> When I see a company "stealing" my video, putting their ads on it, not > respecting with attribution or linkbacks, I get angry. I don't think > it's because someone is profiting of my work. It's more like, they are > *breaking* this new world we are trying to build. They are going > against the reason why we are doing all of this, a possibility of a > future where we do own our media, at least part of it.
I'm not afraid to admit that I am mad that someone else is earning revenues from my work. Here's why-- establishing the bare-bones studio we now have has cost me very dearly. It's not only cost me money, which I don't mind parting with. It's cost me serious amounts of time. This is time I've diverted away from other things in my life, like working on my doctoral thesis. I've put all this labor into Freetime because I've believed in what I was doing and have believed that, in time, Freetime would begin to move under its own momentum. I've never taken a dime of revenue from my work. The most I've ever taken in compensation was a couple of free dinners when I spent a month working on a music video for a band. I've not tried to put a revenue model into Freetime because I haven't come up with a way to do it that didn't insult the subscribers or start to make Freetime become about making money. Freetime has had a financial goal of "at best, break even", which is something that I figured we might do through revenues that don't come directly from Freetime. So, where I take umbrage is that MyHeavy.com has basically made it a fait accompli. They're now out there using my videos to create direct revenue through money-making models that I consider insulting to my audience. Moreover, they don't care. They didn't come to me and ask how I felt about the use of my content in such a way. I wouldn't have consented, even if they offered to share the money with me. I don't want my work being used in that fashion. It's more important that I preserve the "cultural qualities" of the project over any business model, because, for this project, I consider those to be most valuable. So, yes, I'm mad that they're making money off of it because they're basically making money by debasing my content. I'm even more mad that they're doing it without my consent. I'm even more mad than that because they know that they're doing it without my consent and they think that I won't notice, care, or stand up for myself. I'm also mad because they're also either using their made-up base of videos to fleece investors or their investors are just as crooked. -- Rhett. http://www.weatherlight.com/freetime
