July 28, 2000

By DAN ROBINSON

Editor/Photographer

From Dan: How the crime of copyright infringement took $1 million from me and shut down my operation.

In September of 2025, my work is generating the most income it ever has in my career. Yet, I'm being forced to shut down my successul operation, against my will, due to one cause alone: 95% of that revenue is being stolen by piracy and copyright infringement. I've lost more than $1 million to copyright infringement in the last 15 years, and it's finally brought an end to my professional storm chasing operation. Do not be misled by the lies of infringers, anti-copyright activists and organized piracy cartels. This page is a detailed, evidenced account of my battle I had to undertake to just barely stay in business, and eventually could not overcome. It's a problem faced by all of my colleagues and most other creators in the field.

Four strong lines of storms moved through southern West Virginia today, the first at 12:30am, then 11:00am, 3:00pm and 4:00pm.

Cloud-to-ground lightning was close and frequent during these storms. Storm #1 occurred in the post-midnight hours, but fizzled out before I could begin taking photos. During storms #2, #3, #4 I was at work in Teays Valley, and I opted to use the video camera and bypass taking still shots due to the bright daylight conditions.

I missed all but one of the closest strikes. This one (at right) was a loud, single-stroke blast about 1/4 mile away, looking to the west during storm #3 (click photo for mpeg video, 95KB).

Lightning in storm #4 (radar at left) became highly active after it passed to the east, of which I managed about 5 video catches. This multiple stroke flash (MPEG, 269KB) occurred in the eastern sky about 2 miles away, as well as this spectacular triple CG flash (MPEG, 312KB) to the southeast about a mile away (see frame capture below).