Or consider the Acacia letter campaign to be very well thought out. Which I am very more inclined to believe as I never under estimate the machiavellian tactics of lawyers.
Yes they obviously outsourced this bulk mailing, and yes it went to alot of people that do not even deal with video. Yes they spent .517 cents per mailing and at face value it looks as stupid as hell and that they are highly unorganized.
It may get them some fear based license agreements which will look good on paper and could boost the shares. That in itself it beside the point looking at the big picture.
It is painfully obvious that as an industry we do not get along with each other on many levels which makes us easy prey.
It is also obvious nobody will heed our cries because they see us as scum.
We do generate money, which does give them a reason.
Looking at the time line and being one of those that was contacted back in 2002 about this. I personally think I see a bigger plan in action.
They started with going after content providers, leased and those that sell. I think to get targets, since providers keep records of webmasters, and we all seen the initial licenses.
Next they went after some programs, mostly sweetheart deals for name appeal and to prevent them from fighting.
We then see a counter strike with the IMPAI forming against their desires. They do not like this and try to block it.
Next we see a mass mailing to nearly everyone and their brother. Odds are they did get some databases, either via license or some other legal way. To me this was not done to scare up licenses but to make us not trust each other and turn our attentions away from working together.
just
