Interview to the founder of doom9

[Bodom]

Hi, my name is Angelo Eugenio Rosario Catania
I am chief of computer science italian magazine "TiempoLibre"

I want interview the maker of doom9
the interview is very easy:

Step one: i send on you e-mail account the question
Step two: answer the question to the week
Step three: i pubblish the interview in home page and the paper of tiempolibresite.com.

We have many interview
to the very important person
This is my previously interview:
http://www.tiempolibresite.com/content/category/1/67/2/

I am sorry for my english
Thank you for the time dedicate me
Catania A. E. R.

[Doom9]

You can just send me a PM with the questions.. that way they don't go through the EUs information dragnet :)

[Bodom]

I have done
thank you for the time dedicate me for your availability

[techreactor]

Bodom, Do let us know when you publish the interview on your website.

[Bodom]

I pubblish the interview is http://www.tiempolibresite.com/content/view/477/2/

and You can see the interview to intro home page
in the home page to www.tiempolibresite.com

I am sorry for the late ;(

[techreactor]

Just read it, Nice interview and thoughts, good work Bodom

[Bodom]

Goody Goody
everything worth of Doom9, He is fantastic, this is my most beautiful interview.

I have only, the guilt for my bad English

[setarip_old]

Very nice interview. It allowed "Doom9" to make it clear that the Doom9 Forums and other sites are intended for legitimate processes and discussions thereof.

I just don't understand why "Doom9" wasn't willing to provide his name, address, and telephone number ;>}

[sillKotscha]

Bodom: Is there a site to which you are inspired for making doom9?

Doom9: Not really.. it's the lack of a site with the information I was looking for, and encouragement from college buddies that got me started.

hmm, and I thought you were "inspired" by Oleg's site....


Being a regular on Oleg's site even at that date - mainly to get the latest software DVD player - I got interested in DVD ripping... ;)


Soon, your access to my site will be logged 24/7 thanks to the EU's massive data dragnet (also known as the EU data retention initiative)..

my guess is that most of doom9's active forum members are logged anyway - this EU initiative only makes it legal for the appropriate public authorities...

[Doom9]

If you were familiar with Oleg's site.. it not only carried DVD tools news but also quite a bit of warez..
my guess is that most of doom9's active forum members are logged anyway - this EU initiative only makes it legal for the appropriate public authorities...It used to take a court order to snoop into somebody's private data.. it will take a court order for anybody to get access to server stats and parts of the forum database. Anything else than that is out of my purview.

[sillKotscha]

If you were familiar with Oleg's site.. it not only carried DVD tools news but also quite a bit of warez..

I know / knew that... it's just the point that I think Oleg's site was the bone of contention for you to set up doom9 as a place to collect Infos around the tools you've found there...

I mean ezboard was only the beginning and the forum developed to what it is nowadays...


It used to take a court order to snoop into somebody's private data.. it will take a court order for anybody to get access to server stats and parts of the forum database. Anything else than that is out of my purview.

that's my point... it used to take a court order.

At least in Germany we now have this so called Vorratsdatenspeicherung (http://www.golem.de/specials/vorratsdatenspeicherung/).

- translated by google (http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.golem.de%2Fspecials%2Fvorratsdatenspeicherung%2F&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8) -

[Bodom]

@ doom9
it is possible add TiempoLibreSite.com in your link page?

We talk of multimedia and We have many tutorial of multimedia in italian (only italian).

In this url the list of our tutorial http://www.tiempolibresite.com/content/view/75/57/

Please help a small site ;)

The link page in this url: http://www.doom9.org/links.htm

Thank you for the time dedicate me

Regards

[mr soft]

Hi , I can´t seem to open those links , I would love to read the interview.
Anyone know where I can find it ?

Regards

[Doom9]

it's just the point that I think Oleg's site was the bone of contention for you to set up doom9 as a place to collect Infos around the tools you've found there... If you think you know it better than me - fine, it's your prerogative. Me, I'd think its rather preposterous to claim to know better, especially in that light that I have never felt comfortable sharing any intimate details.
@mr soft
It appears the site is temporarily offline. If it's alright with Bobom, I can post the original question/answer from our PMs.

[Bodom]

Now, TiempoLibreSite.com have a problem with the server.
You can post here thr interview, there are not problem :cool:


If you can, do you submit the tiempolibresite.com in the link page of doom?

Edit. Now The site is ok.

[Doom9]

Originally Posted by Bodom
Before all, I want thanks you for the onor and the time dedicate me.
You're welcome.

