BPS 387: How to Protect Your Film from Online Piracy with Evan Zeisel

Movie piracy has hurt the pockets of every filmmaker. But indie
filmmakers are often affected worse. Today on the show we have Evan
Zeisel and he has been systematically tracking down piracy sites
for years. Ten years ago, Evan made his first feature film and
landed a distributor. Within a week of being on its first VOD site,
his film was already popping up on numerous piracy sites.  He
quickly learned through rigorous research to combat piracy and
copyright infringement through the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act, of 1998.

Basically, the DMCA instrument protects copyright holders from
piracy or infringement and it protects the First Amendment of users
who, unknowing of the illegality, uses copyrighted contents online
for commercial purposes. How do you counter online piracy
and what is the DMCA?The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) is a U.S. law enacted in 1998 in an effort to combat piracy
while also protecting freedom of speech. The pitfall of the DMCA is
that in order to “protect” free speech, it notes that any content
put online is considered not to be copyright infringement
unless the copyright holder, or representative thereof,
directly informs the site or the individual who posted the content
that the content is indeed copyrighted.After being informed, the
site has “a reasonable amount of time” (deemed 48-72 hours, by de
facto enforcement by the courts) to remove the content before it is
considered to be an illegal act. What this means is that a content
creator needs to find every occurrence of infringement on
the Internet and then find the site’s contact information, or Web
Host/ISP’s contact information, and send a very specifically
formatted letter (as defined by the DMCA) to that contact, before
it will ever be considered needed to be taken down.Once received,
if the content is not removed, then the content creator can
use the Violation Notice sent, and a screenshot of the piracy, as a
basis for legal action.

The issue is, attorneys cost money and there is an endless number
of sites pirating content, so for the standard copyright holder
taking legal action would be a Sisyphean act, costing them endless
time and money, only to run up against pirates that hide behind
fake email addresses and false contact information. A lot has
changed in the computer and Internet world in the last 20+ years
since the DMCA was enacted.Evan dissects in this interview the
technicalities in reclaiming copyright, contacting violators, the
language, or must-mentions required by the act. Evan tackles the
mechanical challenges of tracking down his contents on piracy sites
through an automated system, Copyright Slap, curated with help
from a friend of his with a coding background, to efficiently
contact these sites and have contents taken down in seconds. To
date, they have identified the 1946 sites and taken down 6212.Every
filmmaker, big and small deals with online piracy. Hopefully, this
episode can help.

Enjoy my conversation with Evan Zeisel.

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