Replies to post #2857 on American Green Inc (ERBB)

[SharonB]

odie: Re RB and Sunncomm post and my take on it. Would welcome other opinions.
Re: Sunncomm’s post on RagingBS board. The poster was born on Christmas day. That means a lot as this poster is not a newbie and yet is informed well enough to post 12 times on the STEH board. Lets, check out a few and see if there is a pattern of sorts.
Post number 1. any1 know what happened to the asktheprez! sunncomm said it is temp. unavailable. i wonder why!!!
Post #2. imo - peter knew what he did wrong so he is trying to crawl away slowly so the big boys behind bars won't make him their girlfriend.

and if u r telling me the sunncomm is fixing it - THAT IS BS. lets see how long asktheprez will be offline. imo peter couldn't handle the pressure and his wrong doing so he stopped it!
Post #5. is sunncomm a scam or not? who knows! but i do know that if a tech company is not advancing in a bull market, as we have been in, than it is in TROUBLE!
Post #10.
any1 want to take a crack at how long "asktheprez" is going to be down or should i say how long peter is going to keep on hiding because he f...ed up and doesn't want to be behind bars where those pretty big boys will make him their girlfriends.

i am starting a pool for dates!!!
Pot #11. "the longest time he went between questions was just a few days."

it is over a few days odie - yet it is over a week. oh more like 3 weeks and counting.

oh and all the other lieing he did with his promised dates that went and gone with no nothing yet. he is right when he said "you ain't seen nothing."
Post #12. The one you were referring to.
A VERY GOOD ARTICLE ABOUT SUNNCOMM

"someone who occasionally drops into this blog (and someone on whom i've commented both in agreement and disagreement, which is a good thing) - left me a little teaser (see comments) in one of my posts on sunncomm.

sunncomm, you might recall was defeated by a shift key and got a bit indignant about being exposed in the light.

normally, i wouldn't get too involved in such things, but the implications - legal, ethical, and business practice - seem to me to make a wonderful set of object lessons in how dangerous it is to depend on darkness in the modern world. these lesson i pretty much left unspoken in my previous comments on sunncomm, so i'll spell them out for you now.

lesson, the first

banking on stupidity and ignorance is a bad idea. sunncomm's business model (at least as far as mediamax cd3 audio cd copy protection is concerned) was obviously to bank on the stupidity of the music listening public. since the music listening public isn't sunncomm's customer (directly), i can't legitimately get on my soapbox and scream "don't count on a stupid customer!" but wait....

the record labels were sunncomm's customers. as reported earlier, there was a bit of spin at the beginning of this fiasco from at least one label (bmg) - one of those "oh yeah. we knew that." statements that just screams for a rebuttal. well, anyway. sunncomm either sold bmg their widget based on its [easily defeated] capabilities, or bmg banked on the music listening public's stupidity. so, that's at least one strike, maybe two. let me say this again. banking on stupidity and ignorance is a bad idea.

lesson, the second

at this point, your widget is in deep trouble, quite probably unrecoverable trouble. even if you can still find stupid cd purchasers, the labels know that they were had, so it's going to be very hard to get enough credibility back to keep any deal alive. you can let it fade into oblivion, or you can call the lawyers. lawyers are trained to solve problems. and you have a big problem. fortunately, there are laws for just this sort of situation, and while i may personally question the wisdom of these laws, the sad truth is that they exist. so a lawyer is going to suggest you use them.

our next object lesson, lawyers make bad policymakers (and this was a policy, not a legal decision point). i've hinted at this before, but the short version is that sunncomm picked the wrong tool for this problem.

so sunncomm's next mistake was pouring gasoline on the fire with a knee-jerk "call the fbi! sue the #######!" reaction. regardless of the merits of the case, a wise person might notice the potential repercussions here. all over the web, in a matter of hours, sprouted the posts and articles on "every keyboard violates the dmca" and such. now i'm sure it's not this simple, and i don't want to get too boring with this post, but the net result is that the world had turned its light onto sunncomm...

