DigitalSignage.com Threatened.

That’s great, really funny. You have to wonder if the guy was drunk when he sent the email or something. Who would expect a message like that to be treated seriously or kept private?

I was talking to Ryan about this. When I read something as ignorant as what was written by digital signage universe , I so wish I could have a photo of the person that wrote it to compare to the comment. It reeks of one of two things - white trash or little man syndrome. Possibly both.

Not only that, but it’s funny that whoever wrote it didn’t leave their name but signed it with Digital Signage Universe. So now, instead of just one idiot, you’ve got a whole company of them.

What’s funny is that he didn’t sign the letter, but you can get this guy’s name from his email address: Lionel . . . you’re right about the complex, but I think it’s neither an issue with height or trailer parks . . . I think it’s just growing up as Lionel.

Hi Nate,

First, I want to apologize to you for the email I sent to you. It has become clear to me that I over reacted to the situation.

There are several things that happened during the period of time that your email arrived that caused me to become alarmed. A couple of days before your email arrived there was an excessive amount of traffic hitting our directory from two IP addresses. Every link in our directory was gone through with precision over several days. When your email arrived at our motionstream address we jumped to the conclusion that you (digitalsignage.com) were useing our directory to build your own. The motionstream address is not listed in very many places (as far as we know) A logical conclusion from our standpoint given that the categories that you started to set up on your site were similar, and your aggressive move to purchase the digitalsignage.com domain name.

For the record, we’ve spent several hundred hours building our link database. We’ve search the Web in five languages and have used multiple search engines from countries around the globe to dig up the most obscure listings from everywhere possible, all in the effort to make our directory as complete as possible. Several hundred more links are being added to our directory in the near future. While links themselves are not copyrightable, (the courts ruled on this a few years ago—without the ability to make links, there would be no Internet) the overall structure (categories, organization, and general concept) are copyrightable as an entity. Our email to you was a reaction to protect an entity that we worked so hard to build and maintain.

We’re living through a time when it has become so easy to take things just because they are there. The music business is a good example where files are freely exchanged without compensation to the artist. This disregard for property has real impact on peoples lives and destroys business. When it happens to you, or someone you know, then you will also take it seriously.

We’re not looking to pick a fight with you— You have every right to build your own directory. If you say that you weren’t using our directory as the source to build your own, then I’ll take you at your word. Once again, I apologize for the tone of the email I sent to you, I don’t normally communicate in that fashion, I was acting out of anger over a situation that I obviously misread.

Good luck with Digitalsignage.com, I look forward to seeing how it takes shape and having another dimension presented for digital signage information. There are a lot of politics that go along with this business, something that you will begin to see for yourself in time, some of it will really surprise you.

Best Regards,

Lionel Tepper
lionel@motionstream.com