Today’s guest post is by filmmaker Solomon Mac-Auley who contacted me to offer his opinion about a DIY Digital alternative that I have been intrigued by called Egg Up. Egg Up offers an elegant solution for filmmakers to monetize their films via Electronic Sell Through (previously known as Download to Own) by selling a film digitally while protecting it from being copied. I was curious as to how consumer experience was with the service – so here is Solomon’s feeling about Egg Up:
Prevent Film Piracy and Globally Monetize Instantly by Solomon Mac-Auley, QNX LTD
The Challenge:
Piracy is the biggest worldwide threat to the film industry. The internet and social media have made it easy for consumers to pirate and share movies illegally. This growing model has disrupted and destroyed the traditional distribution channels such as DVDs, theatres, video stores and pay-per-view providers. It also doesn’t help that many platforms and media channels do not have any digital-rights-management (DRM) in place to prevent piracy. This phenomenon has cost the industry a whopping $18.2 billion and the figure is growing daily and has left in its wake a growing number of frustrated filmmakers and distributors who are unable to monetize their films.
They are therefore seeking alternative routes to outsmart piracy to a reasonable extent and make money in the process. Film makers and distributors are aware that hard media such as DVDs and Blu Ray will become obsolete in the near future and everything is being transferred online to reach consumers. Society itself is going digital; a phenomenon called DPT (Digital Pack Rat). This is whereby; consumers are digitizing everything from CD – Blu-Ray so that they can archive their media on portable hard drives or devices.
Net Neutrality:
Net Neutrality has always been part of the Internet. In fact, it’s because of Net Neutrality that the Internet has driven economic innovation, democratic participation, free online speech and online video streaming. E.g. Youtube, Netflix, Hulu and blip.tv.
There are new government policies that will block Net Neutrality from being neutral. Now the very large telephone and cable companies that control the backbone of the internet will now be able to dictate to internet companies to pay a premium of service to have the quality of service and bandwidth to facilitate their website. If they refuse the premium service, they will be moved to a slower connection. This means that the users, when viewing their web site will not have a pleasant experience. The result will be that the user will not return to the site. This will also empower the telephone companies and or cable companies to limit the consumers’ internet usage.
We believe that telephone and cable companies are looking for ways to limit internet usage to their consumers.
The Solution:
Digital distribution will increase 128% in the next few years. World movie revenue is $60 billion dollars. 66% of consumer market revenue is outside the United States. Knowing this, Eggup developed a secured Do-it-Yourself distribution platform that allows filmmakers or distributors to upload their films, thus creating an encrypted digital download player called an “Egg”. This will enhance current consumer habits to reach a broader audience effectively while preventing piracy.
Why stop the momentum of consumer sharing? They are able to share by instant message, linking, Skype, ftp, thumb drive, and DVDs. Thus creating an indirect sales and word of mouth advertising globally. Why not therefore, embrace a platform for filmmakers to profit from consumers sharing habit while preventing piracy?
Since your film is encrypted as an “Egg”, it can be safely passed from one consumer to another. Whenever a consumer shares an Egg to friends and family they are only accessible to the trailer of the movie. For them to see the full movie they would have to purchase the “Egg” since it’s encrypted.
If your “Egg” is in an illegal bit torrent or any other file sharing site or platform, it transforms it from a piracy tool to a marketing tool. When it’s downloaded, the consumer will still have to purchase to see the full movie in the “Egg”.
To create multiple streams of income, the encrypted film (Egg) is able to be embedded into 3rd party sites and blogs to reach a broader audience effectively. This provides the filmmaker endless possibilities of marketing strategies and alliances with various consumer and niche markets.
In addition, our solution to the filmmakers’ plight will not be affected by the new policies that will govern Net Neutrality. Since our technology does not stream over the internet, this opens up many options of how one can distribute content. The telephone and cable companies are able to put local cache servers on their networks. All of our encrypted content will reside on the local cache servers. Then when there is a request for a particular content, it will download it off of the servers.
There are several advantages to this method. It will not utilize the internet for downloading the content. It will be kept localized. Also the consumer will have a rich experience of downloading a movie without any data and bandwidth requisition.
Filmmaker Benefits of using Eggup:
• 100% control of your film
• Sell on multiple websites and blogs
• No Set up Fees
• Keep all your rights
• Paid in Real Time
• Country Restriction Options
• Piracy Prevention
Visit: www.goeggit.com, www.eggup.com
follow me on twitter.com/SolomonMacAuley
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