Badmovies.org Forum

Everyone might notice that the links to the B-Masters group and to Stomp Tokyo disappeared.  To prevent any muddying of the waters, I have an explanation of the events behind this.

A warning, it is a very personal story and I understand if other people do not care or draw different conclusions.  It just means a lot to me.

http://www.badmovies.org/faq/edenlost.html

Assuming that's an accurate account of what happened, I agree with you.

Personally, I think you should have registered the other Stomptokyo domains as soon as you saw they were open, if for nothing other than the satisfaction of showing him how it feels to have someone you know go behind your back. Of course, that' just me...

that's lame. a total D(omain)-block move.

especially since your website posted links  to their sites anyway.  in any case, it sounds like a frustrating and disheartening situation and that's too bad.

at the least, it should be settled with an arm-wrestling match.


-mr. henry

After reading Andrews side I'd have to say I agree with him. He's making a good point to say that thier actions are what caused his anger and them as people. I would be mad if someone was going around registering domains 'close' to the name of my own site. They probably were trying to get people who mistype the sire (maybe going to .net instead of .org) and and having that redirect to thier own site for hits. That could've been what they were thinking about doing. I support Andrew on this one.

I think registering bm.net was in extreme poor taste, and I've thought as much since I first found the domain (BoF board). That was before I knew how ugly it all really was. This sort of behavior diminishes the sense of web community which I find so appealing. Being a webmaster just makes these domain games seem all the more distasteful. It's a respect-smashing scenario.

You know what's really sad? This "domain-ation" ... it's not like any B-personality is MAKING SIGNIFICANT MONEY by being underhanded here.  What's the gain? I mean, besides ego? I just don't see any benefits -- not even strategic. Except in Andrew's case, who has an established thing going. And I'm glad Andrew didn't register the other Stomp Tokyo names. Because really, he's too good to "go there."

Anyhow, Andrew could run a site with a horrible domain like "zztferiztyyulpdqospwquis.com" and it would still be the beez kneez. And that's why he rocks. Too bad not everyone does. Sorry man.

Sorry, I've already registered "zztferiztyyulpdqospwquis.com". Too late.

I applaude you in your actions Andrew. I also agree with what was said in an earlier remark I too am also glad that you did not register on Stomp Tokyo, because you are far more superior and intelligent to play mindless domain name games. Maybe he should have thought twice about who he was messing with. Stay cool and keep up this magnificent site. We love you Andrew!!!!

While I am in no way saying that Andrew does not make a point with his decision and opinion, I do have to wonder about a few things:

(1) Did Andrew ever consider that he might be, in effect, slapping the domain holder of badmovies.COM in the face when he registered badmovies.ORG after badmovies.COM was registered. Maybe the original owner of badmovies.COM was considering making his own bad movies site, but then when Andrew came along he felt he could not do it.

(2) If Andrew was checking badmovies.COM on a regular basis to see if anything was being done there, why did he not check out the other possibilities (badmovies.NET, badmovies.BIZ, etc.) during this time. For that matter, why did it take Andrew so long to try and register badmovies.NET etc.

(3) If Andrew agreed to try to discuss the matter with Stomp Tokyo in a civilized manner, why did he eventually end up using the ultimate four-letter word in his correspondence.

Though robbery is robbery, I do find it hard to completely sympathize with a guy who did not lock his doors and regularly check on his property.

(4) Did Andrew ever consider maybe, just maybe, the broken link to his site at badmovies.net (which has been fixed) may have been an honest typo. I know I make unintentional typos like that even when I am typing something I feel greatly about.

I don't think this is a case of robbery. It's a case of being sneaky.

1.) Badmovies.com has been tied up for years. It was snagged when dot-com speculation was at an all-time high. Other badmovies domains can't hurt an entity with no plans to use the domain other than to sell it. In other words, your point is moot. If anything, Andrew's work added value to the domain's worth.

2.) I remember Andrew first mentioned registering ".net" here on the message board last year. In fact, there's no way to check, but my elephant memory seems to recall the subject came up last February (2001). Whenever ".org" was threatened. At any rate, had Andrew followed through with his plan he would have seen that the domain was taken.

3.) You can only be civilized for so long. I think Andrew showed remarkable restraint. More than I would have.

4.) I myself wouldn't feel insulted about the link being broken at badmovies.net. The smug write-up is insult enough.

Andrew made one mistake in all of this: he wasn't greedy.

And you know, I bet if my landlord (whom Andrew doesn't know) had registred badmovies.net to sell his collection of Patty Duke movies, I doubt Andrew would have minded. Because my landlord isn't aware of Andrew's work. There's no rapport between them. It's nothing personal.

If I had registered the domain, knowing Andrew and his work, then kept it quiet while maintaining the illusion of a friendship, THEN launched a site once I was found out, I'd be a go-to-the-head-of-the-class a***ole.

I'm sorry if I'm unusually passionate about this. In my eyes, Andrew's work set the standard for cult movie sites. At that, he set a warm, friendly standard. My respect for his work, his approach, and his accomplishments is through the roof. Like I said, a red flag went up immediately upon seeing the .net domain go live. Moreover, this sort of mindless, misdirected greed is why so many dot coms are in the s**tter. I watched it first-hand. I hate this stuff. It's especially baffling when there's no profit motive.

