Dear Hollywood: Hire Better Shills

from the wow dept

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a puff piece showing just how much work it is for NBC Universal to keep fighting all those darn pirates. It's basically a propaganda piece starring Rick "Save the Corn Farmers!" Cotton, NBC's general counsel who fights piracy the way that Captain Ahab chases Moby Dick. There are all sorts of problems with the piece, including the fact that it appears to believe that just because NBC is sending a lot more takedowns, it means that the "problem" is growing. Of course, as we were just discussing last week, when you look at the actual data, it makes a pretty clear case for anti-piracy efforts doing nothing to stop piracy, but investment in lots of innovative startups providing consumers what they want being the path to success. But, that's not Cotton's style.

Anyway, Janko Roettgers, over at PaidContent, wrote a nice post debunking much of the story, which quickly got three comments that all sounded vaguely similar in their poor use of the English language -- all of which tried to spin the story into "proof" that greater enforcement, such as the six strikes effort, was needed. Two of them make the laughable claim that each infringement represents "lost revenue." That's not how it works. Here's one of the three comments:

I’m glad the author is pointing out what is pretty clear to people who browse the internet everyday, piracy is still widespread and is evolving every year. Not even taking into account the huge piracy issues overseas, each of these takedown requests represents lost revenue for both views and time spend tracking and reporting this illegal behavior. NBC will and should continue to do this because legal viewing of their content is vital for their business. But the better long term solution is to create a system where NBC isn’t playing a carnival game just to receive the proper copyright benefits for the content they invest so much in.

Of course, the real way to get to that "long term solution" is for NBC to stop playing the carnival game of takedowns -- which do nothing to reduce infringement -- and focus on making sure its content is more widely available from more legitimate sources.

Either way, Janko quickly pointed out that, in a surprise to no one, it was pretty clear that the comments were from DC-based hired shills for the entertainment industry:

Kelseliz, AlexB and SteveFeather, I’m glad you all enjoyed my story. However, I’m not too surprised you all share the same point of view. After all, the three of you commented from the same Washington D.C.-based IP address, and one of the email addresses you left points to a D.C. lobbying firm that gets paid by major labels, rights holder groups and movie studios… but I’m sure that’s all just one big coincidence.

I know that it's common in our comments for people to accuse others of being "shills." Frankly, people jump to the shill label way too fast. While it is clear that some of our commenters do work in the industry, there are very few indications that they are paid to be propaganda spreaders, and I try to give them the benefit of the doubt (similarly, I would urge our commenters to stop throwing around the "shill" term so readily -- unless there's actual evidence, don't leap to unsupported conclusions). That said, in this case it seems pretty blatant that some entertainment industry "friends" from a DC lobbying group are now out trying to spread a very poorly argued concept that we somehow "need" six strikes. I'd suggest that the RIAA, MPAA and others might find better ways to spend their money.

Filed Under: entertainment industry, hollywood, lobbyists, piracy, shills, six strikes

Game Of Thrones Director: I'm 100% Opposed To The Piracy I Just Said Helps My Show Survive

from the getting-it dept

You know, sometimes content creators can be really confusing. Take Game Of Thrones director David Petrarca, for instance. Remember early last year when we mentioned that the show was on track to become the most pirated television show of 2012? And how the success of the show might actually be a result of piracy, rather than its cause?

Well, ChurchHatesTucker writes in to tell us that Petrarca recently opined that piracy is at least partially responsible for the success of the show, providing an avenue through which more people talk about it and comment on it within greater society.

Panel mediator Rosemary Neill noted Game of Thrones was the most pirated show of 2012 and that 10 per cent of the downloads came from Australia. But Petrarca shrugged and said the illegal downloads did not matter because such shows thrived on "cultural buzz" and capitalised on the social commentary they generated.

"That's how they survive," he told the crowd gathered at the University of Western Australia.

Yes, in addition to allowing late-comers to catch up on episodes in preparation for new seasons, piracy helps keep the show in the societal bloodstream, keeps the buzz going, and generally creates more excitement and awareness of the product as a whole. If HBO could manage to provide a more innovative method for delivering the show to those that want it, likely the boon could be even greater. Still, Petrarca noted that HBO is doing well with their subscriber base.

