What Exactly Is Smile Cinema?

Smile Cinema is a new cutting edge piece of software that allows your staff to play any movie from your office's movie collection via your existing operatory PC with one simple click of the mouse!

Top 3 Reasons You Need Smile Cinema:

- NO MORE fumbling around with DVD's!

- NO MORE scratched or unplayable DVD's!

- NO MORE wasting valuable time you could be spending with your patients!

Smile Cinema is absolutely the EASIEST piece of software that you will ever have in your office! If you're staff can shop for DVD's online then they can use Smile Cinema to quickly and easily play any movie in your offices collection for your patient's entertainment. Its just that EASY!!

Smile Cinema's simple plug and play set up will have you up and running the day you receive your package and Smile Cinema's trained support team is available 9:00a.m. - 9:00p.m. EST 7 days a week to help you along the way!

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Understanding Copyright Compliance

Understanding Copyright Compliance

The Federal Copyright Act (Title 17, United States code, Public Law 94-553, 90 Stat. 2541) governs how copyrighted materials, such as movies, may be utilized publicly. Neither the rental nor the purchase or lending of a videocassette or DVD carries with it the right to exhibit such a movie publicly outside the home, unless the site where the video is used is properly licensed for copyright compliant exhibition.

This legal copyright compliance requirement applies to hospitals, colleges, universities, public schools, day care facilities, summer camps, churches, private clubs, prisons, lodges, businesses, etc. regardless of whether admission is charged, whether the institution is commercial or non-profit or whether a federal, state or local agency is involved.

Movie studios who own the copyrights, and their agents, are the only parties who are authorized to license sites such as hospitals & facilities. No other group or person has the right to exhibit or license exhibitions of copyrighted movies.

Furthermore, copyrighted movies borrowed from other sources such as public libraries, personal collections, etc. cannot be used legally for showing in colleges or universities or in any other site which is not properly licensed.

Unauthorized Public Exhibition of Movies

The concept of “public performance” is central to copyright and is the main issue of protection for these intellectual properties. Most of the persons participating in movie productions depend upon royalties for a major portion of their payment for work performed.

Royalties are the shares paid to movie producers, script writers, authors, computer programmers, playwrights, musicians, inventors, etc. out of the proceeds resulting from the sale, performance or use of their work. If these men and women lose ownership of their work and do not receive royalty revenue, much of which is collected through licensing fees, there will be little incentive for them to continue to invest their time, research and development costs to create future endeavors. If this happens, they must then look to the U.S. Copyright Law for assistance. Consequently, if their intellectual creations are being used by others who are not paying compensation (royalty) for the use, copyright law may need to be enforced.

For more information on how you can show movies in your dental practice quickly and easily while being within full compliance of federal copyright law visit SmileCinema.com!

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Forget Quality Diagnosis and Patient Treatment, Increase Your Practice’s Production!

These days it seems that all I see are dental technology integration companies pitching an increase in a practice’s production numbers. It’s not too often you’ll hear a dental technology integration company advertising better patient diagnosis, quicker treatment times, or better quality treatment.

Don’t get me wrong, money is important to everyone, how else would we support our families? I just feel that money and an increase in a dental practices production shouldn’t be the main focus when discussing dental technology. At Sodium Systems we know that your main focus as a dentist is providing quality dental care and we take this into consideration when discussing dental technology with you.

At Sodium Systems LLC our mission is to provide you with the highest quality in dental technology tools available enabling you to provide superior dental diagnosis and treatment to your patients efficiently and effectively. We can discuss production numbers all day long but at the end of the day it should really be about how well you have treated your patients. By providing quality dental technology products we put the tools in your hands and when we put those tools in your hands we will provide thorough training for you and your staff. Quality dental technology combined with the best in technology training will enable you to be the best dental practitioner you can be.

When you start working with Sodium Systems an account executive will be assigned to your office. Your account executive will be with you every step of the way ensuring that you are given as good a treatment as you provide your patients. Each one of our account executives are experts in dental technology and have a main focus of finding out exactly what you want to offer your patients and tailoring a package to exactly what you need to provide excellent dentistry to your patients.

By focusing on quality dentistry you will greatly increase your patient loyalty and your patient referrals. Sodium Systems still wants to help you make more money, but the two come hand in hand in this situation. If more of your patients are telling their friends about you and how fantastic your office is, the more money your practice will make!

Want to meet your account executive? Submit a contact request!