lesson, the third

one of those lights was barry ritholtz, who has an economic and market perspective that he shares with the world. armed with a company name and a buzzing story on the web, this kind of person does a little homework. sure. i commented on the drop in value of the stock - and i even included a chart, but analysis - not my bag.

i was ready to let sunncomm off the hook. they did a 180, decided lawsuits and lawyers were a bad idea in this situation, and i was done with them. i'd learned a few lessons and maybe made a point or two. and here's an important lesson for modern business - it may not be my thing, but if you get enough people's attention, it's gonna be someone's thing.

it's on the record

barry dug a little deeper (and got prettier charts, too - you should check them out). and in that digging, he raised some interesting questions about the behavior of the stock, a major buyback, and some unexplained major moves in the price. i wouldn't call this a conclusion, but, in barry's own words:

If any purchases were made in anticipation of material non public information, than who ever did so has much bigger problems than some grad student's paper . . .
so a few strange things happen in a microcap stock, and i still don't care too much. interesting, sure, but having basically washed my hands of the whole sunncomm business with my own lessons learned... this is an issue for regulators and shareholders. besides, i'm busy :)

someone remembers

but the light is on, and an anonymous internet entity appears with a very long comment to barry's post.

you can't take such an anonymous post seriously. really, you can't. this is like triple-hearsay, unadmissable and generally on the quality-of-information spectrum somewhere around the level of seeing "peter jacobs blows goats! i have proof!" scrawled on a bathroom wall. the problem is that this particular bit of graffiti has sources that someone could check out. and, unfortunately for sunncomm, you can't get back a secret.

like i said, i'm busy. and i wouldn't even know whom to call to prompt an investigation of such material. but what we seem to have here, ladies and gentlemen, is an itty-bitty corporate scandal. i don't have a whole lot of faith in the current administration's record for bringing white collar criminals to justice (after all, we're busy hunting down the terrorists), but maybe something will happen. maybe.

and if i hear about it, you can bet i'll have some snide comment.

so the new problem for sunncomm is that a couple years ago, a few people probably got screwed on the stock. and they remember. and now there's blood in the water, and the lawyers are circling."
End ( Start of comments. )
Re Lesson #1. banking on stupidity and ignorance is a bad idea. sunncomm's business model (at least as far as mediamax cd3 audio cd copy protection is concerned) was obviously to bank on the stupidity of the music listening public. I find it very difficult to believe BMG would spend one penny from their resources to take part in any scheme that this suggests. Europe has had great and long lasting difficulties of different schemes that has irritated the buying public, the vendors, and the authorities. Sunncomm’s management system was not part of that action. Re; let me say this again. banking on stupidity and ignorance is a bad idea. I would suggest the company is not proceeding along that train of business plan. They wouldn’t have survived this long with such a game plan.

Re: Lesson 2. at this point, your widget is in deep trouble, quite probably unrecoverable trouble. I question your analysis and depth of knowledge about just what Sunncomm is planning or accomplishing at this time. even if you can still find stupid cd purchasers, the labels know that they were had, so it's going to be very hard to get enough credibility back to keep any deal alive.Can the poster, sunncomm, provide one instance of a press release that BMG was disappointed with the test results and the positive indications that the sales fall off after release were not meeting expectations. I believe the results were positive and opened up more business opportunities. so sunncomm's next mistake was pouring gasoline on the fire with a knee-jerk "call the fbi! sue the #######!" reaction. I would agree the response did not receive the response expected. The fact remains Haldeman did in fact publish a way to defeat the system and that I believe is against the law. There is a similar case evolving that I referred to recently with almost identical circumstance and even our competitors are backing.
Re: item 3. one of those lights was barry ritholtz, who has an economic and market perspective that he shares with the world.
[Link to his article:)http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2003/10/abusing_dmca_an.html
There are many things that can be surmised from his lengthy article and most are known by the shareholders. Did the lawsuit cause the share price drop? Not in my opinion. You must arrive at your own opinion, but I suggest it is a rather hastily arrived at conclusion by BR and there are other reasons for the share price decline. Short selling is one that comes to mind. Lack of follow through by management is another. No matter what, STEH has to move forward and if it is to keep it’s current shareholders in a long position quickly.
Finally this poster leaves us with this: …so the new problem for sunncomm is that a couple years ago, a few people probably got screwed on the stock. and they remember. and now there's blood in the water, and the lawyers are circling."
I would ask are they? We have seen what I believe valid responses to all the legal situations that have come along. There is risk and often when dealing with Pink Sheet stocks there are disappointments. The fact remains there are employees, investors, and others with their livelihood invested who do not believe this is a good for nothing company and does have a future. The future looks better now than at any time in the past that I recollect.
We do need some positive feedback and I also believe that will be forthcoming.
SharonB