He said HBO alone had 26 million subscribers in the US and 60 million worldwide, which meant there was plenty of money filtering in and allowing the channel to produce high quality content despite any illegal downloading.

While this all sounds reasonable, I wouldn't want to be accused of not presenting the other side of the argument on whether or not piracy helps or hurts this sort of media. So, here to present a rebuttal to David Petrarca... is David Petrarca. He recently had a Twitter exchange with our own Glyn Moody, including these highlights.

I am 100% against illegal downloading. I said that downloading creates buzz but def am NOT in support of illegal downloads. The issue is a distribution system that gets content to viewers legally in a timely manner. People want to pay if made available.

While it should be noted that he certainly isn't being belligerent here, and he in fact notes that if a great distribution option is available fans will pay for content, it's difficult to square the first part of this statement with what he said in the article. Remember, he was specifically responding to a question about piracy (not authorized downloads) and then responded that it helped create social buzz for shows like his and "that's how they survive." But he is "NOT in support of illegal downloads?" I think I understand this to mean that he simply thinks the ideal solution is the kind of distribution platform that would drive nearly everyone away from piracy, by providing widely available, authorized downloads, and with that I'd agree. Still, in the absence of that great system, which HBO certainly doesn't offer, why staunchly state that you're 100% against piracy when you've already said it's helped you survive? I assume that Petrarca likes surviving, but perhaps I'm wrong?

Or, perhaps, the sudden attention that the original story was getting created pressure for him to walk back those statements. Glyn was not the only one that Petrarca reached out to with identical statements: Perhaps it's possible that, like many in the entertainment industry, Petrarca recognized that infringing copies were, in fact, good for his show, but that actually saying that leads to backlash from within. We've asked Petrarca whether or not he heard from anyone at HBO regarding his original comments, and will update this post accordingly should we hear back.

Filed Under: david petrarca, downloads, game of thrones, hbo, piracy, retractions

Music Industry Data: Sales Up, Piracy Down... But It's Not Because Of Any 'Anti-Piracy' Efforts

from the let's-walk-this-through dept

A few folks have sent over variations on two different reports concerning the music industry, with some suggesting that this is "proof" that the recording industry's "war on piracy" has been effective on two fronts: increasing sales and reducing piracy. Of course, for many years, we've questioned whether or not reducing piracy actually increases sales, so we looked closely at the numbers and they don't seem to say what some people think they're saying. The Hollywood Reporter has a good summary of both reports. One comes from IFPI, celebrating that "global recorded music revenue" rose 0.3% in 2012. That is, obviously, a tiny increase, but it is an increase. Of course, as we've noted, "recorded" music revenue is merely one piece of the wider music industry ecosystem -- and that entire ecosystem has been growing for quite some time.

The second report comes from one of the industry's favorite researchers, NPD, claiming a massive decline in music file sharing (based on consumer surveys). I've found NPD's data to be suspect in the past, but let's just assume this is true. Then, can we reach the conclusion that the industry's anti-piracy efforts both worked and that it led to increased sales?

Actually... no. Not even close. We can see this pretty clearly just by looking beyond the recorded music market, to the wider file sharing space. Various reports have made it clear that widespread file sharing (mostly of infringing content) has continued to grow quite rapidly during the same time period. Sandvine reports (pdf) that BitTorrent traffic increased 40% over the same basic time frame. Or, zero in on a different market beyond music. How about software? The BSA's annual report continues to show increases in "piracy."

What does that say? Well, if wider anti-piracy campaigns were effective, we wouldn't just be seeing a decline in music infringement. We'd see similar declines across the board. But the overall space and some other, similar, markets are showing increases in infringing content spreading.

That leads us to the much more reasonable hypothesis: the reason that music piracy is down and revenue is up is because the industry has finally started allowing more innovation into the market. Not surprisingly, this is exactly what we've been arguing for years. If you let the tech industry create useful new services that better provide the public with what they want, you get services and products that people are willing to pay for. And when that happens, infringement decreases, because the legitimate and authorized services are better than infringing. It's why music infringement fell off a cliff in Sweden when Spotify launched there, despite also being the home of The Pirate Bay. Notably, when music infringement plummeted in Sweden, other types of infringement did not similarly drop.

