where the easier you make it
Speaker 3: for UH users or audience to view your content, yes,
Speaker 3: the more audience are going to get yes. And so
Speaker 3: you know, I initially was not the biggest fan of
Speaker 3: sort of ad based video on demand because you get
Speaker 3: paid pennies. However, the amount of people who watch that
Speaker 3: because they don't want to spend you know, five dollars
Speaker 3: ten dollars two ninety nine for something that if you
Speaker 3: can get them to those free sites, that's how the
Speaker 3: indie filmmakers I think are going to make the money.
Speaker 3: And as you said, sort of leveraging, right, leveraging one
Speaker 3: film to make the next one, and so in that
Speaker 3: that's that's one of the things. The goal of copyright
Speaker 3: slap was is to sort of play whack a mole
Speaker 3: and make it much easier to whack that mole if
Speaker 3: everybody knows that game. If not, then I'm just making
Speaker 3: really weird references. But to sort of send out as
Speaker 3: many DMCA violation notices as easy as possible to get
Speaker 3: these things take and down work.
Speaker 2: So this is the counter This is how you counter
Speaker 2: online piracy. It's just sending out these notices. But do
Speaker 2: they actually take them down?
Speaker 3: So there's we are running statistics, but we'd say about
Speaker 3: sixty percent, if not a little bit more, take them
Speaker 3: down as soon as they get it. Now, will they
Speaker 3: put it up the next week? We don't have the
Speaker 3: numbers on that, but they will take it down pretty
Speaker 3: easily because they don't care. Literally, it's more hassle to
Speaker 3: them to potentially deal with somebody bothering them than to
Speaker 3: just comply. And they know they got to get If
Speaker 3: they put it up again a week or two weeks
Speaker 3: or a month later, then that has to be found
Speaker 3: and it has to happen, but then they can take
Speaker 3: it down again. And so how it works is, yeah,
Speaker 3: you get the DMCA violation notice. Now, as you sort
Speaker 3: of said at the beginning of this podcast, depends where
Speaker 3: the server is though, because the DMCA is a US law. However,
Speaker 3: there are many international treaty that then relate to copyright
Speaker 3: and so a lot of countries respect it. Some don't,
Speaker 3: and they're super annoying. I won't name those countries, but
Speaker 3: they're like, if you have uh, you know, two signatures
Speaker 3: by a notary and you have a court document and I,
Speaker 3: then we'll consider taking it down. And I was like, ah, well,
Speaker 3: don't worry because covers app also sends all these sites
Speaker 3: to the Intellectual Property Division of uh the United States
Speaker 3: of Defense. So yeah, well you just talked to them exactly,
Speaker 3: but yeah, so you have that if they do take
Speaker 3: it down, great, If they don't take it down. Then technically,
Speaker 3: if you, as a copyright holder, have a copyright uh
Speaker 3: for the for the beeast. So this is this is
Speaker 3: one sort of aspect of the of the law. You
Speaker 3: cannot sue for copyright infringement unless you have a copyright
Speaker 3: on the the item that you are you want to
Speaker 3: you want to take legal action off. Now you do
Speaker 3: own the copyright, but to take legal action, it needs
Speaker 3: to be copyright registered. Wait you do the read registered? Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is you know it's what twenty dollars? It needed
Speaker 3: thirty five now, yeah, okay, it's gone up. Back in
Speaker 3: my day.
Speaker 2: Back in my day, it was twenty dollars. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: by the way, just so everybody knows, in regards to copyrighting,
Speaker 2: you when you apply for the copyright, you're protected from
Speaker 2: the moment you've submitted and paid for the thing, because
Speaker 2: it will take six to eight months to actually get
Speaker 2: if you're lucky, the actual copyright certificate back.
Speaker 3: And on top of it, I believe it's ninety days.
Speaker 3: I have to verify that. But if you have copyright infringement,
Speaker 3: if you register the copyright within ninety days of the infringement,
Speaker 3: you can still take legal action from something that happened
Speaker 3: ninety days ago. No photographers do that because photography is
Speaker 3: got huge piracy online.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I've as far as piracy photography
Speaker 2: is concerned, like, if you have a DMCA notice and like,
Speaker 2: hey man, you're using a photo of mine on your website,
Speaker 2: take it down, that's pretty much the end of the conversation.
