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

As couple of weeks ago I read an entry on Adrian’s (DailyDOOH) blog about the purchase of digitalsignage.com (Quoted below) and I have visited the site several time to see what was up with it.

What I find odd is how the categories that were in the directory on digitalsignage.com a few days ago were very similar to those found on Digital Signage Universe. Adrian made note of it too. If digitalsignage.com wasn’t doing anything wrong, then why have these categories been removed so quickly? It does make me wonder…

There are always to sides to every story, but one has to wonder if you read between the lines what the truth is. While I don’t agree with the language of their e-mail, I don’t blame them for being defensive about protecting something that belongs to them. If you had built something similar wouldn’t you would want to protect what you have done too?

I do hope that digitalsignage.com is a success, but what we need is something completely different in the market, not more of the same. There are plenty of directories on the web, most of them suck for lots of reasons. There are also plenty of news sources as well. Nate, if you want to make it success you should follow Adrian’s advice and do something completely different so you stand out even more then the universe website. I’m not sure what that is, maybe other people can give you some advice on how to build something really great.

That’s my 2 cents.

Jeff

“http://digitalsignage.com/ Goes Live
July 4th, 2008

We reported back in mid June about the online auction for the domain name digitalsignage.com in our story “DigitalSignage.com Sold For $20,200?

It’s up and running and pretty much looks like just another resource site, i.e. NEWS in the form of press releases and some resource space for network / directory listings at some future time.

In many ways it’s similar to Digital Signage Universe. Both of these sites we believe are going to have a hard time differentiating themselves out there, though Digital Signage Universe seems to have done a good job of attracting advertisers.”

Both in essence are poor imitators of the original and very good Digital Signage Today

If you Google ‘digital signage’ (and understand a little on how Google’s ranking algorithms work) it’s not surprising that neither of these sites appear in the first couple of pages of search results - if you Google ‘digitalsignage’ it’s a different story but who does that?

Our take ALWAYS has been is that ‘digital signage’ per se is just a technology.

Digital Out of Home is the industry that we cover - it just happens to be that DOOH utilises digital signage and other technologies.

We do like to think that we cover an ‘industry’ rather than a technology. I am sure you will tell us if we are wrong and that you disagree.

In the business world, I feel like competition is very healthy, especially in the kind of world we live in where it is so hard to get started. Every experience gained is worth something, even if it isn’t very pleasant.

I would like to see the underdog win this one. Go get’m Nater!!

Jacob Parrys last blog post..WARNING: Humor may be hazardous to your illness.

What an email! Whomever it was that sent this email from MotionStream must have a really small tolerance for business. After all, business always turns into a competition.

Or maybe they just were living in some dream, thinking that nobody would ever dare compete with them.

Well, good luck with digitalsignage.com! I hope you rock their world!

First, the “About Me” section of this website says, “the Digital Signage Universe is the most complete global news source and link directory available for the digital signage marketplace” . . . although we’ll send you nasty emails if we think you’ve been using it?

Secondly, their hang up about the mass email has to do with the alleged misuse of their directory link . . . .which says this on the frontpage: “If you are deploying a new network or upgrading an existing network, Digital Signage Universe is your best resource for finding information and qualified suppliers.” Hmm . . . again, even if this directory was used to create a contact list of digital signage companies, isn’t that what they just said the site was for? And really, isn’t that what a directory in general is for!? . . . Oh, and just as a thought-provoking side note, the directory requires ZERO registration/login access whatsoever. If they were so concerned about giving access to the competition, you think they might make it a little more secure.

And lastly, their directory is comprehensive, but not very useful for what they claim. The directory only provides links to each company’s website; not emails, nor any other contact information, so creating an email list from their directory would take a lot of time and energy and could be done just as painstakingly through a google web search.

Anyway, I thought this was great fun. I think the “Best Regards” adds a very warm and homey kind of touch. Keep us posted on the lawyer situation. . .