Sorry folks. Someone complained. Account removed at Blip.tv due to complaint of Digital Copyright infringement. All the movies are gone. We had a good run, at least. Until we can come up with a replacement, the show's over.
Thanks all, for your support.
And to the jealous ratfink who spoiled it for everyone else: Karma will catch up with you sooner or later.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
There's a Fink in our Midst. Show's over.
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19 comments:
Nooo!!! But you had such great commentary that I would've thought made the videos an educational use. At least that's how I saw it. :(
Thanks a bunch. We appreciate it.
The best (worst) part is, many of the films I've screened on this show are still up at Blip.tv and other sites on other users' accounts. Plenty of hits, too. And they have the films uploaded exactly from the DVD, some even show the DVD menu screen and/or distributor logo. Whereas I showed the film as released in Japan only, and added the host segments, etc. as well as actually lowering the resolution and quality so as not to interfere with DVD sales.
It basically means someone targeted this show/site. Not only that, but the Cinemated Man Facebook page associated with this show was removed by Facebook at the same time. So, somebody (we have our suspicions who) made a concerted effort to go around and flag our posts to shut down. Pretty sad.
Sorry Michael.
I enjoyed your blog. The Cinemated man was truly an original. Couldn;t you find other links to replace blip.tv? Google? You Tube?
What annoys me is sites like Megavideo and others who host pirated videos then charge you to watch them or have advertising. Hulu.com has movies and they have advertisers so it is possible to host movies that are out of copyright on your Cinemated Man site.
Of course.. you may not want to go to all the trouble and you may not have the time to find links that work number one, then post them to your blog and continue the blog maintainence.
But thanks again Michael. It was a wonderful run.
Kilburn Hall
Author
I enjoyed your blog. The Cinemated man was truly an original. Couldn't you find other links to replace blip.tv? Google? You Tube?
I appreciate it. We always tried to be original, yet pay homage to the great movie hosts of the past.
We started out on Google Video. They had their problems, uploading was a nightmare, took at least 2 or 3 days to finally see it LIVE on Google's video page. But at least they were there and they had great exposure. We'd still be uploading to them, but they stopped that upload service when they bought Youtube. So, they're out.
Youtube only allows 10min segments, so we were only able to put up the trailers and host segments there. Still can, too. Youtube has no problem with our material.
We were also on Veoh at the same time as Google. They were ok, but they got more and more picky about material and finally cut our account there. Again, there are tons of copyrighted old and NEW movies on Veoh, to this day. Not only that, but many of them are the same films we screened, minus the host segment and trailer and Japanese subtitles. Also, there are many DVD ripped movies on Veoh, Blip.tv, metacafe, etc.. So, in our case, it's a matter of someone actually going to the trouble of spoiling things for The Cinemated Man. A self-righteous crank with a distorted sense of duty? A frustrated malcontent who loves to spoil things for others? A loser who had nothing better to do with their time than to pee in the pool? Perhaps all of the above. Lord knows they're out there.
Blip.tv was good, because they had a very fast upload time and encoding time. They weren't perfect by any means, but for free, they were great. They allowed us a long run there, before someone complained and basically forced them to first pull a video post (THX 1138) and then shut down the whole account. Mind you, like I said, they have many, many copyrighted movies and material there from other users still up and running.
continued...
What annoys me is sites like Megavideo and others who host pirated videos then charge you to watch them or have advertising. Hulu.com has movies and they have advertisers so it is possible to host movies that are out of copyright on your Cinemated Man site.
As for Hulu, they do not allow access to Japan. So we can't even watch any of the material on Hulu. Big shame, 'cuz I'd love to. Hawaii 5-0, I Dream of Jeanie, The Invaders, Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Star Trek all on there. We can't see any of it.
As for Megavideo and other share sites, right you are. I even said that to blip.tv in my email, that not only were we not profiting in any way from our screenings, but it was costing us a good chunk of money. The only benefit we derived was in bringing an enjoyable experience to viewers out there (and to blip.tv!). All the movies were low res. None were DVD rips. All had original segments added to them. And we encouraged folks to buy the DVD from wherever (not us, cuz we didn't sell 'em) if they enjoyed the film and wanted a good copy of it.
Their response to me was to simply copy and paste their original shutdown notice and to furthermore notify iTunes and have them remove all of The Cinemated Man content on there as well. Nice. Also, the Facebook page was removed by Facebook along with a very stern warning. (We're still trying to piece it all together - the chronology of the events, etc. )
All this for doing nothing more than trying to bring a little joy into the world. To show the great movies that TV used to show. No good deed goes unpunished, indeed.
