I think Steorn could improve relations with this community by offering a few SKDB memberships free to some folks. This could help them a lot in the end. Since the mainstream media still refuses to cover them (only ONE other article in a minor site besides Sterling's recent one has been seen so far ANYWHERE), they are going to need the maximum amount of public awareness they can get... Since obviously the corporate-owned mainstream media isn't going to help them out at all there, lol.

To be fair to them (as others have well-stated already), their particular business model is not about "us" here at all, or the general public. It is about getting manufacturing corporations to shell out Licensing Fees. But there are still millions of Engineers and many companies who have not even heard of this little device yet... So i would bet they expected more media reaction than they have gotten so far. And such a major shift for a company's entire future requires a lot of thought... Many will "chicken out" when it gets down to signing a check... Unless they feel confident it is a great move that their competitors will make instead, if they don't do it first. If they sense their competitors are going to sit it out and wait to see what happens... So will many who were considering it.   

Are they being "black-balled" by the mainstream media? It would appear so. The only way they got around that last time was to take out the full-page ads.. Lol and that didn't pay in the end: It went horribly wrong, and 10,000 people died in the London disaster!

Just kidding!! .. to make the point that it wasn't such a huge deal to fail in the past as some make it out to be, conventional electronics companies screw-up by the numbers all the time).

Or is the media simply now shy of them? In either event, what they need is Increased Credibility. One "cheap" way for them to do this is Independent Replications. But for this, they can't have their cake and eat it too: They need to let a little more info out to get a serious number of world-wide replications proving and verifying the effect going that will in turn help them gain greater Credibility, leading to improved perception by the general public and to greater media attention... Which leads in the end to more licensing Customers.

So this media "blackout", for whatever reason, causes a big problem for Steorn: It is an indicator to companies that can, and probably will with many imo, be taken as a warning to "Stay Away!!"

This is where offering a few free SKDB's could come in handy; to some of those replicating, and to those who plan on disseminating the info therein. It also helps incrementally with their general "public relations".

Face it, if they can't convince the free energy community, they are not going to convince "copper topped" engineers and academics; and they are even going to have problems selling Licensing Agreements if the general perception is not "positive".... no company wants to be scorned by peers for investing in something overly risky and "woo-woo" (or have to explain it to their stock investors should it all drop in the pot).

Some companies will go ahead and do so no matter what, but this means that assuming the ones that do, can engineer and get something to market in 3 years time which is probably a good estimate of what it will take (... and assuming the device is not STOPPED somehow from getting to market if it is "too good"), they will have to wait that entire 3 years to get a wider Customer Base; as the other Customer prospects "wait it out" to see if it really is valid, worth-while, and "allowed" by "The Powers That Be" or not (..because they sense that the media blackout could be an indicator of it not being "acceptable" to the status quo).

Having a whole slew of successful independent replications and validations to point to, could speed up this process by 2 years... As these replications, if handled properly, could gain some media attention and thus increase the total public awareness of the tech. These successes in turn would increase the "comfort factor" of the "decision-maker" corporate executives that are their prime target... Who are sitting on the fence because they still think it is too risky.   

Of course they have the problem of possibly "letting too much out" then. But no matter what, the first day a device goes to market using this or another FE tech, it will be bought and reverse-engineered, and millions will soon know exactly how it all works anyway. So to me, this is hardly a valid worry... these are not "juicers" and "water filters" here... And the Wright Brothers could not stop Glen Curtiss from making a very similar flying machine (lol despite spending years in Court)... Some ideas just CANNOT be locked up in Patents no matter what you do  

These are not reflections on the validity of their technology at all; just observations that could happen to any company in a similar situation.