Would You Rather Be 'Right' Or Realistic?

from the being-right-in-fantasy-land-doesn't-help-much-in-the-real-world dept

We recently wrote about the excellent comic from Matthew Inman's The Oatmeal to highlight how companies turn would-be buyers into infringers by not making the content available. Here's a snippet. In response, some folks sent over columnist Andy Ihnatko's response, in which he suggests the comic is actually representative of the sense of entitlement that people feel towards such content. Ihnatko's writeup is slightly amusing as he tries to mock those consumers for actually having an opinion on how they consume content and concludes with this basic statement:

The world does not OWE you Season 1 of “Game Of Thrones” in the form you want it at the moment you want it at the price you want to pay for it. If it’s not available under 100% your terms, you have the free-and-clear option of not having it.

I sometimes wonder if this simple, grown-up fact gets ignored during all of these discussions about digital distribution.

I was going to write a rather long response to why this is kinda silly, but Marco Arment did a better job than I ever would in explaining the difference between being "right" and being "pragmatic." You really should read the whole thing, because it involves a rather detailed example involving the physical layout of a restroom. I'm going to skip over that part and highlight the summary point, but it's worth reading the full thing:

We often try to fight problems by yelling at them instead of accepting the reality of what people do, from controversial national legislation to passive-aggressive office signs. Such efforts usually fail, often with a lot of collateral damage, much like Prohibition and the ongoing “war” on “drugs”....

[....]

Relying solely on yelling about what’s right isn’t a pragmatic approach for the media industry to take. And it’s not working. It’s unrealistic and naive to expect everyone to do the “right” thing when the alternative is so much easier, faster, cheaper, and better for so many of them.

This point could be seen as the central theme of many of the 40,000 plus posts that have been made on this blog: dealing with reality is always going to be a more effective way to go about things than taking some "moral" stand on how things "should" be. And, if you can deal with the realities and it actually solves the whole moral "I'm right!" part at the same time, what good is it to not deal with realities?

Taking the point even further, there's a simple fact of today's world, which is that consumers have power. Ihnatko's entire point seems to assume that this consumer power is "entitlement." I tend to think of it as consumers making their will known -- and that tends to lead to better products that should make everyone better off. What Ihnatko ignores is that a market is not determined by just one side. It's the interplay between buyers and sellers, and if the buyers aren't happy, they express that to the sellers in certain ways -- and infringement is one of those ways. It's a market signalling method. I'd argue that it's just as much an "entitlement" mentality by the "sellers" to pretend that only they get to decide what the consumer should be able to get, without listening to what the consumer wants.

Filed Under: business models, infringement, morals, practicality, realism, right

Director Alex Cox ('Repo Man') Says 'Pirate My Stuff'

from the studio-shocked-to-find-zero-sum-game-on-either-end dept

Although we are constantly reminded (or "educated" as they like to put it) that the major studios and labels are only looking out for the interests of the artists, we are equally constantly reminded (by these artists) that this just simply isn't the case. The latest artist to remind us exactly what's wrong with the standing system? Director Alex Cox, best known for Repo Man and Sid & Nancy, both cult classic films and punk touchstones.

In an interview with The Quietus to discuss the Blu-ray release of Repo Man, Cox discusses, among other things, the many ways Universal Studios has given him its patented shaft, starting with the supposed sequel to Repo Man:

We took Repo Man sequels to Universal and proposed they do it, but they weren't interested. What they did instead is they brought out a movie titled Repo Men and pretended that was the sequel.

So, there's strike one. Studio takes a meeting, feigns disinterest, does it on its own terms while simultaneously abusing any goodwill built up between the director and his fans and between the studio and fans of the original. Then there's the wholly incomprehensible "reason" why the UK is getting Repo Man on Blu-ray but the United States isn't:

Universal Studios has an antipathy towards Repo Man and towards Walker. I don't think they will ever bring out a good version in the US. I can't understand why Universal won't do a sequel given how much money they made off the original Repo Man. It's an institutional animus. The kinds of people that get jobs in studios tend to be fearful of their superiors and that's how they keep their jobs. The guys at Universal, even though they were 13 when Repo Man came out, they've been told by their superiors: 'We don't like that film'. And that's the official attitude from generation to generation in the studio. They have an institutional animus which almost makes you think that corporations really could be people.