In other words, for all the complaints about these new services, and the many, many attempts to hold them back or neuter them, letting new services grow and thrive seems to be the best "anti-piracy" measure that the record labels could have used. And yet it still thinks it needs to focus on punishing fans and limiting services.

Filed Under: file sharing, music, piracy, purchases, revenue
Companies: ifpi, npd

Indian Music Industry Exec Says The Unthinkable: 'Internet Piracy Is A Good Thing'

from the he's-saying-what-we're-all-thinking!-and-saying! dept

If you've followed this site for any length of time, you've heard many opinions on file sharing from many different people. While there are many who have taken a pragmatic or even receptive approach to file sharing (and seen a bunch of "freeloaders" cough up a whole lot of cash), there are many more who only see the downside of copyright infringement.

What you rarely, if ever, see is a top level executive of a major player in the content industry state, on the record, that not only is piracy a good thing, but it may also be a necessary thing. Here's Mandar Thakur, COO of Times Music, India, commenting on the internet's upheaval of the recording industry.

I may get lynched for saying this – but I have always believed that internet piracy was actually, in some ways, a good thing to happen to the industry. If not for that, the music industry would never have pulled its act together and embraced innovation and realised changing consumer behaviour and digital distribution. The challenges the music content industry faces are too vast to lay down here but the most significant one is the fact that the very core of the industry and its business dynamics have been shaken deep due to the consumer’s changed consumption habits and habitat, and its value proposition changed forever. It’s almost akin to consumers not wanting to pay to consume Coke/Pepsi anymore. In that sense it is as good as creating a brand new entertainment industry, creating brand new value and brand new revenue models at the same time as preserving the existing value/revenue base.

Now, before someone writes off Time Music as the equivalent of a boutique label run by three guys out of their stepdad's garage, let's take a look at the facts. Time Music, India is a division of the Times Group, the "largest mass media company in India," with annual revenue exceeding $1.5 billion and the employer of 11,000 Indians.

Much of what Thakur stated has been documented here over the years. Piracy may be a problem, but it's also a sign of disruption and an indicator of underserved markets. The problem with the American recording industry is that it spent much more time worrying (and attacking) the first item on the list while ignoring the other two. From what he's stated, Thakur is apparently uninterested in wasting much more time and money trying to eliminate file sharing. This should allow Time Music Inc. to devote those resources towards making money, rather than plugging leaks.

That he would come out and state this plainly probably won't win him any friends in the IMI (Indian Music Industry), the Indian version of the RIAA. Late last year, IMI filed a petition in support of India's IT Rules, pushing to be granted the right to take down content within 36 hours, without having to serve notice to the content creator or uploader.

Thakur may also begin irritating those even higher up on the food chain. IMI is part of International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), best known around these parts for serving up an annual report on piracy that's riddled with factual errors and filled to the brim with pleas for various governments to save it from having to make forward progress.

Not only does Thakur view file sharing as a side effect of industry stasis, he also seems to have a good grip on what consumers actually want -- and how the rollout of better and speedier connections will continue this disruption (and its attendant opportunities).

Faster access at affordable prices has always created a massive boost for consumption. At one point it was content that was king, then the portable device became the centre of the digital universe and now it’s the war of the OSes. The underlying factor across all these spurring growth (or preventing growth) has always been access and in this particular case it’s the global LTE and LTE Advanced roll- outs that will accelerate growth, especially in large countries such as India, Indonesia and China. This [growth of access] will be nothing short of an internet revolution, due to the wide-scale consumption it will create as common people’s daily habits change.

This is also refreshing. Rather than viewing across-the-board increases in bandwidth as nothing but a more efficient conduit for infringement (see also: the MPAA's comments on Google's fiber rollout), he sees it for what it is: an new, rapidly expanding market.

It's great to see such clear thinking from someone inside the industry. IMI and IFPI may not be happy with a pirate-loving COO heading a major music outlet, but it appears he's in place to catch a new market on the upswing, an uncommon experience for those in his position.

