I don't like seeing these sites either but I don't feel they pose a threat to me. (or at least I don't see the threat)
I can see where it may affect you though Ken... if you're selling your DVD's.

Curious:
Why are you concerned with trying/wanting to stop them?
Are you finding your DVD's being counterfeited?
Are you feeling that the counterfeiting is affecting your income?

I've seen sites that talk about reporting counterfeit sites like that but usually don't give it a second thought.

Most small businesses selling DVDs need every sale they can get. Pirates and free down load sites could impact your ability to make a profit.

Hello Ken,
you've posted over 1200 messages here, yet your personal information isn't viewable from the user database. You seem a little protective...?
You've made over 7 figures in 31 projects, according to a post of yours; isn't that enough...?
Now, you're here soliciting help for free on how to devise something to help you solve a problem and make more money, when, in fact, you don't permit your clients to do the same thing with the products you intend to sell them ... ?
If I did know of a method or source to seal DVDs from replication and piracy, why would I share it with you for free when you don't allow others to whom you are marketing to do the exact same thing through your lock-down EULA ... ?

Even if I could help you, I'm not sure I would ...

I apologize if it appears that I don't think much of you; but it also appears to me that you think enough of yourself for both of us...

Just my two pence. . . until that time ... Earl J.

Glad you said this.
Ken is in reality abusing the concept of copyright. Copyright does not protect ideas, it protects original works.
Ken would probably do better considering patent protection although....

Bob.

So we just started selling DVDs of some of our work, only locally and mostly to tourists. But, we live in an area where pirated DVDs are the standard (even in legit rental businesses). Anyone want a copy of the newest X-Men or Star Trek? Cause its right down the street.

Anyway, so we were thinking that if people here did start pirating our stuff:
A) That would suck, but
B) kinda means we're doing something right!

kairosmatt

BOB, in the US, one can not copyright a math expression; since it appears most of Ken's ideals work around "trends", which is based of many other's work with statistical models, ---- it would or should be impossible to patent. Of course, I think many of "93" changes were a mistake.

you've posted over 1200 messages here, yet your personal information isn't viewable from the user database. You seem a little protective...?

What's wrong with someone wanting privacy, no matter how many posts they have made or not?

You've made over 7 figures in 31 projects, according to a post of yours; isn't that enough...?

So would you say the same to anyone else? You've made enough money, don't you have enough? I'm sure you have made more money than others here, should we say haven't you made enough? Obviously if he's made 7 figures his projects are WORTH it, and probably worth protecting more than maybe some others (myself included).

Now, you're here soliciting help for free on how to devise something to help you solve a problem and make more money, when, in fact, you don't permit your clients to do the same thing with the products you intend to sell them ... ?

If there was a way to prevent piracy, I think we'd know about it by now, not sure why anyone would bash someone asking how to do it though.

@dibbkd, and others for whom my connections might be too subtle,
1 - nothing wrong with anyone wanting privacy - I enjoy mine anytime I can get it ... the point being: he wants us to share our collective wisdom <not anything I can provide individually since I just ran out last week> with him for free, yet has a bit of a problem sharing himself.
2 - here again, he wants us to share with him for free what might otherwise be worth millions so he can then brag about making 8 figures? Give me a break...
3 - you are absolutely correct. I would also expect that if any group would know of one, it would be a group of professional video producers. My point is that he wants to make money from what he gathers from other professionals for free so he can design, build, and sell what he has learned to others only with the understanding that they don't use what he sells to them to make any money themselves. He did complain about backward engineering and immediate resell of some of his items.
I'm here on this forum to share and learn myself. I certainly don't expect that anyone who teaches me something new here would not want me to use that new knowledge in making money from its use... nor do I expect that anything I share with anyone will get treated as a state secret never to see the light of day or be used in their personal efforts to make a living. In this specific case, we have someone who is attempting to gather for free what he does not want others to use in their own financial pursuits after he sells them his products. . . that's the part I object to.
It's like buying a car and signing a EULA from the manufacturer indicating that the person will not use any knowledge they gain about cars by owning the car to make a living on their own.
Admittedly, he is talking about copyright and patents . . . two distinct issues. Both handled fairly easily through government agencies ... in the case of patents, he will have to prove that what he has is original in nature or some unique variation of something in existence that isn't under patent now. In both cases, he'll then have the power and authority of the FEDs to go after any violators.

Good response dibbkd ... I enjoyed thinking it through once more to make sure I understand my own viewpoint on the matter.

Until that time... Earl J.

>>>My point is that he wants to make money from what he gathers from other professionals for free so he can design, build, and sell what he has learned to others only with the understanding that they don't use what he sells to them to make any money themselves.<<<

You appear to be talking about the use we make of our education. Maybe you've never made use of stuff you learnt at school. Certainly I know of people who have that as a policy. Making a DVD maths tutorial series, as an example, involves time, effort and skill but will contain no original mathematics and probably little originality of presentation. It's purpose would be to impart knowledge for the benefit of the purchaser, who might use that knowledge for earning a living. Excellent. How does that relate to making money by selling the DVD series? In my world we pay teachers, and I pay for material that increases my expertise. I even pay VASST for their teaching DVDs, but I presume you consider them capitalist dogs for wanting money and objecting to their material being pirated.