Speaker 2: Right they can get can they assue you?
Speaker 3: So well, here's here's where it gets interesting with photographers.
Speaker 3: If a website is using it specifically for commercial value,
Speaker 3: then you have so essentially some company, one of the
Speaker 3: famous ones company is selling skateboards and a photographer took
Speaker 3: a picture of a skateboarder, and the company used the photo,
Speaker 3: took the photo from Instagram from that professional photographer, and
Speaker 3: then essentially made an ad and posted it to Instagram.
Speaker 3: It was like, yeah, blah blah blah, look at our
Speaker 3: our you know, our skates. And just because it had
Speaker 3: their you know, skateboarding wheels or board or whatever in
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that they have the right to use
Speaker 3: somebody's photograph. So this person contacted them is like, hey,
Speaker 3: you're using my com in an ad, So either this
Speaker 3: is a reasonable amount that you should pay me for
Speaker 3: that use or I'm going to assue you. And even
Speaker 3: if they take it down, they already use it in
Speaker 3: an ad. They are generating income for a company, right,
Speaker 3: so you get so that gives a photographers get a
Speaker 3: little bit more leverage. It's a little bit harder for
Speaker 3: in the filmmaking world because it's not really an ad.
Speaker 3: It's content that they're reposting.
Speaker 2: Right except but yeah, but like if you have but
Speaker 2: like a lot of news organizations use you know, blogs
Speaker 2: use images constantly from anywhere anywhere.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and so then you can, you know, DMCA,
Speaker 3: or you can sort of DMCA slash have you know,
Speaker 3: an attorney friend write a note saying, hey, you use this,
Speaker 3: we would like to be compensated.
Speaker 2: And then that so it becomes a question like is
Speaker 2: this going to be worth going to court for?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, And so usually you ask for a little
Speaker 3: less than you might get a settlement, and therefore you
Speaker 3: have an advantage. So the DMCA says, if somebody is
Speaker 3: violating your copyright, you can for up to thirty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars per occurrence.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
Speaker 2: and now back to the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and One of the great things of the COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen relief bill that was passed this past December is
Speaker 3: something called the Case Act, and that initiated for the
Speaker 3: first time in the United States a Small Claims Copyright Court.
Speaker 3: Now it's it's in the process of being set up
Speaker 3: right now, but it essentially allows smaller kind of indie
Speaker 3: copyright holders to go put forth a claim to I
Speaker 3: believe it's three not judge, I guess judges, three judges
Speaker 3: who are you know, people who judiciate this copyright content,
Speaker 3: and then the defend and can send in documents and
Speaker 3: this three in judges make a decision and they can
Speaker 3: then find in favor of the copyright in front the
Speaker 3: person whose copyright was infringed, and it can be up
Speaker 3: to fifteen thousand dollars. So one of the biggest hurdles
Speaker 3: usually for copyright holders in going beyond just a simple
Speaker 3: DMCA violation notice is you have to pay for an attorney,
Speaker 3: you have to pay a lot of court fees, and
Speaker 3: so that was hard. So this small Claims Court sort
Speaker 3: of opens the door and allows the smaller guy to
Speaker 3: be able to fight against these Now, the heart the
Speaker 3: other ASTERIXL throne there is. Finding who is behind these
Speaker 3: streaming sites is hard, right because you've got to figure
Speaker 3: out who you're suing right now if it's you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes if you if you dig into the who is
Speaker 3: information on a site, somebody is not smart enough to
Speaker 3: hide the fact that their email address and their and
Speaker 3: their name and address are the admin email address kind
Speaker 3: of buried in there. You can you know, screenshot, keep
Speaker 3: that and then maybe use it as an attack m
Speaker 3: But it's hard because you have to have a lawsuit
Speaker 3: against somebody to be able to get money, right, you
Speaker 3: have to figure out where those assets are, and they
Speaker 3: hide a lot so one of the other So that
Speaker 3: is the hard side of it. One of the other things, though,
Speaker 3: that we try to do is different is since we
Speaker 3: care more about Batman's style revenge on these pirates than
Speaker 3: necessarily making a lot of money. Beyond the fat fact
Speaker 3: that we we I guess sell our service for very inexpensive.