And... strike two. For reasons only truly known to the studio, Repo Man is not going to see a US release on Blu-ray. Cox has worked with Universal so it's hard to imagine he's just making this up. He's completely right about the institutional fear built into the major studios, which explains everything from the reliance on sequels and remakes to the legislative flailing about in response to piracy. Large entities seldom move quickly and their response time is usually infected with serious amounts of institutional lag. You'd think it would be as simple as throwing on some Region 1 encoding and firing up the burners, but it looks as if Universal Studios would rather American audiences pick this up through alternate methods. If you're worried about "lost sales," it would seem that you'd at least attempt to make your product available for sale.

But Cox isn't through yet. The interviewer mentions "and then there's the crisis of getting the rights from the studios." At that point, Cox tees off:

It's so corrupt. Now they want to have longer copyright periods because they say the young artists are relying on this money. The young artists never see any money because they sign away that money to big media corporations, like Universal and Viacom. We, the artists, lose all of our rights to these massive corporations, who then come down heavy on these kids for downloading films and music that we never see a penny from. It's complete bullshit. I want to encourage your audience to go and pirate a bunch of my stuff right away.

Strike three.

This is what happens when you fight a stranger in the Alps, Universal. Instead of having a happy artist celebrating the worldwide Blu-ray release of a seminal film, you've got a disgruntled former employee telling people to shoplift the hell out of the store. The studios seem to think they're playing a super-smart "long game" by pushing for extended copyright while simultaneously refusing to relinquish any control over the creations of others. As long as the major studios (and labels) continue operating in this antagonistic fashion, they'll find that their "long game" has left them with nothing to play for. Piracy is a message and it's being repeated by the very artists they thought they had under control.

Filed Under: alex cox, business models, copyright, infringement, repo man, studios

Universal Music Album Recalled... For Infringing Content?

from the seize-'em! dept

Probably the most aggressive major record label, when it comes to supporting ridiculously overaggressive attacks on infringement and things like taking down websites, would be Universal Music -- the company whose ex-CEO once gleefully declared to the world that he was too clueless to hire someone who understands technology (he has since moved on to lead Sony Music). Of course, we always discover that the most aggressive copyright maximalists are later caught infringing themselves... So it's not surprising to hear that the release of the album for Universal Music recording artist Tyga has run into some copyright problems. While the album had been sent to retailers and was available for pre-order on iTunes, it was yanked off iTunes, and a note was sent to retailers telling them to "pull and return" the album.

The issue? Apparently the title track, "Careless World," has some sound clips from a Martin Luther King speech... and no one bothered to clear it. Oops. Of course, many of us think that locking up MLK's works are a travesty, but his heirs have been incredibly aggressive over the years in claiming that they deserve to get paid for any attempts to honor MLK. Of course, if Universal Music wasn't such an extreme copyright maximalist we might have a bit of sympathy for their plight. But given that they've made this bed, there's a bit of irony in noting that they now have to lie in it.

Filed Under: clearance, copyright, infringement, martin luther king, mlk, tyga
Companies: universal music

Open Offer To Chris Dodd & Cary Sherman: Meet The Internet Online And In The Open

from the no-more-backroom-deals dept

We've covered how the RIAA's Cary Sherman and the MPAA's Chris Dodd have both taken the strategy of first slamming everyone who took part in the internet protests against SOPA/PIPA as somehow being misinformed corporate pawns... but then concluding by expressing a desire to "meet" to discuss solutions. The problem, of course, is that both of them still think that it was Google that killed SOPA/PIPA, and so their idea of a "meeting" is to get Google into a back room and to "negotiate a deal." But, as many people have been pointing out, that isn't going to cut it.

So let's make a clear offer to Chris Dodd, Cary Sherman and the rest of the corporate supporters of SOPA/PIPA: You want to meet? Let's meet. But let the meeting be open and public. Let's have it outside of DC. Pick a place. Let it involve representatives from public interest, civil service, consumer rights, human rights groups, as well as internet communities such as Reddit and Wikipedia. Let it involve the actual companies you seek to regulate as well, from the tech industry (meaning not just Google, but also the startups these bills would have hit the hardest), and the actual technologists who understand the impact of what you seek to do. And then let's stream the whole thing online, and have it with a system that lets everyone, including those watching the stream, contribute comments and questions.
Is this of interest? Over the past few weeks I've spoken to numerous people representing a variety of different groups, and they've all expressed interest in such a meeting. So how about you? You asked for a meeting. The community is happy to meet. But we want it to be open and transparent. And we want real internet users to be able to take part.

