Unlike plenty of our users, you were using AlterTube for what it was intended for: helping to get underground, indie, or lesser-known-but-cool video to new audiences.

The fact of the matter is that Shadowsnake doesn’t recognize the fact that the BoingBoing altertube plug of their video brought them a lot of exposure, and even if they (and we) weren’t making money off of the views of their film on AlterTube, they could have used that PR to their benefit.

As demonstration of that, google “alan moore documentary.”

However, (like the RIAA), they don’t see things this way, and instead get threatened by it as someone “stealing” something from them and clamp down. The result in both cases is a disenfranchizement of the core audience, and a lot of wasted opportunities. I understand that fear motivated their action (possibly greed too, but that hasn’t been proven). However, that’s no excuse for such an unproportional response. I didn’t even know the video existed until after all of this had gone down.

-^9