Speaker 3: We also compile a blacklist of piracy sites that we
Speaker 3: find from our users interactions anonymously sort of figuring out
Speaker 3: which one are just pure piracy sites, and then we
Speaker 3: take that list in once a month we send to
Speaker 3: essentially the Internet Crimes Division of the United States and
Speaker 3: say here is a list of the sites that we
Speaker 3: know are illegal, please take action. And they've been open
Speaker 3: to that. It's hard to keep track of like if
Speaker 3: they do anything, but they are open to us sending
Speaker 3: a file and we give it into format so they
Speaker 3: can integrate it into their system very easily. So we
Speaker 3: sort of are pushing to do things like that because
Speaker 3: that'll have more of an impact if we can just
Speaker 3: take down a whole site.
Speaker 2: Well, of course, because if there thinks out tens of thousands,
Speaker 2: if not more films that have been put up there,
Speaker 2: it's fascinating. And so so copyright slap dot com, what's
Speaker 2: the process, What does filmmakers have to do to use
Speaker 2: your service? And how does it work?
Speaker 3: So it's as simple as we possibly could make it.
Speaker 3: So yeah, copyright slap dot com and you just go
Speaker 3: and you register as a user, and then once you've registered,
Speaker 3: you can initiate a new project or start a new project.
Speaker 3: Project essentially is your film or we were expanding into
Speaker 3: books because online literary piracy is a big thing. We're
Speaker 3: slowly sort of expanding as much as we can to
Speaker 3: protect different copyright holders. So you register a project and you.
Speaker 3: Essentially we ask you for the specific information needed to
Speaker 3: fill out a DMCA violation form, as you know the
Speaker 3: title of the film, when it was published, the original
Speaker 3: location of where the film can be found, be it
Speaker 3: the film's website or the Amazon Prime link or something
Speaker 3: like that, and then you submit that it saves and
Speaker 3: you started this new project, and then we run in
Speaker 3: thirty day cycles. They can click and activate the project.
Speaker 3: Our normal thirty day cycle is twenty dollars for unlimited
Speaker 3: number of takedowns. To put that in perspective, one of
Speaker 3: the reasons when I was starting out didn't go to
Speaker 3: a site like this is it was essentially our competitors
Speaker 3: charge just under two hundred dollars. I believe it's one
Speaker 3: hundred and ninety nine dollars per single takedown of Jesus
Speaker 3: Christ's particular. There are some that are a little bit
Speaker 3: less expensive, but then you have to enter all of
Speaker 3: the information that we ask for once every time, and
Speaker 3: you have to do like jump through a number of hoops.
Speaker 3: So our goal is like make it as simple as possible,
Speaker 3: So for us, it's twenty dollars and then whatever you
Speaker 3: find online as a URL, that's an infringement. You can
Speaker 3: just copy and paste that into a form we have
Speaker 3: you hit enter and we take care of everything, and
Speaker 3: then we also keep track of it. And essentially we
Speaker 3: have a system where if there's a contact info directly
Speaker 3: for the website owner, they get a DMCA violation of this.
Speaker 3: If they don't comply, then we escalate it, allow the
Speaker 3: user to escalate it, and that goes to the online
Speaker 3: service provider, the person hosting the website. And one of
Speaker 3: our goals is if the website owner may ignore it,
Speaker 3: but the online service provider doesn't want to legal content
Speaker 3: on their server. And there are certain laws that say
Speaker 3: if you're a winger that somebody is hosting illegal activity,
Speaker 3: you are not allowed to host.
Speaker 2: Them, or you're going to get you're liable.
Speaker 3: And there's so I'm going to add to it. There
Speaker 3: is a bill sort of coming out or a up
Speaker 3: for discussion, an update to the Digital Millennial Copyright Act.
