Conventional Idea

[captain_slinky]

I woke up with a kind of brilliant idea that I *might* follow through on, depending on just how illegal it is.

As most folks who will read this know, I have a fairly large collection of hard-to-find and out-of-production digital video on my hard drive. Lots and lots of stuff that I've accumulated over the years via everything from Napster and Limewire (back in the day) to various private torrent trackers to trades with other collectors to my own private rips from ancient VHS tapes. Approximately 3TB of the stuff that I try to keep close tabs on, making sure to delete stuff as it becomes available on legitimate, official DVD release in the United States.

(Back in the 80's and 90's I was pretty big in to the VHS Grey Market Bootlegging, and am very aware of the copyright loophole that turns a semi-blind eye towards video and media that has not been officially released in this country such as most Anime and British Imports back then, as well as "Personal Use" recordings that lead to the widespread saturation of Station Identification watermarks and the dreaded "Commercial Bar" at the bottom of your screen on standard TV).

One of the ways we VHS bootleggers used to get around copyright so that we could sell tapes full of old TV shows was to make it clear that these tapes ARE NOT for sale; we TRADE. You trade me a tape of stuff I need from YOUR private collection, and in exchange I give you a tape from MY private collection. If you don't have a tape I need, that's okay... You can either send me a blank video tape and $10 (to cover the cost of my time and the use of my VCR) and I'll make you a copy, or just send me $12 and I'll sell you one of MY blank tapes that I will then fill with the video that you want.

So how about this? I take my laptop to the convention with me and let people fill thumb drives with as much unreleased video as they want for FREE. The only way I'd be making any money on this would be in selling thumb drives to people who didn't bring any.

Not really a MONEY MAKING SCHEME of any kind, just a great way to get weird, obscure and/or legally dubious video in to the hands of the fans.

This is the only way that most kids today would ever get to see the 1960's Batman...

Comments

[aurora77]

If you had a space to use as a base, and a way to get the message to the right people, all without attracting the attention of he con staff, it might work. I'd be wary of letting people use their own thumb drives, though. It's one of the easier ways to get a virus. Another concern is how many thumb drives should you buy and bring with you? Too many and you're stuck with them.

[captain-slinky.livejournal.com]

With the Ink Recycling Program at Staples, I can pick up $20 worth of thumb drives every month for free. Seems like they have a sale just about every other week where some brand of thumb drive costs about $2 per GB so having a bunch of 2GB, 4GB and 16GB drives on hand wouldn't be too cost prohibitive :)