The good news is that all your videos and user accounts are automatically and seamlessly mirrored at the new domain, as well as remaining hosted at the original domain (brighteon.com).

All video pages and video embeds will auto-forward for the next six months. Existing comments will also auto-forward, although we should all expect some glitches during the transition.

All your videos that play at brighteon.com URLs should already be playing at Brighteon.com URLs, using the exact same video ID, channel name, etc.

As explained in the video below, this name change was necessary in order to protect the platform brand and expand into other areas such as social media and feature films. Although we registered Brighteon.com with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), our intellectual property attorneys told us that we would not be able to defend the name "brighteon.com" because it was too generic. There are also thousands of existing trademarks incorporating the word "real," and even though none of those trademarks exist in the category of online video platforms, other trademark holders could easily sue Brighteon.com and claim a "natural expansion" of their existing categories.

Our legal counsel urged us to switch to a new, unique name, warning that if we didn't, we could easily spend $500K in legal bills over the next five years attempting to defend the Brighteon.com name. We checked with several trademark and intellectual property attorneys, and they all agreed with the assessment.

Switching to a completely new name now allows us to spend our resources on new features rather than fighting legal battles involving trademarks. This is why we made the decision: So that we can focus on building new features and growing Brighteon.com into an increasingly popular pro-liberty online video community. One of the most important features we need is a standalone, independent comment system. The current comment engine is driven by Disqus, which has a nasty habit of censoring certain end users for no apparent reason (and outside of our control).

The next features we'll launch include an improved search (already done), playlists (nearly done) and RSS feeds (in progress).

"Brighteon" means a bright era for humanity

The new name "Brighteon" means a "bright eon" or bright future. It is a completely unique name that we plan to strongly brand and expand into other areas of free speech expression. The Brighteon.com video platform, for example, will build out a simple messaging system in 2019, transforming it into a video + Twitter-like social media platform.

Brighteon Films, a division of Brighteon, will launch independent films and documentaries, with the first such documentary being Biosludged. (To be released in just a couple of weeks now.) We are also working to attract other independent filmmakers who wish to release their films on this platform.

We're also working on video streaming solutions that we hope to roll out in early 2019, allowing independent media to stream live videos through the Brighteon platform.

Watch the full explanation video here, which covers technical aspects of the name change, the timeline for the switchover and additional reasons behind our decision to make this change for the benefit of everyone who uses this platform.