I love the internet cult movie scene. Until now, it's been relatively free of the petty ego-fueled political behavior that made the cult movie zine scene seem so lame. This sort of behavior breaks the community spirit that makes webwork so attractive.

I think Abby has said everything that needs to be said.

I also agree that when I first heard of the badmovies.net site, my first impression was that it was some copycat trying to ride on Andrew's coattails.

Andrew runs probably the best B-movie site I know of. Great message board and a sizeable selection of funny and reviews in a style that's easy to read. It's the only one I check every day.

I also enjoyed checking out StompTokyo from time to time, but I don't think I will do that from now on. Unless Chris Holland can say something pretty convinving in his own defence, I'd say he sounds like a first-class scumbag.

Well, at least the Badmovies.org link at Stomp Tokyo works as of 5 minutes ago.

It's a sad story when something like this causes a break in the b-movie community. Andrew sounds pretty reasonable, though I don't want to make too harsh a judgment without both sides of the story represented. Then again, I've been on here since '97 and Andrew's always been a straight shooter.

It's just a shame.

Speaking of shame, guess what .net/.org domains are available for purchase? Talk about not locking doors ... I spy with my little eye quite a few available domains. Too many to play such a dangerous "domain-ation" game. Odder still considering how much effort/money was directed toward obtaining badmovies domains.

Frankly, I don't see how presenting another "side" will alter my perceptions. The honorable gut instinct here should have been to offer a transfer of the domain(s) to Andrew once he expressed his displeasure. That would have been the friendly, community-minded thing to do. That didn't happen, as evidenced by the operational badmovies.net website.

I will address Capt Haddock's questions in order, though Patty (Abby) has already spoken my mind.  I think that her and I might have been separated at birth.

> (1) Did Andrew ever consider that he might be, in effect,
> slapping the domain holder of badmovies.COM in the face when
> he registered badmovies.ORG after badmovies.COM was
> registered. Maybe the original owner of badmovies.COM was
> considering making his own bad movies site, but then when
> Andrew came along he felt he could not do it.

I am not certain that Badmovies.com was registered when I started Badmovies.org.  After checking, to the best of my knowledge, it was registered after Badmovies.org by something like the "TM Acquisition Corp" (some other cybersquatters) but subsequently changed hands.   I know that I looked into obtaining the domain before my first B-Fest.   If anyone knows where an archive of registrars can be found, providing a history of a website's registration, I would love to see it.  Unfortunately, my emails from when the site first started are lost.  However, it looks like I have everything from July 1998 on.

> (2) If Andrew was checking badmovies.COM on a regular basis
> to see if anything was being done there, why did he not check
> out the other possibilities (badmovies.NET, badmovies.BIZ,
> etc.) during this time. For that matter, why did it take
> Andrew so long to try and register badmovies.NET etc.

I did not know that I had to check on those other domains.  I have been concerned about the change of management for .org domains.  Worst case scenario is that I could lose Badmovies.org, but that is very, very unlikely.  Regardless, I finally decided to register Badmovies.net so that I had a rescue azimuth.

> (3) If Andrew agreed to try to discuss the matter with Stomp
> Tokyo in a civilized manner, why did he eventually end up
> using the ultimate four-letter word in his correspondence.
which ties in to
> (4) Did Andrew ever consider maybe, just maybe, the broken
> link to his site at badmovies.net (which has been fixed) may
> have been an honest typo. I know I make unintentional typos
> like that even when I am typing something I feel greatly about.

Civilized based on the status at the time of he and I speaking.  That Badmovies.org was the only broken link I could find after dedicated looking tells me something.  Indeed, the .ogr was the only typographical error I could find at all.  That is awfully darn suspicious, is it not?  Plus, notice that, for once, they did not use "Badmovies.org," instead choosing "The Bad Movie Review Website."  That is the only time, to my knowledge, that they have ever used "The Bad Movie Review Website."  The broken link was definitely a deliberate insult, because the person in question is a worm.

> Though robbery is robbery, I do find it hard to completely
> sympathize with a guy who did not lock his doors and
> regularly check on his property.


This is a poor analogy.  How about this:  I purchase a parcel of land well outside of town.  Every week, for about two years, Chris Holland and myself can be found among a group of friends at the pub.  On rare occasions, Chris and I have supper together.  One day I want to buy the plot of land to the south of mine.  I go to town hall and find out that Chris bought all three other plots of land that were open, in the time since we knew each other.  He never told me.

No, this is a matter of broken trust.  I knew Chris Holland personally, had dinner with him and his family, and never dealt with him in anything less than a professional and honorable manner.  That he did this, over a period of months, was hard to believe.

Abby wrote:

> Frankly, I don't see how presenting another "side" will alter
> my perceptions. The honorable gut instinct here should have
> been to offer a transfer of the domain(s) to Andrew once he
> expressed his displeasure. That would have been the friendly,
> community-minded thing to do. That didn't happen, as
> evidenced by the operational badmovies.net website.

