Los Angeles-based Withoutabox, a membership site which allows independent filmmakers to submit their work to movie festivals, has been acquired by Amazon.com subsidiary IMDB, the company told customers in an email today. David Straus and Joe Neulight founded the company in 2000 and saw it become popular among film-school students and film-festival producers. A niche audience, to be sure: Compete.com puts the site's "people count" in December 2007 at 22,888. But we suspect that Amazon bought the site not for its eyeballs, but for content it can sell directly to its huge audience of shoppers, bypassing Hollywood. Straight from Withoutabox to Amazon Unbox, in other words. Anyone know how much Amazon paid?

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