Filed Under: consumer behavior, digital distribution, india, innovation, mandar thakur, music, piracy
Companies: time music

RIAA: Google Isn't Trying Hard Enough To Make Piracy Disappear From The Internet

from the but-of-course dept

When Google first caved in to the legacy entertainment industry's demands to start modifying search results to downrank sites that received a lot of DMCA notices, we quickly warned that the RIAA and MPAA would never think that it was enough, and would continue to whine and complain. Yesterday, we pointed out that the RIAA was bitching and complaining about how many DMCA notices they could submit (which turned out to be a case of the RIAA failing to RTFM). But that was just the prelude for today, when the RIAA would release a "report card" on how Google's new filtering was going. Guess what? They're not happy, and apparently they won't be happy until Google magically makes all infringement disappear (*poof*).

Six months later, we have found no evidence that Google’s policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy. These sites consistently appear at the top of Google’s search results for popular songs or artists.

For everyone else in the world, if they're not satisfied with how the sites they favor rank in Google, they learn a little something about search engine optimization. But, noooooooo, not the RIAA. They think that it is a requirement that Google be tailored to them directly.

Well-known, authorized download sites, such as iTunes, Amazon and eMusic, only appeared in the top ten results for a little more than half of the searches. This means that a site for which Google has received thousands of copyright removal requests was almost 8 times more likely to show up in a search result than an authorized music download site. In other words, whatever Google has done to its search algorithms to change the ranking of infringing sites, it doesn't appear to be working.

Well, that's one interpretation. Another one (the right one) is that whatever the industry itself has done to raise the rankings of those sites by effectively competing in the marketplace "doesn't appear to be working." iTunes, in particular, is locked up in its own little walled garden with few people "linking in" (a big part of how Google determines relevance). Do people still use eMusic any more? The problem seems to be that those other sites just aren't where people look for stuff when they're searching Google for the music. That's not Google's fault.

Of course, what all this continues to demonstrate, beyond the fact that the RIAA will never, ever be satisfied until Google wipes out all infringement with the magic "piracyBgone" button, is that the RIAA still just doesn't understand search. The methodology here is suspect:

For this analysis we performed searches for [artist] [track] mp3 and [artist] [track] download over a period of several weeks starting December 3, 2012

First big mistake: the RIAA simply does not seem to know that Google does not deliver the same results to everyone. That change a while back. They try to tailor specific responses to specific users, based on what those users are searching for. So, if the RIAA is seeing those sites ranked higher, perhaps it says something about where the RIAA is commonly looking for stuff...

Also, here's the thing that the RIAA just doesn't seem to get. Google's entire business and algorithm are built, ground up, around the idea of understanding what people are looking for when they search, and then taking them to that place. The RIAA might not like it, but the simple fact is that when people are searching for [artist] [track] mp3 and [artist] [track] download, chances are they're not looking to buy, but to download for free. So that's what Google is showing them. That's not Google's fault. That's what the person is searching for. Even if Google magically did show them Apple, Amazon and Emusic as the top results for every [artist] [track] mp3 and [artist] [track] download, the people doing those searches wouldn't go there, because they're not looking to buy. If they did a search on "[artist] [track] buy" perhaps there would be different results.

If you actually compare apples to apples, and look at the kinds of sites that people are probably looking for, the RIAA's own "data" seems to suggest that Google is, in fact, demoting sites that receive a lot of takedowns. Note that in those last two categories, sites that have received more than 10,000 DMCA notices appear less frequently than those with closer to 1,000 DMCA notices. The other three categories are red herrings, because those aren't where people are looking for when they do searches on either [artist] [track] mp3 or [artist] [track] download.

Basically, this just reinforces two (completely unsurprising points):

1. The RIAA will never, ever be satisfied, no matter what Google does. Which again, reinforces the idea that it was probably a bad idea to even cave in in the first place.
2. The RIAA still doesn't understand how search works, nor does it seem to have any interest in learning. It doesn't understand that every single other website in the world has to work hard to lift themselves up in Google's search rankings. They don't get to specifically call out sites they don't like and automatically force Google to lower their rankings. The RIAA gets a massive headstart on every other site in the world... and they still haven't figured out how to take advantage of this.