[STEHSUCKER]

Where does one begin?

Peter's sue ploy may have been knee-jerk but there is an old adage, "any publicity is good". Whatever else was accomplished, the Sunncomm name did become a much more recognizable one and given a few months, no one will recall exactly WHY they know the name, they just will.

My understanding is that Peter pulled this on request of his customer(s). For the record, the labels knew exactly what the strengths and weaknesses of this product were/are.

At present, and I emphasize present, the copy protection scheme can be interrupted by holding down the shift key, preventing the copy protection software from ever being loaded onto the Hard drive. This is a standard windows feature and not a "flaw", even though it does allow a cumbersome workaround the Sunncomm copy protection scheme.

Of course, one will have to recall to do this shift key thing EVERY single time you load a CD with copy protection. Should you forget but one time, it will install and then holding down the shift key will forever more be a mute point as the copy protection will already have been installed.

100% copy protection has never been the goal of the record labels and is yet another reason that Macrovision is having zero traction in the space. If you look at the DVD copy protection market, you will notice that Macrovision has a monopoly position and can and does dictate pricing.

Curiously no one has pointed out that(Macrovision)their DVD protection is easily circumvented by any one of a hundred free DVD ripper programs on the web. Why is it that the labels will pay for easily circumvented DVD protection but not for CD protection with the similar issues?

The truth is that Macrovision has a great deal to lose in both the DVD and CD markets by having a competitor and is doing everything they can to eliminate any potential competition before it gets a foot hold. Ironically if you were to ask any of the labels, they WANT more than one supplier so that they can keep them both honest with pricing pressure.

Sunncomm is currently a victim of a very large and organized short scheme. Macrovision has been lauding it's upcoming CDS300 product to numerous hedge fund allies and has convinced them that Sunncomm will go away and so is safe to naked short to extreme levels.

Naked shorting is where an entity that is an MM, typically a hedge fund, shorts shares that they have no certificate to cover with. This has become an epedimic with small pink sheet stocks and has often led to the price declining so much ynder the attack, that the company can no longer obtain financing at any reasonable level and so begins a dilution death spiral in order to stay afloat.

The beauty of the fraudalent behavior is that there is currently next to zero enforcement by the SEC, of regulations to prevent this activity AND if you succeed in driving the price to zero, you never have to cover your short, OR pay any taxes on your gains, since technically you never closed the trade... a gorgeous scheme to defraud shareholders and profit to the max.

>>at this point, your widget is in deep trouble<<

Uhmmm... Sunncomm has the only copy protection product in the world, has a contract with a major label, BMG and is working on landing the others. They have passed all independent tests to date with flying colors and they are adding features to the technology as we speak... dead?? I should think not.

Is Sunncomm a perfect company?? Hell no!! Does it have some skeletons in the closet?? Probably a few, but sometimes thats what you end up doing when you're a small company> It's not always pretty, but going forward they have a very real shot with an evolving product that is best in class.

Macrovision may just find that turnabout is fair play.