So, let's see if you're serious.

Filed Under: cary sherman, chris dodd, copyright, infringement, meeting
Companies: mpaa, riaa

Evidence Shows That Megaupload Shutdown Had No Real Impact On Infringement

from the look,-a-mole!-wac!-wac! dept

The first big analysis of what happened to file sharing via cyberlockers following the shutdown of Megaupload shows that there was no slowdown in file sharing -- it's just that the traffic moved elsewhere. The analysis, by Deepfield Networks, concludes that there was no significant drop off in file sharing in the US... but that it has become "staggeringly less efficient" from a network standpoint, because much of it moved to offshore locations over "expensive transatlantic links." This isn't a huge surprise. We've been pointing out for ages, that you can shut down as many sites as you can, and new options will always pop up. Shutting down sites has never worked, but for whatever reason, ICE and the MPAA/RIAA never seem to learn from their past mistakes.

Filed Under: copyright, impact, infringement, whac a mole
Companies: megaupload

NY Times: RIAA & MPAA Exaggerate Piracy Impact Stats... But We're Going To Assume They're True Anyway

from the really? dept

Sometimes you have to wonder if the NY Times is simply trying to hurt its own credibility. That's the only conclusion I can come to after reading the editorial by Eduardo Porter concerning the impact of unauthorized file sharing on the economics of the creative industries. While he admits that the RIAA and MPAA have "tended to exaggerate piracy's economic costs and threat to jobs," he then goes on to more or less repeat their arguments anyway. But the editorial is a classic case of how one misleads with statistics in a variety of ways. First, he shows the declines in recorded music sales and in-home movie sales, as if that's proof that the industry has been harmed by infringement. But, as we just recently showed with our The Sky Is Rising report, people are still spending more on entertainment -- it's just that some of the money has gone elsewhere.

And is it really any surprise at all that money has moved away from direct sales? It's not a piracy problem, it's a market adjustment thanks to the shift in the ability to buy singles in music, combined with the more efficient means of distribution, meaning that people no longer have to pay $20 for a CD to get the one or two songs they want. In the meantime, all of that money stayed in the wider industry (something that Porter completely ignores -- why?!?). The amount of money that's gone to concert tickets has gone way up. The amount of money from publishing? Up. The amount of money from licensing? Up. And here's the key part that Porter totally and completely ignores: those other areas of the business which are all up? Those are the areas that give much bigger cuts to actual artists. Artists rarely made any money from direct music sales in the past anyway. So, today more people are making more money from music than ever before... but you wouldn't know that from Porter's laughable analysis.

The top album in 1999, “Millennium” by the Backstreet Boys, sold 9.4 million copies. The top 2011 album, Adele’s “21,” sold 5.8 million.

Two things on this: (1) again, while not everyone is buying the music, the money is still going to the artists -- in fact I'd bet that Adele made out nicely on the live side. (2) What Porter completely ignores is that there's a lot more competition today. So of course the top selling album sells less. Because unlike in 1999, not everyone is being pressured into listening to just one or two superstars, but we can all find our own niches. Some of us think this is a good thing. And then there's Porter.

Hollywood was hit by piracy somewhat later because movie files are bigger and require more Internet bandwidth. But home entertainment sales -- a huge chunk of movie revenues -- fell every year from 2004 to 2010.

Perhaps we should stop here to mention that if Hollywood had had its way 30 years ago, there would be no home movie business. That's because the MPAA fought hard to ban the VCR as an evil tool of piracy -- just like torrent search engines and cyberlockers today. So, forgive me for not exactly caring when Hollywood whines about this particular bit of revenue going away.

But, once again, let's look at what really happened here. The key reason why the sales fell over that time was because as most people shifted online, the studios fought as hard as possible to keep movies from being sold online. Instead, they focused on a ridiculous, years-long fight over which would be the new physical disc standard: HD-DVD or Blu-ray. That fight is what killed sales more than anything else. People didn't want to buy because they didn't want to commit to a standard that only had some movies, and which might go away, leaving people stranded. By the time Blu-ray finally won, there was enough bandwidth that people just wanted their movies online... but Hollywood had no interest in delivering it. When Netflix finally was able to start offering some movies online, the massive success of that setup caused Hollywood to freak out, and spend the next few years trying to either limit Netflix (and any competitors) or jack up the prices on Netflix to make it hard for Netflix to make money without raising its own prices.