Of course, it's not just the RIAA. Musically points out that the RIAA's complaints are only the latest in a long line. The MPAA and BPI have already made similar complaints. And they'll continue to complain, because it gives them an excuse for not doing what they should be doing, which is helping the companies they represent adapt to the internet era. It's much easier to just blame a third party -- especially when doing so without understanding the very fundamentals of how a search engine works.

Filed Under: copyright infringement, demotions, filtering, piracy, search
Companies: google, riaa

Dead Kennedys Guitarist Joins Crusade Against Ad Networks & YouTube Despite Understanding Neither

from the make-it-stop dept

At the always wonderful SF Music Tech conference yesterday, I went to what should have been a fascinating panel discussion about "artist revenue streams." It had Kristin Thomson from the Future of Music Coalition, talking about their wonderful artist revenue streams project, as well as Steve Rennie, who manages the band Incubus, among others. And then there was the third panelist, East Bay Ray, of the band The Dead Kennedys. Despite that band once mocking the whole "home taping is killing music" argument, it appears that he's now turned into one of those grumpy old musicians who demands that everyone else figure out a way to pay him. So, rather than an interesting discussion about artist revenue streams, the panel basically turned into a big rant from East Bay Ray complaining about all these internet sites that don't pay him. His misunderstandings were legion. He held up a screenshot of a file sharing site in Russia, showing Dead Kennedys songs on them, and noted that he doesn't get paid for those. And, of course, those sites have ads. This is the thing that gets me. A group of music industry folks, led by Jon Taplin at USC, who don't seem to have the slightest clue about how online advertising actually works, keep insisting that when they see an ad from a big company on a site that has infringing materials, it means that "the pirates are getting rich and the artists are getting screwed."

What I find amusing is that professional musicians so often insist that others are simply not qualified to speak about the music business. And yet, they have absolutely no problem pretending they know how internet advertising works. Let's make this simple: internet display ads pay next to nothing -- especially on sites like the one that Ray was complaining about. Those kinds of sites can only get deals with complete bottom of the barrel remnant ad providers, whose payout numbers are so small that most people would laugh. Some -- like Google's AdSense -- only payout if people click, and these days no one clicks on banner ads. They don't even see them. These sites make next to nothing. I'd be amazed if they can clear $0.05 CPMs. That is, if they're lucky, they get five cents for every 1,000 views. If they're lucky.

Furthermore, folks like Ray are blaming the sites, which tend to be platforms or conduits for sharing, rather than the hosts or the actual people responsible for uploading the works. Either they don't understand this or they don't care, but they really seem to want to blame the middleman for the actions of end users.

Steve Rennie tried to talk Ray down a few times, with little luck. Rennie, rightly, pointed out that whining about the pennies some Russian site might get is a really fruitless activity, when there's so much opportunity to make revenue elsewhere. Why not focus on the actual revenue opportunities, instead of whining about the two and a half cents some Russian site got?

And, of course, Ray's anger isn't just at Russian file sharing sites, but basically every legitimate site as well. Even if they pay, they don't pay him enough. He, of course, singled out YouTube and further demonstrated his near total ignorance of the world by insisting that YouTube has "forced 12,000 musicians out of work." You might wonder how that's possible, and read the link for the full "math" and try to hold back the guffaws. The short version, as far as I can figure it out, is that he argues that YouTube only pays artists 35% of the revenue they get, but they should be paying 70% "like Apple." And then:

So, if they had done the same percentage as say iTunes, 30/70 instead of 65/35, that's a difference of about $600 million. Now if you take a middle class musician, say, $50,000 year, year in and year out, divide it into $600 million, that's 12,000 people that Google has siphoned the money off.

And that's 12,000 people that are now working in the salt mines of Walmart.

There are so many things wrong with this that I'm afraid to even try to list them all. First of all, YouTube revenue is incremental revenue on top of other revenue. This is revenue that did not exist at all prior to YouTube setting up ContentID and monetizing those views. This is not money that was somehow taken away from artists. Second, the revenue is not evenly distributed as his simple "division" implies. Bigger artists get more views, so even if his other nonsensical argument about how Google should fork over more of the money made sense, the "missing" money would still go disproportionately to bigger artists anyway.

And, of course, there are so many other factors at play here, including a whole bunch of musicians who only have careers because of YouTube. The fact that this "logic" is even considered seriously is so bizarre.

