[Ron Lindeboom]

I am always amazed when I read these kinds of posts and threads, as I cannot help but feel how the original poster’s words would be so different if they discovered that their work had been used somewhere else by someone who wasn’t respecting their rights.

The wording would likely be something like…

I just found that some of my work has been used by someone who has taken it without my permission and is stealing it without any form of compensation.

It’s funny how the rules change when it’s convenient. It’s even funnier still how indignant you would likely get were it your rights being violated.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[Mick Haensler] “When you have a magazine claiming to be “The Authority in Event Videography” not only endorsing breaking copyright laws but printing articles showing you how to do it, it is highly highly doubtful the authorities will come a knockin. The bigger issue is getting paid a reasonable amount for the gig.”

I would beg to disagree here. The bigger issue is the copyrights which have been violated by both parties in this scenario. Likely, the dance school has not licensed the performance rights (which is why our local dance academy has licensed a much less expensive performance piece than they once did, as they did run into performance issues and had to pay fines).

The truth is, a magazines that documents ways to break the law is NOT a smart magazine. Eventually, one of their readers is going to run afoul of the law and when they get sued, they will name “The Authority in Event Videography” as a culpable party in the matter. And they will be right and will have documented proof to that affect. The magazine will find themselves in legal hot water, which is why you won’t ever see anything like this in Creative COW Magazine.

Odds are, you can get away with this. But you are still playing the odds. The truth is, “Russian Roulette” uses only one bullet in a six shooter whose shell magazine chamber is spun and the odds are just 16.6% that you will be the one whose head is blown off if you play. Still, someone is going to eventually “find the bullet.”

Me, I’d question the advice and value of any publication that encourages people who want to claim the rights to copyright and protect their own work, to so freely dismiss the rights of other copyright holders.

Using their math, if I like any of this magazine’s articles, I can help myself, right???

You can’t have it both ways: if musicians and artists can’t enjoy copyright protection, then why should your (or the magazine’s) rights be respected?

That’s the real bigger issue. The issue of payment is merely a walk down a self-justified distraction in a pursuit that is eroding the rights of content creators of all kinds.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[Shawn Miller] “Personally, I prefer PCs. My vendor of choice “for now” is Bold Data Systems (https://www.boldata.com/catalog.cfm/page/wks_Intel). Their machines are well built and well priced. Support from these guys is awesome (1 Year Premium On-Site Warranty with 24/7 Technical Support).”

We use Bold Data Systems machines here at the COW. In fact, all of our servers are BDS boxes, all five of them and we have another one that we will be adding to the farm to help take some of the weight of the ever increasing traffic here.

They build great boxes and their support is simply the best we have found.

I vote with you, Shawn. ;o)

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[KC Allen] “The past greats in radio told of how their connection with the audience is what created a fan base. The talkers of today do still enjoy that, but normal FM radio has been taken over by voices via satellite and Internet. Even the guys in the booths are “voice-tracking”, pre-recording their raps so they can get out and sell for their station, or attend a remote broadcast, or a staff meeting for crying out loud.”

As an ex-radioman myself, I agree with this but would add another point to consider. The standardization of formats and stations by conglomerates like Clear Channel who all play the same few artists shoved down our throats by a few mega-record conglomerates is killing listener interest in radio. (Thank God for my iPod.) Gone is any real artistry in most modern playlists — for the most part — and with few exceptions, I can’t tell one of the sound-alike girl and boy cookie-cutter artists from the other. And if rock is your cup of tea instead, just how many bands do we need to have force-fed to us that have singers that sound just like Eddie Vetter anyway?

The station I worked at was one of the last full power commercial FM free-form radio stations in the country, and now it’s part of a conglomerate and has the same exact playlist day-in and day-out that runs on all the other channels on their network. Boring. Boring beyond belief.

But as Brendan Coots pointed out in his comments regarding NAB as a lobbying organization, these kinds of things are the things that they lobby for and protect at the expense of the little independents.

Just my opinion, your’s may differ — and likely does.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

The booths cost more than that, much more.

Then you have to factor in the costs for hotel rooms, travel, food and many other incidental expenses that must be added for a couple of hundred people that work the boothsm, the hospitality suites, handle the press, etc., etc.

Then you have the make-ready time, the pulling them off their jobs to devote time to the preparation for the show, plan the marketing campaigns, the “pitch” and rehearsing it and the presentations, etc., which are indeed scripted, rehearsed and the list goes on.

Tim Wilson can give you a much longer list as he used to be the one who did it for Avid’s NAB presence.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[Brendan Coots] “Sorry to get political but hey – I’m a wacky Californian what can I say.”

From one wacky Californian to another, I couldn’t agree more, Brendan.

Thanks for saying something that I have been sitting on my hands afraid to say, as I am already out on the branch pretty far.

;o)

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
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[Ron Lindeboom]

Yes I removed it, Tommy, as the post was not what the Business forum is there for. We work very hard to keep the appropriate posts in the most relevant areas of the COW and the Business forum is a crown jewel of the site and we really want to keep it focused on issues of business, commerce, sales, marketing, law, rights and licenses, etc.

Please feel free to post your questions in the relevant area but also be aware that such an open-ended question such as upgrading my computer is so broad that unless you place it in a more focused setting, it is hard to give feedback on such a non-focused issue.

