March 20, 2007

In my real life I run a consulting and publishing business called Emerging Media Dynamics, Inc. (EMDI hosted the New Video Summit). In one form or another, I’ve always been in the consulting and publishing business and have spent my entire professional career conducting research, performing analyses and producing quantitative estimates of just about every media and communications business that has existed.

Whether that research was conducted for a sole employer (during my years as head of research for the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, for example), or for dozens of business customers, I can’t recall a single complaint regarding the quality or relevance or value of my analysis or work. Certainly, of the thousands of research reports I’ve sold over the years, I can’t recall a single request for a refund.

But Monday morning, while in San Jose running my event, I got an urgent voice mail from a third-party research vendor, a respected outfit that sells research reports and analyses to companies worldwide. Someone who purchased my report from this vendor wanted his money back.

Most reports sold by this vendor come from well-known analyst firms and are typically very expensive, running into the thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands, per pop. For this reason, the vendor has a no-refund policy. Otherwise, frugal firms looking to save a buck would purchase a report, copy it and then demand a refund.

My report, the one in question, Overview of Internet-Based Video Services, A to Z, is priced at a relatively modest $899. Despite the clearly displayed no-refund policy, one customer was demanding his money back.

Because of my schedule, I was unable to deal with this unusual situation and planned to postpone dealing with it until VON ended, although I admit it bugged me throughout the day. Whether out of indifference or true satisfaction with the reports I release, no one has ever complained and my curiosity was piqued. To my surprise, I got another urgent voice mail later in the day asking that I call to deal with this matter. Where, I thought, was the fire?

After a series of emails with the research vendor, the situation became clearer: Eric Bauman of ebaumsworld bought the report and Eric Bauman was voiciferously demanding a refund. An excerpt from his first email:

I recently purchased this report expecting to see useful information and instead found nothing more than generalizations. The report doesn’t shed light on anything and is simply not worth the outrageous amount of money you are charging. It is quite apparent that what you are doing is a scam. I demand a full and prompt refund. If not I will do everything in my power to bring this matter publicly. I expect a reply in the next 24-48 hours. Thank you for your time.

Bauman was threatening to “go public” (indeed, he would do “everything in his power” to make this matter public) if he didn’t get an immediate refund. No wonder the vendor was panicked.

But what, exactly, would Bauman go public with? He had the opportunity to read the table of contents of the report and study the abstract of the report via the vendor’s portal. He knew about the no-refund policy.

I asked the vendor to query Bauman further about what, precisely, he found wanting. Here’s an excerpt from Bauman’s response.*

The first 10 pages are just giving the definition of each subject. Anyone interested in this report and willing to pay $1,500 [not sure where this dollar amount came from] would already know the definition and would expect more in depth “research.”

The last 40 pages is simply a directory of a collection of sites, including mine (ebaumsworld.com). There is no value of this information since it is all public WHOIS domain information.

There is no specific market research of any site in the report. The only mention of any site is in the actual directory.

After these and other complaints, Bauman lobbed yet another set of threats, the ones highlighted at the beginning of this post — he would “file a criminal complaint with visa” (as if a credit card company has the authority to bring criminal charges against anyone) and spread the word of the vendor’s “fraud” to his 1.2 million visitors unless he got his money back immediately.

At this point I took a closer look at Bauman and discovered he’s one of the most hated men on the Internet. ebaumsworld is widely accused of stealing the video creations of others, going so far as to splice off the original creators’ watermarks before posting videos on its own site. Here’s one excerpt from an Alexa review of ebaumsworld:

Eric Bauman has been caught lying on multiple occasions, such as claiming the creator of the famous “Badger” cartoon gave him permission to host it on his site and even work with him, even though this contradicts his own quotes saying that he never gave permission to Eric Bauman to do anything. And I really don’t have to give an example of theft, but I will anyway. The humor site Something Awful had a photoshop phriday event where people parodied various movie posters. These pics found it’s way to eBaum’s World, had their watermark cropped off, and then replaced with the infamous eBaum’s World watermark.

There’s even a web site devoted to people who hate ebaumsworld’s tactics called ebaumsworldsucks.com.

Despite the enmity he engenders, Bauman has apparently become rich off his highly-trafficked site. According to a Wired profile of Bauman (a generally negative piece that is nonetheless posted on ebaumsworld), ebaumsworld generates revenue of $10 million per year and the 26-year old Bauman drives a black Porsche Carrera.

So, you’d think that someone riding this high wouldn’t have to resort to scary and laughable threats of criminal fraud charges and public smears to get his $899 (or $1,500) back. He doesn’t scare me and he shouldn’t scare the research vendor. Bullies like this are the biggest cowards of them all.

It doesn’t really matter anyway. I don’t want his money. He can keep it.

*Bauman, is, of course, off-base on every point. The directory was compiled over two months through painstaking research and all descriptions and categorizations were originally written by me. Specific websites are mentioned throughout the report, as well as in the directory. Bauman had every right to not find the “definitions” useful, but the main purpose of the report was to develop a categorization scheme aimed at helping people come to grips with the jumbled morass of Internet video sites out there. The definitions he refers to are, of course, explanations for how we derived the categories.