I guess I hadn't been following his other posts, so my background might have been limited. I was going off his original post here and he was asking how to shut down pirate DVD reseller sites.

Blink pretty much summed it up well enough.

My 2 cents on shutting down pirate sites is that it will take government and legal agencies to track and enforce this. Even then it's still going to happen. Murder is illegal, and has a high penalty if you get caught, and it still happens right?

If there was a way to make it not profitable for these pirate DVD sites, they'd stop. They're in it for the money right? Not sure how to stop that though.

Thinking about what blink said about it being like the oldest profession, prostitution, I know one way cops try to stop that is not by going after the hookers but going after their clients. If you can stop the clients then the hookers have no business.

1 - nothing wrong with anyone wanting privacy - I enjoy mine anytime I can get it ... the point being: he wants us to share our collective wisdom <not anything I can provide individually since I just ran out last week> with him for free, yet has a bit of a problem sharing himself.
Uh... that's what a lot of people do on this forum. Share wisdom for free.

Also, I think it's unfair to accuse anybody of not sharing themselves / not 'reciprocating'.

In this specific case, we have someone who is attempting to gather for free what he does not want others to use in their own financial pursuits after he sells them his products. . . that's the part I object to.
Uh... what???

2- Why would it matter how much money somebody has (or hasn't) made???

you've posted over 1200 messages here, yet your personal information isn't viewable from the user database. You seem a little protective...?
Do you really want other people knowing that you must have spent thousands of hours on an Internet forum talking about Sony Vegas? ;)

There's a lot of different legitimate (and illegitimate) reasons why people may not wish to post their full name. Though it's not hard to figure out what kind of DVDs Ken makes, and what his full name is if you look at his posts where he asks for feedback on his work.

Ken is in reality abusing the concept of copyright. Copyright does not protect ideas, it protects original works.
I think the issue here is that the pirates are copying the DVDs bit for bit (i.e. copying the original work)... clearly unethical and illegal.

Ok so back on topic...

any ideas on how to stop them?
A lot of people would like to know too. ;)

If your customers only find the pirate sites through search engines, then maybe it's possible to flood the search engine results (via SEO, links from your own sites) with your own 'honeypot' sites. Where it looks like a fake pirate DVD site, and then you flip them onto a page where you tell them that a lot of these sites won't ship product, they are pirates, etc. etc.

That might work????????? Never tried it myself.

Though the general consensus from internet marketers is, don't both trying to fight piracy, it's a losing battle, focus instead on your paying customers
If you want to make the most money, that seems like the way to go. Whatever you do, other people will be doing unethical/crazy stuff and there are more important things to do than to try to police the world yourself.

"I think the issue here is that the pirates are copying the DVDs bit for bit (i.e. copying the original work)... clearly unethical and illegal. "

No, that is not the issue at all here. If it was, no problem.

If I buy a VASST training DVD I can do any of the following:

1) Resell it.
2) Loan it.
3) Rent it.
4) Using the knowledge I gain from it write a book or produce my own training DVD and sell that.

Ken is restricting all of those rights embodied in copyright law.
The only right Ken will confer on a purchaser is to use the knowledge gained from the DVD to make money for themselves. This is not a copyright issue, it could possibly be covered under a contract.

Bob.

Hi Glenn and others, thanks - good ideas.

The point I was making was a constructive one about asking for anybody's ideas on how to stop illegal DMCA-infringing bootleg sites that sell pirated DVDs, especially those of me and my colleagues, since it's a copyright/IP infringement. Selling bootleg/copied DVDs is illegal; in this case I'm not talking about reselling legitimately purchased DVDs, I'm talking about those who wholesale copy and pirate DVDs for their own profit at the expense of us producers.

Thanks for the intelligent responses, those are appreciated. You can always tell the difference between successful professionals (vs those who aren't) by the tone of their posts, eg if they're positive and contribute, which is what good people do.

Seems to me that your real problem is your business model is kind of inviting piracy. You're selling high value information that's cheap to copy i.e. the pirates stand to make a handsome profit from their enterprise. This is what you need to counter.
As many have pointed out the studios aren't effectively able to stop piracy and that's per unit less attractive than what you have on offer.
Perhaps you should look at a pay per view streaming distribution system, that's much easier to control. There also seems to be available invisible audio watermarks that make it possible to determine the source of the pirated copy.
I'd also at a guess imagine you could include timely content. Latest updated information that's only available online. This would also lessen the value of bulk piracy.
I do work for an enterprise that delivers high value information using this kind of model and as far as I know there's zero piracy.

Bob.

Seems to me that your real problem is your business model is kind of inviting piracy.
I think anybody who sells intellectual property is prone to piracy.

Movie studios have tried selling their product cheap in China... I don't believe that really worked in eliminating piracy.