So, sorry, but the problems Hollywood has with home theater revenue? That's got nothing to do with piracy.

While box-office revenues have benefited from rising ticket prices, movie attendance has been steadily declining.

I've seen this point made a few times, and all I can think is who cares? I mean, honestly, the whole point is to maximize revenue, not to maximize attendance. If the goal was to maximize attendance, then that's easy: just throw the doors open for free and you'll have maximum attendance. But, of course, that's not the goal. As for fewer people going, once again, we're talking about a market with much more competition, especially from the internet (legally!) and video games.

Of course, not every pirated download displaces the sale of a book, album or movie. But when it comes to music, most economic studies have concluded that piracy accounts for the vast majority or even entirety of the sales decline.

Sorry, but we have to call bull on this one. "Most" economic studies? I've never seen any. In this case, the study points to a recent study done by Stan Liebowitz, the entertainment industry's favorite economist. He's been making the same claims for years, and I've yet to see a single other economist agree with him. So I have no idea where this "most" comes from. Most of the economic evidence I've seen suggests otherwise.

From there, Porter just gets downright insulting. He dismisses all of the tons of new content being produced by claiming that it's just hobbyists, and somehow those people don't count:

Many Internet enthusiasts say that this change isn’t unhealthy, and that the Web makes more ventures possible. They point out that while piracy may be cutting the pay of record label executives, it doesn’t seem to have stopped musicians from making new music. According to Nielsen, 75,300 albums were released in 2010, 25 percent more than in 2005. But new releases that sold more than 1,000 copies fell to about 4,700 from 8,000 during that time. The wave of creation that is more hobby than profession has little to do with piracy, and would likely be unaffected by laws to curb illicit downloads.

This isn't just insulting, it's missing the point. First, Nielsen numbers are hardly complete, as Jeff Price at TuneCore constantly reminds the world (apparently Porter doesn't pay much attention to anyone outside of Nielsen). But, more importantly, Porter once again seems to assume that the only way to make money is through selling music. That's wrong.

But if professional musicians, movie directors and writers can’t make money from their art, they will probably make less of it.

Probably? The evidence says two things: (1) they're actually making more money -- perhaps just not from "selling their art," and (2) they seem to be making more of it, not less. Instead of Porter's "probably" why don't we go with reality? Independent producers say piracy is already making it harder to raise money for small and mid-budget movies. And yet, as was just reported in the NY Times (the paper Porter writes for), new technologies and services are popping up every day to help finance small and mid-budget movies... such as Kickstarter.

The big problem with Porter's analysis is he assumes a static world in which no one can change or adapt. What we've seen, out here in reality, is that content creators are adapting. So, sure, as we've said, infringement will hurt your business if you're stupid and don't adapt. But if you actually take the time to understand what the market wants, and then embrace your fans, the artists who do that are finding that they're making more money than they were before. So, yes, piracy harms you: if you're stupid. That's no reason to change the law.

Filed Under: eduardo porter, infringement, piracy, stats
Companies: mpaa, riaa

Why Piracy Is Indispensable For The Survival Of Our Culture

from the posterity-will-thank-them dept

Last Year Techdirt wrote about the case of the huge collection of historic jazz recordings that had been acquired by the US National Jazz Museum. The central problem is that even if the recordings can be digitized before they deteriorate, very few people will hear them because of their complicated copyright status.

But as this eye-opening article from Benj Edwards explains, bad as that situation is, it's even worse for the entire category of software creations. For example, consider the earlier generation of floppy-based programs:

Floppy disks, which were once used as the medium du jour for personal computers, have a decidedly finite lifespan: estimates for the data retention abilities of a floppy range anywhere from one year to 30 years under optimal conditions.

A floppy stores data in the form of magnetic charges on a specially treated plastic disc. Over time, the charges representing data weaken to the point that floppy drives can’t read them anymore. At that point, the contents of the disk are effectively lost.