Dental Practice Set Back Years After Lightning Storm

Dental practice loses 2 years of patient information due to severe lightning storm last night. Sodium Systems says, “Incident could have been avoided if the practice had a good backup running on a daily basis.” Doctor says, “I never knew the importance of verifying my data backups until now!”

Data backup integrity is one of the most crucial pieces of the dental technology puzzle and shouldn’t be taken lightly. For practices that have been paperless for years and practices that are just beginning to become paperless I heed this warning; check and verify your backup daily.

It is amazing how many high tech dental practices our technology specialists go into to do a system evaluation and find out that the doctor’s data hasn’t been backed up in days, sometimes months! Some of these instances we can blame on the original technology company not configuring the backup correctly, or a corrupt backup schedule preventing the backup from being run but no matter what the scenario it is always the doctor’s fault for not just simply verifying whether or not his backups have run successfully. It only takes a few seconds to verify a backup and it can be done during the daily rotation (hopefully your office is on a daily backup rotation. If not, check out our article on how to have a successful backup). If your office is utilizing a file server with Windows Server 2008 than it’s as easy as double clicking an icon and looking to see whether there’s a green check or a red x next to the day’s backup.

Being paperless creates a quick and efficient practice, no more giant filing cabinets with paper files for every patient or fumbling with paper charts however being paperless also brings the quirks of technology. Having all of your patient information in a single hard drive on a single file server creates a vulnerable situation for your precious data but by instituting some simple procedures you can assure that your patient data is safe and recoverable.

The goal in having a good daily backup is to be able to recover not only your patient information but also your entire file server if your file server ever were to crash. If your office is struck by lightning and your server hard drive gets fried than you need to confidently know that you can plug in your backup drive to a brand new server and be up and running immediately. By implementing a simple backup process and appointing a staff member responsible for verifying your backup data on a daily basis you will always have the assurance that your practice will never be taken down by a lightning storm, power outage, office fire, careless employees, or any other unpredictable natural event.

Let’s say that your dental practice is the one that was headlined in this article and you lost your data because, during a lightning storm, your practice was struck by lightning and strong electrical surges were sent throughout your practice’s electrical system frying your server’s hard drive.


Which Scenario would you fall under?

Scenario A:

I rely solely on an online backup and a single external hard drive that is always connected to my server. The technology company that set my network up told me that the backup runs every night and I don’t have to worry about it. I never disconnect my external hard drive from my file server because the backup won’t run if I disconnect the external drive. If my file server was to crash I have no idea what steps I would take to recover data and bring my practice back to a functioning status.

Scenario B:

I backup my file server with an online backup that runs every night. I also have 3 external backup drives. One of the external backup drives is a 2TB external hard drive that always stays connected to my file server and a backup is written to it on a nightly basis keeping the daily backups on the external hard drive for 7 days. I also have two smaller external hard drives that also have a daily backup run to them and these drives get rotated out by my office manager every evening. My office manager then takes the backup drive from the night prior home with her for safe keeping in case of an office fire or any other disaster. Finally I have an online backup that runs every night just in case something was to happen to all 3 physical hard drives.

My technology company, Sodium Systems LLC, provided my office with a clear plan of action upon our initial backup configuration on what would happen in the event of a file server failure and how quickly they would be able to have my practice back up and running.

Which scenario are you? Which scenario do you want to be? How is your backup configured? How do you check your backup? Do you know what steps to take if you had to recover you data from your backup?

If even one of these questions is making you nervous and you want some answers to these questions please contact Sodium Systems LLC, our staff of certified technology specialists will assist you right away.

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Dental Practice Closed Due To Movie Copyright Infringement

Do you offer movies to your patients?

If you said yes to this simple question than your dental practice could be on the front page of a national newspaper under this heading. One of the biggest misconceptions throughout dental is that it is OK to show movies and TV shows to patients during treatment. You may think it is OK for your office to be showing movies to patients but what happens when a patient comes into your office that works or knows someone that works in the movie industry or is a member of the FBI? Or what if an investigator is doing copyright infringement investigations at local businesses in your town? You can say good bye to your dental practice!

Federal copyright law specifically states:

"The Federal Copyright Act(Title 17 of the U.S. Code) governs how copyrighted materials, such as movies, may be used. Neither the rental nor the purchase of a movie carries with it the right to show the movie publicly outside the home, unless the site where the movie is used is properly licensed for public exhibition.