Rennie pushed back on some of Ray's claims, and Ray just went on something of a rampage, comparing internet sites to companies that exploited child labor in the past. When Rennie suggested that YouTube and other internet services were providing new and incremental revenue streams that simply didn't exist before, Ray referred to Rennie as "massa," which is incredibly obnoxious. He later insisted that "pirate sites are on the payroll of multinational companies," and then said that the internet companies were "pimps" and that "iTunes pays their 'girls' 70%, but Google only pays 30%." The fact that these companies created brand new revenue streams for him never seems to even enter his consciousness.

Finally, when people pointed out that there are a growing number of artists who are successful primarily because of the internet and new business models and services, he mocked those success stories, arguing that they got lucky -- saying that it's "just like a casino." Apparently, he's unfamiliar with the old recording industry which was much more of a pure lottery, where most people never were even allowed in the door, and ended up making nothing at all.

Oh, and poor Kristin barely got to speak at all, despite actually being the one with lots of actual data to share, rather than angry, ill-informed, misguided rantings. Later in the day I got to speak to Dave Allen, who we've written about before, and who was a founding member of Gang of Four -- a contemporary of the Dead Kennedys -- and he made a key point. Whenever the conversation focuses on "but what do we do about piracy," it becomes a complete waste of time. There are so many amazing new opportunities out there, with all sorts of fantastic ways to create, promote, connect, distribute, and monetize music. Whining about "losses" is just time spent not seizing opportunities.

Filed Under: ad networks, artist revenue streams, copyright, dead kennedys, east bay ray, incubus, internet advertising, kristin thomson, piracy, steve rennie, youtube

Bollywood No Longer Worrying About Piracy As Studios Keep Setting New Records At The Box Office

from the look-at-that dept

For years, India was held up as a country that just didn't respect copyright law at all. We'd heard the stories about how widespread piracy was for all kinds of content. However, as we'd seen elsewhere, the claims that piracy was somehow "killing" the industry didn't really hold up under scrutiny. In fact, the Indian movie market (Bollywood) continued to grow massively and to thrive, even as piracy was rampant. That certainly seemed to contradict the old claim that infringement kills the incentives for content creation. And now, according to the Economic Times, many Indian studios have more or less stopped even talking about "piracy" because the box office is booming. The secret? It shouldn't be a surprise, since it's exactly what people have been talking about for years: making the authorized versions of the content more widely available more quickly in a variety of formats, thereby cutting off one of the main reasons why people seek out infringing copies:

A few years ago, theatre releases were limited to tier-I and tier-II cities due to high costs of prints. It took between three months and a year for a film to be released elsewhere. Consequently, films reached television and home video only after six months of a theatrical release. Pirates gleefully filled that vacuum by bombarding consumers with cheap optical discs....

Not anymore. The brightest stars of the Rs 100-crore constellation are theatres and prints.... Digital prints, which cost one-fifth of analog prints, have facilitated the swift reach of movies across the country.

There's an infographic that shows most movie releases in 2011 were shown on about double the number of movies screens as similar movies just the year before. That's a massive increase in availability for theater showings. As for the home market, while it still competes with pirated copies, quality seems to be winning:

According to Dwyer, the better-off who earlier paid to have high-quality cinema systems at home are no longer interested in poor quality (pirated) copies. "The quality of DVDs and Blu-ray discs is excellent with extra features and at a reasonable price."

While the article still says that there's a lot of infringement going on, it's just fading into the background for the most part, especially given the record-setting revenue numbers.

For one, producers are happy with the current box-office fortunes. There is also no evidence to show big hits suffering from online piracy. On the contrary, data crawls suggest that the most downloaded films are nearly always the biggest hits, according to Lawrence Liang of Bangalore's Alternative Law Forum, one of the authors of the India chapter of the Media Piracy report.

And, thus, the studios have finally realized that paying more attention to improving the authorized market is probably more important than "stomping out piracy."

What has really changed is the focus on piracy. As the case of AACT shows, the struggles against pirates are few and far between to make even news, leave alone act as a deterrent. "The tendency has been to focus always on the numbers we are capturing rather than looking at leaked markets," says Uday Singh, managing director, MPDA.