This becomes particularly troubling when we consider that publishers began releasing software on floppy disk over 30 years ago. Most of those disks are now unreadable, and the software stored on them has become garbled beyond repair. If you’ve been meaning to back up those old floppies in your attic, I have bad news: it’s probably too late.

Actually, the situation is even worse than that, because software publishers in the 1980s spent a huge amount of effort trying to make it impossible to copy their programs, through the use of things like hardware dongles that had to be plugged into the computer, or intentionally-corrupt sectors on the discs. That makes the creation of backups a non-trivial matter.

Fortunately, getting around such schemes is just the kind of challenge that hackers enjoy, and this has led to efforts by enthusiasts to preserve these fast-disappearing cultural artefacts by transferring them from the old media to more modern storage. As Edwards explains:

For the past decade, collectors and archivists have been compiling vast collections of out-of-print software for vintage machines (think Apple II, Commodore 64, and the like) and trading them through file sharing services and on "abandonware" websites. Through this process, they’ve created an underground software library that, despite its relative newness, feels like the lost archives of an ancient digital civilization.

That's great, apart from one slight problem: under today's copyright laws, all these wonderful backups that will probably ensure the programs' survival while civilization itself is still around, are illegal. The choice is stark: follow copyright law, and watch decades of computer culture literally fade away on their unreadable floppies, or save them for posterity - and break the law.

Nor is this is a problem that only concerns antediluvian forms of computing. Our cool, smartphone- and tablet-based approach is no better:

take a look at the iTunes App Store, a 500,000 app repository of digital culture. It’s controlled by a single company, and when it closes some day (or it stops supporting older apps, like Apple already did with the classic iPod), legal access to those apps will vanish. Purchased apps locked on iDevices will meet their doom when those gadgets stop working, as they are prone to do. Even before then, older apps will fade away as developers decline to pay the $100 a year required to keep their wares listed in the store.

This is a deep and fundamental problem with not just computing culture, but all artistic expression that is locked down with DRM. The only way that its glories will be preserved for future generations is if considerate "pirates" make illegal back-up copies, stripped of copy protection. For DRM is a guarantee of oblivion: the term of copyright is so disproportionately long, few will care about breaking ancient DRM to make backups of long-forgotten digital creations when it eventually becomes legally permissible to do so.

Edwards concludes with a call to action:

If you see strict DRM and copy protection that threatens the preservation of history, fight it: copy the work, keep it safe, and eventually share it so it never disappears.

Some people may think ill of your archival efforts now, but they’re on the wrong side of history: no one living 500 years from now will judge your infringing deeds harshly when they can load up an ancient program and see it for themselves.

This is a crucial point: whatever qualms people might have about piracy now, posterity will have no doubts whatsoever. It's not simply that the supposed harms of piracy to culture are exaggerated, as more and more evidence suggests: it's that in the long term, piracy is actually indispensable for its preservation.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: archiving, copyright, culture, history, infringement, piracy

An Infographic Showing Just How Frequently Hollywood Has Cried Wolf About 'Piracy'

from the sky-is-falling,-the-sky-is-falling dept

A few folks have sent over this excellent infographic about the frequency with which Hollywood insists every new technology will destroy the movie business. It's based on the list that Steve Blank put together of Hollywood being totally wrong on lots of things: Figured some folks here might appreciate this...

Filed Under: crying wolf, history, hollywood, infringement, piracy, sopa
Companies: mpaa

The Pirate Bay Introduces 'Physibles': Napster For Physical Objects

from the kicking-the-hornet's-nest dept

A little over a year ago, we wrote about a fascinating paper from Public Knowledge with the splendid title, "It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology." It was written by Michael Weinberg, who recently recorded an interview going over much the same ground, if you prefer to listen rather than read. At the heart of both is the concern that once 3D printers become better and cheaper, and people start posting digital blueprints for commercially-available physical objects on the Net, then the manufacturing industries will recapitulate the war on sharing currently being waged by the music and film companies.

The output quality of 3D printers may still leave something to be desired, but the second part of the equation – freely swapping digital blueprints of objects without too much concern for any intellectual monopolies that are infringed upon – just became much easier thanks to The Pirate Bay:

We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.

That's probably true. Whether you will risk prosecution for doing so depends on how the post-SOPA legal landscape turns out.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: 3d printers, file sharing, infringement, physical objects, sharing
Companies: the pirate bay