You are for me, and many italian the "guru" of ripping and encoding divx, i like your site and i always visit it since 2001/2002.
If we'd be talking face to fact I'd probably blush now - it may well have been that at some time I was into a lot of what is going on, but if I look around the forum today, there are so many areas where I'd have to read a guide myself to get started. The whole subject matter has grown so large that I do not think there'll be one single person who can claim he/she is very proficient in every area. If you are, e.g. into DVD authoring, the whole MPEG-4 area might not be so interesting, etc.

The question are:
1. Who is the founder of doom9.org? Age, Name, Native Town and your job.. We want a gossip
Especially in today's climate with lawsuits, disappearing software (DVD Decrypter gone, RipIt4Me gone, PSL2 Plugin gone, FixVTS and MenuEdit stopped), DMCA takedowns (BackupHDDVD on sourceforge and the hddvdkeys.com website) I want a clear cut between my online persona and my real life. I may or may not be in the MPAA crosshairs, but I certainly won't make life easier for anybody trying to come knocking at my door.

2. Is there a site to which you are inspired for making doom9?
Not really.. it's the lack of a site with the information I was looking for, and encouragement from college buddies that got me started.

3. how and why Do you make doom9?
The why is outlined in my About section and it has not changed. I'm not sure the how is interesting.. it used to be wordpad, nowadays it's a html editor and hypersnap. I still spend 30+ minutes each day reading various websites looking for information that is related to my subject matter. Over the years, I've found that more topics than just new software is of interest to me, and could be for other people, so that's why I got into reporting about legal affairs. And naturally, any potential successor to DVD is of interest as well.
4. Why doom9 has a version for every language and as they are managed?
As much as I'd like, there's a market for people who do not speak English well enough to follow the information and news posted on my site - so when I started getting requests for some of my documents to be translated into another language, I thought why not try and get my site up and running in another language, rather than just giving out bits and pieces of the information I've gathered and have it spread over various foreign language sites.
There is always one person in charge of a mirror - that person is in charge of coordinating translations, and gets information about all documents that are uploaded/removed/changed on my site on a daily basis. The same person is also responsible that my news are translated in a timely fashion, as regular news is the main reason why people keep coming back on a daily basis.
In recent years, my move from college life to professional life has reduced the amount of time available, and thus I'm not always as active in looking after the mirrors as I'd like to, resulting in a situation where not every mirror is necessarily up-to-date
Basically a mirror gets all the content, has to use my design, and provide their own website hosting - other than that whomever is in charge of a mirror can pretty much run their own show - they are even allowed some liberties as to the main page design (e.g. ads to cover hosting costs).

5. Which the future objective and developments of doom9?
Well - I'm not going to spill the beans here, but I guess it's reasonable to assume that there will be more codec comparisons and that sooner or later the HD format topic will be more than just news items.
6. For General Talking: What do you think about file-sharing?
I haven't used any P2P tools since the original Napster, so I'm only really up-to-date on the legal affairs surrounding P2P, and not what is out there and how convenient it is to get content these days. From a legal standpoint, sharing content with the whole wide world has always been problematic even under pre DMCA legislation, whereas the legality of downloading still varies between countries. I think that the RIAA committed a big blunder when they get rid of Napster back in the day. While Napster was on hiatus, there were rumors about Napster coming back in its original form, but for a small monthly cost (I'm not sure how much exactly.. I believe in the $10 area though it might have been as much as $20). In tracking downloads, that money could then be distributed amongst the artists. The industry would've gotten a new revenue stream overnight, and basically made money with any effort on their part (bandwidth was cheap even back in the day), and users could keep on using the service they've gotten to love. The burden of finding a proper source, download speed, proper naming, finding whole albums in the same quality - all that would remain up to the user.

