A 35-year broadcast journalism and film veteran; Ellen Seidler is experienced in all aspects of film and media production. She’s earned credits as producer, director, cinematographer, and writer for a variety of independent film, documentary, and web-based projects.
Seidler began her career in journalism at ABC News in New York as an assignment editor, and later joined KRON-TV in San Francisco as a photojournalist and editor.
She served as professor of Fine & Media Arts at Contra Costa College for 22 years teaching digital film and tv production classes and has also been a lecturer in Digital Media at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and taught workshops for the Knight Digital Media Center at Berkeley. She remains active in film production and works as an anti-piracy consultant, assisting independent film distributors with IP protection, DMCA takedown and Content ID management and monetization.
Over the past two decades, she has also produced/directed/ and worked as a cinematographer on a variety of independent film and documentary projects. Her directing credits include the award-winning documentary “Fighting for Our Lives-Facing AIDS in San Francisco” and the indie feature “And Then Came Lola” which screened in LGBT film festivals throughout the world.
Following the release of “And Then Came Lola” in 2010 Seidler began to speak out on the issue of online piracy’s link to profits (via advertising) and created a blog www.popuppirates.com documenting online piracy’s link to profit (via advertising revenue) and its negative impact on content creators. She has been credited with bringing the issue of ad-sponsored piracy to the fore.
The idea of targeting websites financially goes back as far as there has been money changing hands on the Internet. However, the more recent history of it began when director Ellen Seidler launched the site PopUpPirates.com in 2010 (previous coverage), where she began to highlight many of the companies whose ads ran next to pirate downloads of her content.
Though Seidler began to receive some significant media attention, it wouldn’t be until December 2011 that the idea would take the national stage. — Plagiarism Today
Seidler continues to blog at voxindindie.org exploring issues surrounding piracy, copyright and the challenges facing indie artists in an online world.
Seidler is a member of the Advisory Board for the Digital Citizens Alliance and has participated in presentations on piracy and artist’s rights for Canadian Music Week, George Mason’s Center for Intellectual Property, University of Georgia, Stanford Law & UC Davis Law school, among others. She’s also participated multiple government sponsored section 512 copyright roundtables focused on potential updates to the DMCA. Her anti-piracy efforts have also been covered by a variety of news outlets including NPR, Fortune Magazine, and Backstage.
Seidler received her B.A. in fine arts from Harvard University, and her M.A. in journalism from U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.