Of course, the article is still full of dire warnings about how the studios need to stay vigilant or everything might fall apart, but that seems based on random hyperbole, rather than any actual evidence.

None of this should be even remotely surprising. For years we've been pointing out that if you make works available, make them convenient and reasonably priced, and stop treating your customers like criminals, people will pay. Sure, there will always be some piracy, but those people are unlikely to pay no matter what, for the most part, and you just need to stop worrying about them and focus on giving more fans more reasons to actually pay. It appears that India is an example of a place where that's actually happening.

Filed Under: bollywood, box office, india, movies, piracy

Chris Dodd Sounding Like A Broken Recording Industry

from the and-so-it-goes dept

Ever since the failure of SOPA, MPAA boss Chris Dodd has been making the rounds, giving the same damn stump speech over and over again. We've reported on it before, but he's done it again, this time at the National Press Club. As the transcript shows, it's the same old story.

Play up just how amazing the movie industry is because it "tells stories." Then, transition into just how many "jobs" the industry creates -- and focus on how those jobs aren't the glamorous ones, but those everyday people (the "little people" if you will) -- and always claim that there are over 2 million of them, even if that's massively exaggerated. At least this time he put in the caveat that he was including people who are both "directly and indirectly" in the industry (plus he admits that he's including TV people, as opposed to just movies) -- such as the people who "prepared our lunch today." Of course, I would imagine those people would likely be preparing lunch for someone else even if the movie industry disappeared. He also highlights that the industry creates jobs across the country, naming New Mexico, Georgia and North Carolina. Don't think those are by accident. Those are three states that have provided significant subsidies to the Hollywood studios, and are some of the very few such programs not rated as a dismal failure for the local economy. He claims that "You can go down a list of states all across the nation and find one economic impact success story after another." He conveniently leaves out that the evidence actually shows that most of these are actually not economic success stories at all, but dismal failures that funnel taxpayer money from states to Hollywood studios which bring in their favorite crews, and hire few locals.

But, then, of course, there's the key section on "technology" and innovation. At first he tries to play up all of the "innovation," but again, leaves out how many of these "innovations" wouldn't actually exist if the MPAA had its way in the past:

Because movies matter—to more people, in more places, who want to watch them at more times, across multiple platforms—the film and television industry is continuously innovating to meet that demand.

Today movies and TV shows can be viewed in theaters, on the big screen, or at home on TV screens, laptops, iPads, Kindles and smart phones.

There are more than 375 unique licensed online distribution services around the world that provide high-quality, on demand film and television shows, offering the easiest, fastest, safest, highest quality product and viewing experience possible.

That the industry was dragged, kicking and screaming, to support many of these things is sort of left out. Also, the fact that the industry has worked ridiculously hard at crippling many of these services, making them way too expensive and annoying (how many services require you to watch a video within 24 hours, because, apparently, no one in the MPAA has kids and recognizes you might want to start a film one night and finish it the next?) seems kind of important, but not mentioned.

There is one thing we agree on:

These innovations are great for consumers. I'm not exaggerating when I say a new golden age in television and film is being ushered in. You can watch more content than ever, through more channels, and the quality of the movies and TV shows is outstanding.

So why did the MPAA fight nearly every one of these changes all along? And why is it still trying to do so? Well, then we get to the usual talk about how the next wave of "innovation" isn't about providing more value to those consumers. It's not about extending the golden age. It's about how can Silicon Valley help the MPAA stop piracy:

This is why it's so crucial that we protect this content from theft. Because consumers deserve to enjoy first-generation versions of their favorite films—not secondhand, pirated films-of-films shot and recorded inside a movie theatre on a mobile phone.

First off, it's not theft. Stop saying it is when it's not. It just makes you look totally out of touch. Second, you know what helps consumers get good works? Making them available in convenient ways at reasonable prices -- something the big studios frequently work against, despite his list of services. Finally, you know how to beat the "secondhand, pirated films-of-films shot and recorded inside a movie theater on a mobile phone"? You offer more convenient ways to view the actual product. I don't know why Dodd and the MPAA think that anyone really wants to watch a crappy cammed version of a film shot from a mobile phone. They don't. Give them legitimate reasonable options and they prefer that.