Instead, the industry did nothing, and in that vacuum, several alternatives developed. Even today, the majority of industry sanctioned download sources are DRM infected, resulting in a situation where you either have to strip the DRM with all that entails, or buy the same thing over and over again to cover all the devices you own. It is thus no surprise that P2P filesharing is still prevalent. I believe that the industry still has to learn the lesson that they won't regain as much control over the market as they used to have, and I have my doubts that we'll enter a DRM free age any time soon - it's simply too lucrative to charge people over and over for the same thing (it is the holy grail of any copyright industry). And even if they do get paid (allofmp3), for a service that has a reasonable price (hence the popularity), the industry has nothing better to do than go after it.
If iPods ever lose their popularity, all those songs that Apple is peddling today will backfire big time - consumers will finally wake up and realize they've paid good money for a less than good product. And while leglsiation generally favors the industry, politicians will have a hard time overlooking millions of upset consumers.
7. What is the future of divx and xvid? The divx or xvid is still the best? There is a best alternative?
You should ask DXN and the XviD team about that. DXN is very tight lipped about going beyond MPEG-4 ASP, and we know XviD AVC should've been out a long time ago. The HD format war will set back mainstream adoption of MPEG-4 AVC for several years, but HDTV and IPTV simply require more efficient codecs than MPEG-2 so MPEG-4 AVC will be a big part of the video future and it remains to be seen if DXN will expand the DivX universe accordingly. I believe that in a few years, standalone players will handle high def AVC content on DVD (or successor formats) you create on your own. The format war has the potential to slow down this development, but in the end it is inevitable. Even today, we have iPods, PSPs, consoles, hardware acceleration in modern GFX cards - so I think in a few years, MPEG-4 ASPs current popularity will swap over to MPEG-4 AVC. If you look at my last codec comparison that is over a year old now, AVC codecs already dominated, and development has continued since - and more powerful machines have become available that make up for the speed loss you incurr when switching from ASP to AVC.
8. Where is the number of doom9.org? (unique visitors, seen pages and other) Where is the best recognition of these years?
I'm not a big fan of boasting with numbers - once the counter I used refused to work because I had too many hits, I switched to webserver stats. At this point, my site is distributed over multiple servers and I do not have statistics on every server, but when I extrapolate the numbers from a few servers, the site gets somewhere in the range of 1.2 to 1.5 million unique visitors a month. That number tends to vary a lot over the months - December and January are usually our strongest months.
The forum probably makes about as much as well, but in the absence of cookies (most forum visitors are not members), I suspect there are a lot more repeat customers than on the site itself.
9. The project doom9 is the most famous of the web, you would be you expected this success?
Well, I'd have to disagree on the most famous.. my site is small by comparison to really major sites out there, and I have no clue how we stand compared to the other big DVD sites out there today - I know years ago, traffic wise we were in third place, but in the end I don't think the goal is to become the most popular - I much rather have the site that is the most useful to my visitors. It is unfortunate that today, the main site is not fully up-to-date guide wise, but I believe the forum is definitely the most valuable resource for the topics that are deal with therein and I want to thank all the people that have made this possible - we have a high concentration of knowledgeable people that come back to help others and this is not a given. Many discussion forum suffers from having just a few knowledgeable people, and if those have other matters to deal with, the forum just turns into a place where the same question is asked again and again.
And no, I never expected that kind of popularity, and it wasn't something I was working towards over the years. If you told me tomorrow that I suddenly had 10 million visitors, that would be great (and we have seen massive spikes when certain stories break - if your number of active users increases more than twofold it's not only exciting, it also gets you worried that the hardware might not be up to the task) but I'd hope those people were as happy with what they're getting as the 1.x million gets today. I have been online ever since Mosaic was used the surf the web, and I've seen sites come and go, and sites whose focus dramatically shifted as the numbers increased (no longer targeting a knowledgeable audience but instead targeting the lowest common denominator) and I hope that once the site turns 10, the old timers that are still interested in the topic will still visit and not have left for other sites that better cover my original goals when I started out.
10. other things for the pubblic of tiempolibresite.com?
Do not forget that the freedoms we enjoy today as far as digital content is concerned are endangered: The content industry is on on a massive global war against consumer freedoms - just because you can backup DVDs today doesn't mean that it's always going to be like that. In the past few weeks, important tools that permit DVD backups have been squashed by legal onslaughts, so if you don't want to wake up one day and find that you now have to pay once to play a movie on your HDDVD/Blu-ray player, then another time to play it in the DVD player in your bedroom, another time to play it on your PS and yet another time to play the same thing on your video iPod, don't just sit back, but actively engage in ongoing efforts by consumer organizations to fight for your rights. I try to mention ongoing efforts in the news as much as possible and hope that babaz - the guy in charge of the Italian mirror - will bring you additional news that only concerns Italy.
Likewise, the massive extension of copyright laws endanger sites like mine where you can get information on how to use legitimately purchased content as you see fit. Soon, your access to my site will be logged 24/7 thanks to the EU's massive data dragnet (also known as the EU data retention initiative).. now all it takes is to criminalize information that can be abused for copyright infringement, and suddenly you'll be visited by the police in the middle of the night, just because you made a copy of "Lion King" for your daugher to protect the original against scratches, dirt and teeth.

Cheers
Doom9

[setarip_old]

@Doom9

You should consider making your post #16 a "Sticky"...

[Shinigami-Sama]

Well Actually with a quick glance I counted about 1.2 million hits per month

and I agree with Setarip about sticking

[Die*wrek*show]

That was way cool, and well worth the read. Doom9 you're a hero of sorts to me. I hold inspiration as the highest form of compliment, and that story is well and truly inspirational.