Fullertonstories.com gets original $50,000 bandwidth bill for Kelly Thomas video reduced to $1,000
Local news blogging is not all fun and games. Sometimes it gets downright serious. Like when FullertonStories.com covered the release of the Kelly Thomas video.
The highly anticipated city surveillance video was released last month, ten months after the incident happened and just days before the local city council elections. FullertonStories.com was the first website to post the video.
Because they were the first to get the video onto the web, and because the video quickly went viral, many of those who linked to the video used the FullertonsStories.com source.
But instead of using one of the standard video hosts, FullertonStories.com used the BrightCove video platform (brightcove.com). In an email to Carlos Miller at PINAC Davis Barber at FullertonStories said he chose BrightCove in part because of its "ability to add third-party advertising to generate revenue."
The problem is that the revenue Barber generated did not nearly cover the expense of using BrightCove. When the 34-minute video got more than 100,000 views, BrightCove wanted to charge FullertonStories $50,000 in bandwidth fees for overages on the news website's plan.
Barber was able to talk BrightCove down to a more manageable $1,000 but is now asking people who linked to his video by copying his embed code -- the HTML code behind the web page, which can easily be viewed on any web page by right-clicking and selecting "view source" -- to reimburse him.
One of the people he is asking for reimbursement from is PINAC. Carlos Miller, from PINAC, has posted the story here.
http://www.pixiq.com/article/fullerton-blogger-asking-pinac-to-foot-portion-of-bandwidth-bill
Here Mr. Barber inquires as to the legal precident of his complaint:
http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=40077
UPDATE: 6/18 01:30
The following includes comments from Davis Barber and the email he sent to Carlos Miller.
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