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