Honestly, during our phone conversation, Mr. Holland asked me what I wanted to do.  I said that it would take me some time to calm down and that our relations would be frosty until enough time passed.

What broke my back was his quickly putting up a domain at Badmovies.net and then deliberately insulting me with a broken link and salt-in-wound description.  No way was I going to let that pass, I had not even begun to calm down as it was.

Chris Holland's best bet in this matter was that I would stay quiet.  Since that has failed, his best bet is pleading innocence in intent and that I am out of control paranoid.  He is intelligent, but I am not an entirely brain dead Marine.

Man.....can't think what to say. I gotta agree with Abby. She said it pretty well. A real friend would offer you the first dibs on those sites. (Sigh). It just sucks. I like the wprk on the B-masters sites, but i'll never forget this shafting of a good guy. Under the circumstances, you showed class, Marine. The Corp. should be glad to have you. I know i do. Keep up the good work, ya' old jarhead:)

Andrew wrote:
, but I am not an entirely brain dead Marine.
>
>

I thought that was the only type of Marine.

(From a guy who grew up in an Army house)

>> Honestly, during our phone conversation, Mr. Holland asked me what I wanted to do. I said that it would take me some time to calm down and that our relations would be frosty until enough time passed.  What broke my back was his quickly putting up a domain at Badmovies.net and then deliberately insulting me with a broken link and salt-in-wound description. No way was I going to let that pass, I had not even begun to calm down as it was. <<

Well, I don't envy your position in that decision. You should never have been put in that position -- not by a colleague. If it were me, I would have done something similar -- I would have suggested a cooling off period during which the domain would remain in stasis. If I was a tokyo stomper, I wouldn't have launched anything without your consent at that point.

In light of the collaborative work y'all have done,  registering the domain without your knowledge was s**tty; launching a domain without your sign-off is unacceptable.

It's not about being paranoid, either. Because up until now, I never thought any webmaster had a need to watch his/her back. At all the sites I visit, there's a sense of camaraderie. This camaraderie existed between Badmovies.org and the various Stomp Tokyo entities. Backscratching as opposed to backstabbing. That's the way it should be in like-minded circles. And the web is based on this sense of camaraderie. The Cabal most surely was based on this principle. Those who wanted to break the communal spirit on the web so they could eat the pie by themselves ... those people all failed.

So yeah, it's a foolish chain of events in respect to community opinion. It raises eyebrows. And my brow isn't raised in Andrew's direction.

URGH!! Geez, can you tell this stuff got under my skin? Reminds me why I'm an anti-social loner.

Anything I say is rather irrelevant (and would be redundent in any case) but I felt I should say that my days of haunting That Other Page are numbered.  A part of that is because of this mess, but another part is that I haven't been liking their reviews of late.  I can't say what it is; they don't seem that diffrent.

In any case, it's rather sad for me.  That Other Page was the first web Movie-Review place I hit on a regular basis.  End of an age, for me, I guess.

Like I said, my comments here matter very little one way or the other.

Hope the rest of the year goes better for you, Andrew.

Kill him. Kill him and wear his flesh. Enter doors to which his flesh is the key and right the wrongs. Taste the flesh. Savor the sweet, delicious subtleties of victory.

I just wanted to mention that, when, Andrew announced that he was pulling out of the Cabal, I decided to follow.  Not because of the disagreement itself; assigning right'n'wrong blame is something I try not to do when it's not my call.  But Andrew was the principal instigator of what became the B-Masters Cabal, and I felt that if he didn't feel he could stay in the clubhouse he built, then I (whom he had originally invited) couldn't in good conscience stay either.  I can confirm that Andrew was very careful not to even imply a "Choose ye this day" ultimatum; he simply announced that he could not continue in the forum of association.  And I decided that a B-Masters without Andrew would be an empty hanger-on, like a weak eighth season of a sitcom.

(I note in passing that coldfusionvideo.org and .net are still available...)

Nathan

perhapse the guys with the sneakily-nabbed domains could put up "B-masters" link pages at the controversial domains. a class move would be listing badmovies.org first and the others in equally prominent type.

it seems to me that would iron out a few wrinkles and work toward eliminating the dark cloud that will inevitably bee over the next b-fest.

-mr. henry

Kill him. Kill him and wear his flesh. Enter doors to which his flesh is the key and right the wrongs. Taste the flesh. Savor the sweet, delicious flavor of victory.

Never liked them other damned ole websites anyhow! This is by far the superior site, and I will absolutely be here on a daily basis as I have been for the last year or so. Can we kill him...can we?
DJ

 I concur that the actions Andrew has listed sound pretty immature and annoying, as well as seem to be without real benefit to him. I also never liked that site, and have mainly restricted my reviewing to this site, Nathan's, and Liz's. That is certinally not going to change now that I've read this.

I must concur with the others who've found this to be the better site.  I probably stumbled across the others first a couple of years ago, but for some reason this is the site I kept coming back to.

Shame on those who are so underhanded, may the only movie they can ever view be Glitter.

I use to think that StompTokyo was just a lame site, now I know it's a lame site run by a***oleS!!!! May Chris and Scott writhe in Hell with their stupid site.