Speaker 3: So Senator Tom Tillis from North Carolina have put forth
Speaker 3: at the beginning of this year, at the end of
Speaker 3: last year, the Digital Copyright Act of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: and that is aiming to update the DMCA so that
Speaker 3: these online service providers can't hide from when they know
Speaker 3: there's a legal activity that the loopholes that a lot
Speaker 3: of places get away with because the copyright the MCA
Speaker 3: was written in nineteen ninety eight sort of closing those
Speaker 3: so it's not as easy for them to hide without
Speaker 3: being illegal immediately. And yeah, so we sent Yeah, so
Speaker 3: we send to the website owners. Then we send to
Speaker 3: the online service providers. Sometimes they're multiple and if there's
Speaker 3: sort of two levels there. The website owners sometimes they
Speaker 3: reply back and they're like, we took care of but
Speaker 3: it's gone, stop bugging us. And then if they don't,
Speaker 3: sometimes the service providers go, well, we've removed that account,
Speaker 3: and so then that actually ends up taking down the
Speaker 3: website or taking down the page at least, but not
Speaker 3: even the website doing it, just these the online service
Speaker 3: providers like, we're going to we're going to remove this
Speaker 3: entire website if you don't comply with this. So then
Speaker 3: they can apply. And one of the features that we
Speaker 3: are in the works of adding right now so this
Speaker 3: will be dated hopefully in within the next couple to
Speaker 3: few weeks, is the ability for if the online service
Speaker 3: providers don't respond and help get it taken down, that
Speaker 3: users will be able to send every thirty days violation
Speaker 3: notices to everybody associated with the website. And the goal
Speaker 3: of that one is if every thirty if we can
Speaker 3: be annoying enough that they get enough notices saying they're
Speaker 3: in violation, that they will just take it down so
Speaker 3: that they don't have to deal with the users.
Speaker 4: Interesting, well, you're you are you are the batman of
Speaker 4: cop No no man, I mean, you are a vicious
Speaker 4: It makes me angry, I'm And the more ways that
Speaker 4: we can, we can, you know, go and help get
Speaker 4: them taken down.
Speaker 3: I just I you know, it's it's when when you
Speaker 3: see how it impacts your film, right, mean, these indie
Speaker 3: well a lot of these indie films go straight to
Speaker 3: straight to video on demand, and it's like you put
Speaker 3: your sweat and blood into this and this is your
Speaker 3: passion and you care so much, and then somebody's gonna
Speaker 3: come and steal it and then they get it for
Speaker 3: free and you already are making it free for people,
Speaker 3: like come on.
Speaker 2: It's enough, you know, yeah, well listen.
Speaker 3: And they don't need to make their billions of dollars.
Speaker 3: You just need to be able to make you know,
Speaker 3: make your money back and make sure you've paid all
Speaker 3: of your cast and crew and that they've been happy,
Speaker 3: and that maybe you make a potentially I mean, fingers crossed.
Speaker 3: This is not the thing that always happens. Fingers cross
Speaker 3: you make a profit, so that you could then put
Speaker 3: that towards the next film. Stop it stops.
Speaker 2: You're talking. Just you talk, crazy talk. It's crazy talk,
Speaker 2: crazy talk. It's all the same. Look Tebra per am,
Speaker 2: I the only one I aveted the piano. Okay, you
Speaker 2: had to.
Speaker 3: Time. Now is there a you mentioned they might be
Speaker 3: because I was read friend sing it per commentary.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
Speaker 2: and now back to the show. Yes, exactly. Wow, Wow,
Speaker 2: let's all sing the Happy Birthday song.
Speaker 3: So that's now legal though that's not legal? Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: A couple of years ago it turned out that they
Speaker 3: the author of it, had released it publicly like hundreds
Speaker 3: of like one hundred years ago, and they were illegally
Speaker 3: collecting copyright for it.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, So now you can use the Happy Birthday
Speaker 2: again and you can.