Thank you for your understanding.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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[Ron Lindeboom]

[Paul Waszak] “Another idea we had was to contact Motionographer, Designinmotion, etc. and try and get some press. We figured increase awareness would help!”

Motionographer is a great site but unfortunately is likely to rarely ever get anyone a job. It is designed for motion graphics artists to show off their work among their peers. Sure, the odd-ball job here and there no doubt gets awarded, but that is not the site’s purpose. A very cool site and one I like to visit from time to time.

Designinmotion.com on the other hand, is a graveyard and you could shoot a cannon in there and not hit a soul. In fact, I just went over to their forum on 2-pop.com (towards the bottom of the list) and they have just 2 visitors online this morning, me and some other person according to the report. (But hey, that’s two people better than their VFXpro forum, Cinematography forum, Editor’s Net forum, and many others that have none.) Don’t waste your time playing in graveyards if you are looking for business.

Craigslist.com may have a lot of flakes there but they also get people some real jobs too. Check out craigslist as I know many people that get jobs there — some they regret, some they love. Be careful and use your head there, but in doing so you can get some real work at Craigslist.com.

Then the COW’s job forums have some good jobs in them. Use your head here too, as there are some great jobs there but you can also find jobs you will regret taking.

There is no substitute for learning to sell yourself. If you don’t, you will rarely be in control of your own destiny and when salespeople get the customers — they’re their customers, rarely are they yours. If they decide to go somewhere else, trust me, they will take the customers since they are the ones that brought them to you in the first place.

Learn to call, learn to talk to clients and learn to listen to them and offer business solutions not just graphic pretties. If you do, you will have a real business. If you don’t you and your friends will have a hard time making your business a success.

There are tons of threads in this forum that you can go back through that dig into techniques and ways to expand one’s business. Spend some time here in this forum going back through the threads with titles that look like they are applicable to your questions. You won’t regret it.

There is no magic bullet.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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[Ron Lindeboom]

Hello Leo,

We apologize for the bumps in the road during the transition to a realnames-only site but the reason that your posts failed is due to the fact that we ran the site for two months with a “grace period” warning that accounts with a single name would have to be updated. After two months, we turned off the grace period. Your account used to be “leojuly” (with no spaces) and as our mechanism was set to reject single names, that is what happened. By updating to “Leo July” your account now fits the criteria that passes our rejection test and so this post went up.

I have looked back through the server logs and have found your rejected post and have taken it live after updating the user name on the post.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronlindeboom
Publisher, Creative COW Magazine
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Now in the COW Magazine: Commercials. A look at the history, strategy, techniques and production workflows of successful commercials. All brought to you by some of the COW’s brightest members. Accept no substitutes!

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[Ron Lindeboom]

[Randall Raymond] “Frankly, I find that much more appealing than brown shirts and a goose step in trying to align the troops behind your admitted hatred of the NAB. It’s so…unbecoming. Stay positive, dude – you’ve got your knickers in a knot. You’re like the divorced guy trying to get all his friends to hate his ex. That ax-grinding gets old in a hurry. Are you harming your business here? Now that’s a topic for discussion.”

I am not asking anyone to agree with me, Randall. I am merely saying that the knee-jerk belief that NAB is a necessity for everyone to attend is pure bull and is not based on fact or always based on good business sense. There are many valid reasons for some companies and people to attend, while there are many other compelling reasons for people to assess their own situation and decide that it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Perpetuating the propaganda that this show is a “necessity” is crapola of the highest order and if I am banging my drum harder than may seem prudent in your opinion, it is because it’s a new discussion in this industry. (Please don’t try to tell me it’s an old one because you can’t produce ANY threads anywhere (before leading into this year’s NAB 2008) in our near million and a half posts over the last almost eight years that would show it to be an old argument.) I am merely trying to get people to think and consider their own situations, either as a vendor or as an attendee.

Don’t be a lemming … think. That’s my real point. If it makes sense FOR YOU to go, then by all means, go. But if you do the math and it doesn’t make sense, then don’t go.

I resent your fascist reference — especially as I was just showing facts substatiated by a number of links and other proofs as to why NAB had become so expensive that major companies have started dropping out. You are the one who took it into the flag raising for NAB and championing the Cult of Personality as to why it is such a venerable thing. Me, I was merely talking numbers.

Your opinion is fine but when you start calling me a fascist and a Nazi, you only show that your arguments have so little merit that the numbers can’t back your opinions and so you have to resort to childish remarks like that.

And yes, I have considered that my opinions may hurt my business. I have given it a LOT of thought. But someone has to stand up to the money-grubbers at NAB who think that even in a bad economy with shrinking prospects and lower traffic figures, that they can give healthy price increases anyway.

It is a matter of principle and I have never run from that kind of fight — even if it costs me business.

I personally believe that there was a time when it made sense for Apple and Avid to go, for some companies it still makes sense, but it doesn’t make sense for everyone. That is the argument that I am making, if you don’t like that and can’t use tactics any deeper than to disparage my character by your juvenile rantings about brownshirts and such, I have nothing more to say to you.

After all, Dear Ole Sainted Dad taught me long ago that you should never enter a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

Ron Lindeboom