Video Piracy and VOD

As we all know, VOD is becoming a bigger and bigger portion of video distribution sales.

With more and more VOD "distribution" companies, (eg AEBN, Maleflixxx, HotMovies, XonDemand, etc) coming online a potential trouble spot is emerging that has not yet become a major issue but I see it as having potential to be a real pain in the ass.

The VOD distribution companies, in many cases own many websites, under different names, that stream the videos they have licensed from studios, using the same theory as "feeder sites" that those in the paysite business employ.

Additionally, these distribution companies often completely skin their licensed content for other sites which at the present time is something easily seen. However, in the not too distant future I believe we will see more and more complete skinnable solutions for websites as affiliates thus making it harder to determine where the VOD distributor and the selling website differ.

Now, the issue.

We agressively pursue (maybe not as much as Titan) websites who pirate our videos. The copiers are obvious, but the streamers are not, and will, in my opinion, become more difficult to discern as time goes on.

We are presently pursuing a website hosted at godaddy, and with payment processing through verotel that is streaming or at least offering for download, our video titles as well as those for some studios we represent.

In pursuit of this website, the question arose, what if they have a licensing deal with one of our VOD providers? What if this "tour" area is just that, and inside is a VOD site?

VOD distribution companies are not going to give any studio a complete list of their websites that they are licensed to, and they aren't going to let us know about all their feeder sites. So how are we going to be sure that the sites we are pursuing for potential copyright violations are indeed violating our copyrights?

Any thoughts or ideas on this?

Tom,

The same could also be said for licensed image or movie content from any of the content providers and, in fact, several years ago the same type of situation you are explaining happened to me.

I licensed a couple of thousand dollars of image content from a provider that was new to the industry, perhaps only a week old.

I put several of their content sets inside a paysite that we had owned for a few years in addition to a new one we were in the process of launching.

About 2 weeks later, i got an email from our host at the time saying that he had received a DMCA notice from the 'owner' of the content saying that it was being used illegally, even though, it wasnt and that we had to remove it all or our service would be shut off.

It took a good 24-48 hours trying to explain to this content provider that we had purchased the content for our sites and that we owned both of the sites it was being used, as per the terms of their license.

Needless to say, that provider never got any of our business again.

Now, as the customer, should i have told the provider each and every domain, sub domain, ip address, etc that this content could have been potentially used on even though their license only needed the 'main url' or, should i have just provided what we did to the guy i bought the stuff from which was all he asked for in the first place?

Regards,

Lee

Exactly my point. And yes, it does apply from both the studio or provider, and the licensee perspective as well.

Is a website obligated to tell you where they get their content from?

If they don't answer an email to you when you inquire, are they violating any terms of service agreements or license agreements?

I hate Gray area!