Speaker 3: Sing Happy Birthday without owing anybody money.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. Now you said earlier off air that you
Speaker 2: have a promo code for any Indie Film Huszle tribe
Speaker 2: members if they want to get their film uh you know,
Speaker 2: work copyrights, use copyright slap to help protect their films online.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, as I said, we made very inexpensive, so
Speaker 3: twenty dollars a month, but we created a special Indie
Speaker 3: Film Hustle promo code. So I'm going to tell you
Speaker 3: that code should be pretty easy for everybody. It is
Speaker 3: Indie Film Hustle all one word, all lowercase. Yes, that
Speaker 3: is the proper code, and that's entered when they activate
Speaker 3: a project, and that will give them three months at
Speaker 3: fifty percent of the actually, so ten dollars a month
Speaker 3: for three months and they'll use all three months. You
Speaker 3: could use it one month and you know stop and truthfully,
Speaker 3: if you if you use it for even a single day,
Speaker 3: you can you can enter and send DMCA violation notices
Speaker 3: to every single person infringing on your your site or
Speaker 3: your content in that day because there's no limit and
Speaker 3: it's no extra cost, you know, per one. We have
Speaker 3: we have a number of users who they use it
Speaker 3: every three months. They sign in for one month, they
Speaker 3: spend a few days and they enter every single illegal
Speaker 3: thing and they update, you know, things that haven't been
Speaker 3: complied with, they escalate and then they you know, they
Speaker 3: stop using it for a couple of months and then
Speaker 3: come back, you know, three months later and say, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna use it again. And here's another story.
Speaker 2: Bucks less rock and roll.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, and it has had an impact with my
Speaker 3: films in getting them off of streaming sites. And it's
Speaker 3: you know, I think it also it depends on the
Speaker 3: genre of film and and also the length of time
Speaker 3: it's been online, you know, the logger it's been online.
Speaker 3: If you've been able to squash these sites from adding
Speaker 3: the content and they've taken it down, then they're less
Speaker 3: likely to put it back up. But if it's you know,
Speaker 3: if it's newer and been there for the last number
Speaker 3: of years, you know, it's probably already been up and
Speaker 3: people keep adding it. One thing we have seen is
Speaker 3: because of the pandemic and people are at home more,
Speaker 3: it's not just it's not just the action or horror
Speaker 3: films that are gaining the content. It is it's sort
Speaker 3: of everything everything is up in getting pirated. I mean,
Speaker 3: we had one person who it's uh it was, yeah,
Speaker 3: a documentary and they were like, we are seeing so
Speaker 3: much piracy. I mean, you know, I won't tooot our
Speaker 3: own horns, but it was, you know, we love your
Speaker 3: site because we can put in so many you know,
Speaker 3: takedowns every single day, but like, is this normal to
Speaker 3: have this much piracy? And unfortunately, because of the pandemic
Speaker 3: and sort of the switch over to two people watching
Speaker 3: a lot, you know, at home, it's up so much.
Speaker 3: It's it's I mean, it's also it's also up more
Speaker 3: on the on the Amazon Primes, on the two BtVS
Speaker 3: as well, which is good for filmmakers. It's just frustrating
Speaker 3: because it's like, just give me one penny, Just give
Speaker 3: me one penny for every hour you watch and it'll help.
Speaker 2: Which is essentially which is essentially what Amazon Prime is
Speaker 2: paying you if you could either get your film on
Speaker 2: Amazon Prime anymore.
Speaker 3: And that's a whole other conversation.
Speaker 2: But there is a lot of there's a lot of
Speaker 2: ways you can still make money with your film, especially
Speaker 2: avad is the future. I think that is where a
Speaker 2: lot of money is being made right now. It's the
Speaker 2: strongest sector for independent filmmakers doing or trying to make
Speaker 2: money in vod because s VOD if you can get
Speaker 2: a deal. Great, but that's rare. H. T VOT is dead,
Speaker 2: it's essentially almost dead. But TVA exactly transactional like paying
Speaker 2: two ninety nine. I've always stold people. I'm like, ti
Speaker 2: vot is just a holdover from the Blockbuster video store days.
Speaker 2: That's all it is. It's just you're holding it over.
Speaker 2: It's an older concept. And I don't know, I mean,
Speaker 2: how did you have any numbers on how these these
Speaker 2: Disney Because I know Disney's like releasing the premium for
Speaker 2: like twenty bucks a pop or something like that, Like
Speaker 2: they're gonna do that with Black Widow. Like Black Widow
Speaker 2: I think might actually get some money. Like a good
Speaker 2: amount of people might might pay to see Black Widow
Speaker 2: because it's a Marvel movie. So it's a it's the
Speaker 2: first real test because they did it with you know,
Speaker 2: a couple.