2- re: subscription model
That might be a good idea. Seobook.com for example costs $100/month... (so $1200/year)... and people (I'm surprised) do pay that much.

And seobook's information has been pirated before... though I don't believe their latest content is constantly being pirated / you'll have to pay if you want the latest information.

But selling DVDs seems to work for Ken too, so I don't know.

There also seems to be available invisible audio watermarks that make it possible to determine the source of the pirated copy.
Deluxe does this... it doesn't seem to work. They have used that technology to track down cammers (and there are/were only a few in the world). In Canada they finally got the laws to go after the cammers... but piracy goes on.

Or put it another way... the big movie studios spend **a lot** of resources going after piracy... yet they haven't really found something that works.

Well, quite the interchange of barrages here...
it appears that there isn't any way to stop it, regardless of the amount of money a person (or organization) has to spend on the matter.
_ _ _
Now, if it is Internet searching that is leading to the piracy sites ... one possible method to combat that sort of thing is linking. Google uses the links from other sites to determine the popularity of a particular site during a search function. So, the obvious alternative is to get losts of sites to link to yours ... and if you can't find enough to link to your site, buy some. There are many inexpensive registration services where you purchase sites for little money ... for three or five years at a time. You buy them, put up one page, and have it link to your primary site... ultimately, your ranking goes up and the piracy sites get pushed down. I know of people who do this sort of thing. They don't always get to the top, but they always get to the first page.
_ _ _
In the long run, I agree with offering frequently updated information/services to provide your legitimate users with the knowledge that anything older than 3 months old, for instance, would be pirated from older postings/distributions.
_ _ _
As an aside, Vegas 8 is capable of creating copyright protected projects, well, not V8 specifically, more like Architect 5 ... the drawback is the final product is pressed and not burned (I'm not sure I understand all I know about that process - but the client is satisfied that his final DVDs are as protected as he can make them)... so the production run and sales have to be significant enough to offset the cost of the press processing.
_ _ _
Until that time. . . Earl J.

@Ken C ...
I have it now... dhoh!
_ _ _
If I buy a car, reverse engineer it in order to make an exact duplicate (not happening in your case - in your case, they mass duplicate it and sell it), then put it up for sale as a cheaper alternative to the original ... thereby, cheating the original manufacturer out of a sale. . . that the duplication should be a punishable action.
Okay ... now, I'm with you ...
Personally, I don't think it can be accomplished ... why not?
Not everyone respects our copyright/intellectual property laws ... scattered throughout all the good the Internet has brung us, it also infected us with a global reach, both an outgoing and an incoming reach ... so, as easily as your products reach a global market online, they can also easily get pirated and resold to your local market from pirates outside the reach of our laws ... and as one is shut down, others still further out of reach take over...

Such has been the case of music for decades - I remember being stationed on Okinawa in the early 70s where major recording stars records were sold in Taiwan for 50 cents apiece ... Santana, Chicago Transit Authority (before they were forced to change it to Chicago), Herb Albert, Baja Marimba Band, and many, many others . . . anything that hit the top 100 charts was fair game . . . so, now, decades later with a global reach, pirates are even more difficult to shut down.

In my estimation, nothing short of a global synchronized frontal assault will even slow them down, let alone put them out of business... we even have the return of real ocean-going pirates to the news ... they've always been there, it's the global reach of news and speed of delivery that brings them to the spotlight... I'm sure they were much more successful before the publicity and the implementation of more aggressive defensive measures... way off topic here.

I'm with what many have advocated in their posts ... 1 - don't give them anything to pirate; 2 - put your sales directly in the hands of legitimate buyers; and 3 - update frequently to make pirated products old by the time they get reproduced.

Good luck. . . until that time. . . Earl J.

"but the client is satisfied that his final DVDs are as protected as he can make them"

Which is to say ... not at all.

Macrovision hasn't hindered copying for at least 15 years. It was one of the first protection schemes to be bypassed, and it only took a few months. Modern protection schemes are much much more sophisticated, and some of them take whole minutes to break.

Basically, if your audience can see/hear what you produce, they can copy it. That's all there is to it.

@Cheinworks . . .
I have no idea about protection schemes.
As you say, if I wanted to copy something, I could just play it on the DVD, and capture video in Vegas. . . no protection-busting schemes required. Everything else is added expense for nothing...

Until that time... Earl J.

Method 1. Spend $xxx and lots of time to produce and distribute DVDs on stock trading from which a certain number of people are able to make a certain amount of dollars.

Method 2. Keep the valuable knowledge to yourself and quietly employ your own methods to make all that money that your clients are making, yourself, thereby getting even richer and avoiding all the hassles of DVD production and piracy.

Just for purposes of clarification, copyright law in the USA does not extend to rental of DVD product without specific license. If you view the front end of a VASST DVD, you'll see it specifically precludes rentals, due to a specific experience we had with a rental company.
this is specifically addressed in two separate copyright documents; one that went into effect in 1986 and the other in 1990.
I don't know enough about the law in Australia, but I would assume it's similar.