And I disagree with some who may say it's the same thing as using or sharing pirated software, (which I don't agree with). There, the person is benefiting financially or artistically by using pirated FCP or Adobe Photoshop, or Illustrator or whatever. The receiver is benefiting. We at The Cinemated Man already bought the films, we own them. We are adding our content to them, making them fun to watch, and showing them for free in multiple low-resolution formats. The viewer is not going to suddenly refuse to buy a DVD based on seeing a low res version of the film at our site. In fact, by seeing the film on CM, many wrote to me that they went out and bought it, oftentimes, not even having heard of it before. Just look at Monty Python's success in selling their DVDs. Their profits at Amazon went up 2000% (I didn't add a zero!) right after they made their material available for free on Youtube. For free! They knew, and rightly so, that people would watch, love it, remember it, and want their own copy - their own pristine, high quality copy. They were right.
continued...
And as for advertising, we had none until very recently. We reluctantly added some temporarily during the last marathon, but even that was going to stop since I could see no advantage to it. Earning 5 dollars every three months was not worth the annoyance of seeing banners, pop ups and other forms of ads on an old film. Not at all. The advertising on blip.tv is really a scam, since they benefit and the content provider very rarely does. I was going to remove ads all together.
But back to the point, I don't see a similarity between using pirated software and screening low res Cinemated Man versions of old films, none of which are sending any profits to the filmmakers themselves. Ask William Shatner how much he gets when a Star Trek airs. Or ask Carol Serling how much she gets when one of her father's Twilight Zone episodes airs. Nothing. Not a penny. Sumner Redstone gets paid, not her. Creators have to be pretty darn savvy to get what's coming to them and not be hoodwinked into losing any connection to the thing they helped create. We prefer to honor the creators here, not the conglomerates that benefit from their work. We need distributors, of course, but this stranglehold on even low res material is ludicrous and financially foolish business - for them!
Of course.. you may not want to go to all the trouble and you may not have the time to find links that work number one, then post them to your blog and continue the blog maintainence.
It's really a matter of finding a host site with a fairly decent upload time and not too picky about material. We haven't given up hope yet.
Maybe we can convince the Russians to take up an extra HD on the next Soyuz and host the show from the ISS! ;)
"Wanna take a ride?"
But thanks again Michael. It was a wonderful run.
Thanks to viewers like you, it sure was.
Noooooooo.....why o why does someone do this?? This show was fantastic!! So sad. Thx very much for your efforts and the time put into this.
I remember 'Lives of a Bengal Lancer' and your commentary....wonderfull! I was realy looking forward to every update on your page. WHY should someone target this show is beyond my understanding!!
"WHY should someone target this show is beyond my understanding!!"
Maybe they have some kind of financial stake in the copyright and don't care that in their drive to protect their own they are depriving the public of its right to fair use.
I'm disappointed that there seems to be no defense. I didn't think anyone could demand material be removed from a service like google or blip that they themselves didn't hold the copyright to. Am I wrong on that?
I'm mad as hell what this rat fink b******d has done.what comes around goes around.
your show was great it bought a lot of fond memories back watching the movies.
i would like to thank you and everyone at the cinemated man for the joy you bought to me watching your show
gterl said...
Noooooooo.....why o why does someone do this?? This show was fantastic!! So sad. Thx very much for your efforts and the time put into this.
...
I remember 'Lives of a Bengal Lancer' and your commentary....wonderfull! I was realy looking forward to every update on your page. WHY should someone target this show is beyond my understanding!!
Thank you for your support and kind words. We enjoyed doing all the episodes.
Divers and Sundry said...
"WHY should someone target this show is beyond my understanding!!" Maybe they have some kind of financial stake in the copyright and don't care that in their drive to protect their own they are depriving the public of its right to fair use.
In this case, I don't think so. On Youtube, the owner of the copyright is very clearly stated as the one submitting complaint. At Blip.tv, no such mention of copyright holder was made. They made the statement, 'a significant portion of your show was a major copyright violation." Therefore, they made the call on their own, they didn't go to Paramount, or Sony, or Viacom, or whatever and ask if they still held the copyright. They just took action.
I'm disappointed that there seems to be no defense. I didn't think anyone could demand material be removed from a service like google or blip that they themselves didn't hold the copyright to. Am I wrong on that?
Apparently the service can remove material, suspend and/or revoke accounts at their discretion.
johnboy said...
I'm mad as hell what this rat fink b******d has done.what comes around goes around. your show was great it bought a lot of fond memories back watching the movies. i would like to thank you and everyone at the cinemated man for the joy you bought to me watching your show
Thanks again. Yes, it's very sad for us, too. Movies were meant to be shared and watched with others. So, it's just not the same around here at the abandoned movie theater.
Michael, I am so sorry that this has happened to you - I loved this site. I will miss it terribly - Monster Month alone was incredible. Best wishes in all your future endeavors.
Perhaps you could sneak back under another name (she wrote hopefully).
HT said...
Michael, I am so sorry that this has happened to you - I loved this site. I will miss it terribly - Monster Month alone was incredible. Best wishes in all your future endeavors. Perhaps you could sneak back under another name (she wrote hopefully).
Thanks so much. We appreciate it.