Speaker 3: Of Wonder Woman nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: But that wasn't a paid a Bousan paid now. No, No,
Speaker 2: that was free, Max, Yeah, that was free. Now I'm
Speaker 2: talking about like paying twenty bones up front right away,
Speaker 2: and the only place you can get it is by
Speaker 2: paying the twenty bucks for that thirty or sixty day
Speaker 2: window I think the Marvel movie will pro and we're
Speaker 2: so hot, like we're hungry for Marvel.
Speaker 3: I think I think all the people with their home theaters,
Speaker 3: it's in there. I do think it's I do think
Speaker 3: that will be more popular once the once we get
Speaker 3: over this hurdle of the pandemic where you can actually
Speaker 3: watch things as groups, you know, like, oh, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: pay forty dollars, but we got you know, seven friends
Speaker 3: over and we're chilling. That works a lot easier than
Speaker 3: I'm gonna pay forty dollars and it's me by myself
Speaker 3: or like, you know, me and my significant other right
Speaker 3: that it's it's a little bit harder. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: I think I don't have any specific numbers, but I
Speaker 3: know for the HBO Max is, they've been pretty happy, oh,
Speaker 3: on their individual releases because it gets people to join
Speaker 3: the subscription, and usually it's it's all about getting people
Speaker 3: to join because maybe their retention rate is forty percent,
Speaker 3: but they got supporting that more than they normally would have.
Speaker 3: You know, no, what is BO Max.
Speaker 2: What HBO Max has done, man is is I mean
Speaker 2: it's pissed off a lot of filmmakers, a lot of
Speaker 2: big time filmmakers and and and actors and stuff because
Speaker 2: they're not getting their normal paydays. But i've off off
Speaker 2: off record, but I can't say who, but the payments
Speaker 2: that I've heard from people on the inside of these
Speaker 2: actors because they all get bonuses based on box office
Speaker 2: when that was taken off, They're like, look, we're just
Speaker 2: going to give you a X dollar to just be happy.
Speaker 2: You good with that?
Speaker 3: Well, well, I mean so yeah, there's well, there's a
Speaker 3: number of things. I'm I'm pretty active in the SAG
Speaker 3: after the film and TV radio union, and one of
Speaker 3: the big gains that they gained in their last TV
Speaker 3: theatrical negotiations was they had the foresight to say, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: We're cool with you know, theatrical and.
Speaker 3: We and releases and we you know that's important, but
Speaker 3: we want to talk about streaming and online usage. And
Speaker 3: that was their big focus and I think it is
Speaker 3: going to is paying off a lot better because that
Speaker 3: was their shift in Okay, we got to make sure
Speaker 3: that actors are covered here. And that was before the pandemic,
Speaker 3: and it was just you know, that's the trend that
Speaker 3: things are going. I think I think the movies that
Speaker 3: will be big for you know, the releases directly online
Speaker 3: like The Black Widow are going to be the same
Speaker 3: movies that will do well in theaters that you know
Speaker 3: you want to see with a you know, a big
Speaker 3: screen and surround sound. That I mean I went last
Speaker 3: I saw. I remember seeing Captain Marvel in the theaters
Speaker 3: and in the last ten minutes somebody let their kid
Speaker 3: run up but now in the aisle screaming, and I
Speaker 3: was like, are you kidding me? Like, I'm here, this
Speaker 3: is my movie experience.
Speaker 2: And I paid, I paid good money to be here.
Speaker 2: Oh no, dude, don't even get me start.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm like an Alamo draft House. This is
Speaker 3: not an ad for Alama draft House. I have no
Speaker 3: association with them. But the fact that day at the
Speaker 3: beginning are like, if you answer a cell phone call,
Speaker 3: we will kick you out. If you open your cell
Speaker 3: phone and we see the screen on, we'll give you
Speaker 3: a warning and then we'll kick you out and you
Speaker 3: don't get your money back. I'm like, yes, because it's
Speaker 3: like I'm paid, I paid me here, and I think,
Speaker 3: you know it's it's changing the types of movies do
Speaker 3: you need to see, you know, a comedy in a
Speaker 3: big screen. Huh. But like you know endgame, Oh, I.