Ownership of the movie and the right to use it publicly are two separate issues. The copyright holder retains exclusive public performance rights.”

This means that although you may have paid for that movie you’re showing in your dental practice, it in no way gives you the rights to be publicly showing said movie in your dental practice.

You may be thinking, “What do I care, what are the chances that the movie industry is going to take me to court for violating copyright laws?” Publicly showing movies in your dental practice directly violates copyright laws and all it takes is a simple phone call for an FBI investigator to be knocking at your door. Copyright infringement investigations are a lot more common than you may think, especially during this “digital age” we currently live in where nearly everything can be shared via the internet.

The Motion Picture Association of America takes copyright infringement extremely serious and with good reason; after all, it’s their livelihood. People that work in the movie industry rely on royalties from their movies being shown to put food on the table and to provide for their families. Showing movies in your dental practice without the proper copyright licenses is the same as someone practicing dentistry without ever going to dental school and becoming a licensed dentist. It just isn’t ethical.

“The Motion Picture Association of America and its member companies are dedicated to stopping film and video piracy in all its forms, including unauthorized public performances, illegal downloading, etc. The motion picture companies can go to court to ensure their copyrights are not violated.

To avoid embarrassing publicity and fines, it is important to comply with U.S. Copyright Law when using movies publicly. If you are uncertain about your responsibilities under copyright law, consult your legal copyright compliance advisor or attorney.”

Smile Cinema enables your dental practice to show movies to your patients while fully complying with movie copyright laws. Smile Cinema works directly with the Motion Picture Licensing Corporation to provide dental practices with valid public viewing licenses to bring dental practices into full compliance with copyright law.

The Smile Cinema package is extremely affordable and will bring you in full compliance with the law allowing you to include your latest “Movie Menu” in direct advertisement mailers to your patients. Just think how much of a buzz you’ll create when all of your patients are talking about all of the feature films and television series that your office offers.

Visit Smile Cinema for more information!

No more complaints about drills and screams, ease your patients mind by offering their favorite movies!

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History of Smile Cinema

Smile Cinema was thought of after a phone call to our support department from a doctor asking us if there was a way for him to be able to play his product DVD's from his server so that he doesn't have to fumble with physical DVD's. The doctor’s main concern was that by the time he was able to find his product DVD and play it for his patient he had already lost the product sale. Here at Smile Cinema we thought "this is a great idea, but why can't we have it so the doctor can play movies from his media server too?"

When we created Smile Cinema we had the doctors concern in mind. By having DVD players in each room not only do you have to deal with lost DVD's, scratched DVD's, DVD's already being used when you want to use them, etc, you ALSO have the added cost of putting DVD players in each room. When you compare the costs of DVD players, installation time, replacement of DVD's when they get too scratched to play and the replacement of DVD players that will fail after time with a simple and quick installation of Smile Cinema you can easily see that using Smile Cinema makes much more sense then messing with DVD players and DVD's.

DVD Player Scenario (assuming you have TV’s in each room):
Office with 6 operatories and a waiting room:

- $350 = $50 x 7 DVD Player's (Cheapest Available)
- $420 = $60 x 7 Installation (industry standard rate of $120/hr with 30mins per room $60 x 7
- $150 = Replacement DVD's every year 10 DVD's @ $15/piece
- $175 = 50% DVD Player failure rate after 2 years

Total cost for 6 OP practice = $1,095

This is the cost for your initial installation, but we also have to factor in the fact that cheap $50 DVD players will fail fairly quickly, plus the time your practice is wasting searching for DVD’s, putting them in the DVD player, waiting for it to load the movie, and clicking the play button. Plus, your DVD replacement could be greater depending on how well your staff treats your DVD's. So it’s very easy to see that these costs can keep adding up.

Let’s just say that it takes your staff on average only 5 minutes to find the DVD your patient wants, load it, and hit play. And you have an average of 15 patients a week that watch DVD’s when they’re in your operatories.

5 mins X 15 Patients = 75 Minutes of your valuable time!

That's 300 minutes a month!

That’s 5 hours every month wasted on simply finding entertainment and product education DVD’s. Rather than have these 5 hours cost you, fill this time with more patients!

Put all of this information we just shared with you aside. Now think about the fact that publicly showing DVD’s in your practice is a federal crime that carries with it heavy fines. Smile Cinema provides you the license to be fully compliant with federal copyright laws and allows you to publicly show nearly any movie your patients will want!

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