Yes, it comes at a bad time, too. Just when we needed a bit of a laugh. For the time being we still have the site and all of our previous host segments (just not the movies!). I guess you could say we've been cancelled. But as we all know, sometimes, cancelled shows come back. Blip.tv is in their rights to cut us, of course. It's their site, and their call. Two years is a long time for them to take notice, though. But, as far as Facebook is concerned, the fact that they removed the show page there is rather curious. After all, there was nothing uploaded on FB, only links. So, if links are verbotten, that cancels just about 90% of internet movie sites. Strange behavior by Facebook. We're not going to debate the issue with them or Blip or any other entity, but rather retreat into our cave and rethink our strategy for now. We'll not advertise our next move just yet, since we can assume the same sorry soul that ratted is most likely following along, too. (We'll let Miles and his digitally muscular associates deal with that ;)
-CM
I continue to resent the ongoing encroachment on our rights to fair use. I feel like I'm defending a lost cause, but it looked to me like you specifically managed your offerings so as not to go beyond what is clearly allowed by fair use. Let's report him for violating _our_ rights under copyright law! Sheesh.
Thanks for your response - it gives me some hope. I'll keep coming back here. Your intro's were worth the price of admission, and after all, you only used a few screens from each movie (most of which had no copyright), so you could continue to do those, right?
This really stinks, particularly the timing, with Michael's recent loss - it stinks.
And to whomever thought it was a good idea to single out The Cinemated Man for their vitriol, what goes around comes around, you piece of unimaginative, vengeful vermin.
HT said...
Thanks for your response - it gives me some hope. I'll keep coming back here. Your intro's were worth the price of admission, and after all, you only used a few screens from each movie (most of which had no copyright), so you could continue to do those, right?
This really stinks, particularly the timing, with Michael's recent loss - it stinks.
And to whomever thought it was a good idea to single out The Cinemated Man for their vitriol, what goes around comes around, you piece of unimaginative, vengeful vermin.
Haha. Yeah, we're able to put Godfrey up on archive.org. It was ready to go, so we figured...
And there's no guarantees.
There's a little worm over there in the forums at archive who does nothing but compile lists of films and TV shows that are not public domain and pesters archive.org to delete them.
I don't normally judge others publicly, but people like that are a scourge to humanity. In other eras they would have volunteered to help the Spanish Inquisition, proudly turned-in their grandparents to the Hitler Youth and waved the red book with other Mao followers, all in the name of enforcing the hard fast rule on others to make up for something lacking within themselves.
CM
Most people outgrow that whole tattle-tale thing.
Besides, I still think what you were doing clearly fell under fair use.
I suspect I know the person to whom you are referring, however I don't know whether he/she is responsible for what happened here. For example, I can still view Them over there, yet your site has been stripped of all movies regardless.
My son is a musician and a good one, regardless of how I feel about his output (heavy metal - ugh), The stories that he and other bands tell me are terrible. No wonder so many artists are going independent so they can get out from under the yolk of the recording companies. I know it's the same in the film and television industry. The really karmic and sad thing about their stupid response is that if someone views something they absolutely love, they want to own it. I have most of the Godzilla movies (VCR) because I love them. I also view movies online with an attitude of whether I want to purchase - buyer beware and all that. My latest purchase was Death at a Funeral - the british one - amazing - yet I watched 20 minutes of the american remake today and found it to be banal.
My point, sites like yours actually help the industry. I've been looking for an outlet that sells old movies because you've reawakened memories. Whoever did this to you, did the industry no favors.
HT said...
I suspect I know the person to whom you are referring, however I don't know whether he/she is responsible for what happened here. For example, I can still view Them over there, yet your site has been stripped of all movies regardless.
Right, I wasn't referring to them as the same person, just merely noting that over at archive.org there exists a person who spends an enormous amount of time looking for others violating the rules and reporting them.
My son is a musician and a good one, regardless of how I feel about his output (heavy metal - ugh), The stories that he and other bands tell me are terrible. No wonder so many artists are going independent so they can get out from under the yolk of the recording companies. I know it's the same in the film and television industry. The really karmic and sad thing about their stupid response is that if someone views something they absolutely love, they want to own it. I have most of the Godzilla movies (VCR) because I love them. I also view movies online with an attitude of whether I want to purchase - buyer beware and all that. My latest purchase was Death at a Funeral - the british one - amazing - yet I watched 20 minutes of the american remake today and found it to be banal. My point, sites like yours actually help the industry. I've been looking for an outlet that sells old movies because you've reawakened memories. Whoever did this to you, did the industry no favors.
Very true. People like to own it. Even if they prefer to 'catch it on TV' or some other random unplanned happenstance viewing, they like to have 'just in case'. It's proven time and time again. Hollywood, or rather, today's Hollywood believes they're losing money because of sites that show the films, even old films like we do here. The truth is, that's not why they're losing money. It's because they're not making as good films as they used to and the actors are too busy spouting political views than acting. It poisons the atmosphere and shatters the illusion. When will they learn?
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