Speaker 2: Mean can you oh God, of course.
Speaker 3: Like Alatar back you know, back in the day when
Speaker 3: that came out, Like I saw Avatar in three D twice,
Speaker 3: just because there's it's an experience.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's a ry at that. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: can't get that at home, no matter how insane. I mean,
Speaker 2: unless you have literally an IMAX at your house. It
Speaker 2: really is not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna lie. I've got a
Speaker 3: I've got a projector and it's it's probably set up
Speaker 3: for a fifteen foot diagonal screen, and I've got five
Speaker 3: point one surround sound, well five point zero because I
Speaker 3: removed my soubble for because of neighbors. But you know,
Speaker 3: I've got like it's you know, if I'm watching a movie,
Speaker 3: I make my own popcorn. We can we can, you know,
Speaker 3: we can, we can chill. There's nobody screaming, and compared
Speaker 3: to some of the smaller theaters in New York. Actually
Speaker 3: the screen size might be comparable.
Speaker 2: Compare and the sound experience might be comparable. Look, at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, I don't think theatricals ever
Speaker 2: going to go away completely I think they'll always go
Speaker 2: some way, just like like Broadway. Still Broadway. People still
Speaker 2: paying amount of money. But I think it's because the
Speaker 2: price of those tickets are going to go up. It's
Speaker 2: going to be much more of an experience in the
Speaker 2: days of going to go see, you know, a comedy
Speaker 2: of like Dumb and Dumber at the theater and spending
Speaker 2: twenty five bucks to go see a comedy or even
Speaker 2: a drama at the theater unless you're hardcore cinophile. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
Speaker 2: now back to the show. Most people are being like,
Speaker 2: know what, I'm good. I'm good at.
Speaker 3: Home, unless the theater industry pivots, if they pivot and
Speaker 3: everything becomes like the Alamo Draft Horse have Alamo Draft
Speaker 3: House where there's you know, a restaurant link to it
Speaker 3: or a bar, and you can bring your food and
Speaker 3: you can bring your drinks, and they make money off
Speaker 3: of the food sales like they do now except for
Speaker 3: the you know, the theaters that make money off their food.
Speaker 3: Now it's popcorn and candy that's not necessarily for everybody
Speaker 3: and way over priced, but if it's reasonably priced and
Speaker 3: they're making their money because people want to come and
Speaker 3: they want the experience. It's that's a way to keep
Speaker 3: it going.
Speaker 2: It's gonna keep going, It's gonna ge qu Anyway, we
Speaker 2: have veered off the copyright path a bit. It's just
Speaker 2: now two film geeks talking about the business. But anyway,
Speaker 2: Evan man, thank you so much for you know, being
Speaker 2: that night avenger for copyrights. You are. You are the
Speaker 2: dark Knight. I appreciate what you're doing man, and helping
Speaker 2: filmmakers out when you reached out to me a while ago.
Speaker 2: Now we've been trying to see this interview for a minute,
Speaker 2: but when I saw it, I was like, man, this
Speaker 2: is so desperately needed and I want to get the
Speaker 2: word out on this. So thank you so much for
Speaker 2: what you do, brother, and keep up the good fight,
Speaker 2: my friend.
Speaker 3: Now, keep and keep making films. Anybody listening, keep making films.
Speaker 3: Don't let them keep you down. Thanks man, Thank you.
Speaker 2: I want to thank Evan for coming on the show
Speaker 2: and dropping his copyright knowledge bombs on the Tribe today.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Evan for not only being on
Speaker 2: the show, but being that avenger of the independent filmmaker
Speaker 2: and helping us fight these pirates online. Thank you so much, Evan.
Speaker 2: If you want to get links to anything we spoke
Speaker 2: about in this episode, including how to sign up for
Speaker 2: copyright slap, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof
Speaker 2: Screenwriting dot tv. Forward slash three eighty seven. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for listening, guys, As always, keep on writing
Speaker 2: no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Thanks are listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof
Speaker 1: Screenwriting dot tv.