We must strike a balance between the desire for a free and open internet and the protection of intellectual property. The future cannot be about choosing one over the other—between protecting free speech OR protecting intellectual property—it must be about protecting both

There is no "balance" needed here. What we need is a free and open internet, period. Protecting IP is a fool's errand. Focus on providing more legitimate services with better service, more convenience and reasonable pricing and there's no need to protect things. People pay for Netflix, Spotify and others because they're simply more convenient. Do more of that and stop worrying about piracy.

We can and must have an Internet that works for everyone, and we can and must have protection for the creative industry’s genius that intellectual property represents.

This assumes that protection is a reasonable goal. It's not. It will always be costly to protect and will always have collateral damage. Considering you can solve the problems merely by providing better services, stop worrying about piracy, and just start helping more companies innovate cool additional value.

There should be no confusion. For the more than two million Americans whose jobs depend on the motion picture and television industry “free and open” cannot be synonymous with “working for free.”

I'm sure whichever staffer wrote this line thought it was really clever, but what does it even mean? No one is asking anyone to work for free. Just moments before in the speech, Dodd was talking about how the industry was doing great and growing. More movies than ever before are being made and there are all sorts of new opportunities. Focus on those.

To protect IP, and the openness and freedom of the Internet, we must together innovate our way through these challenges. Fortunately, Silicon Valley and Hollywood are making some progress on this front.

No, the challenge is not how to "protect content." The challenge is "how can we make money" and the tech industry has been providing answers to that over and over and over again, creating new and useful tools and services that help the creation, promotion, distribution and monetization of movies. And the industry has either fought to block or simply looked down upon nearly all of them, until suddenly they're "big enough" to matter, and then they take credit for those innovations. Don't "work together" on the useless goal of "protecting content." Focus on innovating in a way that makes consumers better off.

It's a simple thing: are you adding value to the consumers, or are you trying to stop them from doing something? If you're doing the first thing, you're moving in the right direction. If you're doing the latter, you're throwing money away on the impossible. While Chris Dodd represents the movie industry, the joke around here for a while has been that industries fighting the future "sound like a broken recording industry." Dodd's been telling this same tall tale for a year now, and it's time he got some new material. Stop focusing on ways to stop people from doing stuff, and start looking for ways to help them get more value.

Filed Under: chris dodd, content protection, copyright, innovation, movies, piracy, stump speech
Companies: mpaa

Game Developer Connects With Pirates, Sees Massive Support & Deletion Of Torrents

from the how-it's-done dept

One of the long-running themes here at Techdirt has been our insistence that the best way to combat any negative effects of piracy is for content creators to connect with fans, buyers, and pirates alike. If you treat people in a congenial, awesome way, the goodwill you garner will not only make up for any piracy negatives, but can actually propel your work to further success. Unfortunately, too few people seem to avoid the understandable but unproductive emotional response that comes with having your work show up on sites like The Pirate Bay. The vast majority of responses are vitriolic. Nevermind that some creators, such as when Hotline Miami's developers decided to embrace pirates, have experienced the boon of goodwill and sales as a result. No, anger and threats of legal action tend to rule the day.

That's why it's so important to offer up every example available that shows how mistaken this methodology is. With that in mind, witness how the developers of an indie RPG called Anodyne embraced the uploader of their game and used the exposure to propel themselves into the internet limelight. It all started, as these stories so often do, when a Pirate Bay user offered up a torrent for the game. Instead of losing their minds, the game's developers decided to be the second commenter on the torrent's page, reaching out to anyone interested in downloading the game and instead offering a better way to do so. The text of that comment follows:

Hi, I'm Sean! I'm one of the two guys who made Anodyne. It's neat that Anodyne's ehre and I'm glad that means more people can play it, though of course we'd love it if you bought the game! We're tryin' to get Greenlit on Steam so we'd really appreciate it if you and your friends gave us an upvote over at http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=92921739.

Most importantly let us know what you think of the game and if you like it or if it fills you with burning rage! - we're on Twitter at @seagaia2 and @jonathankittaka.

Then they decided to go over the top in generosity by offering up free download codes for Anodyne and pointing readers to Desura.com to redeem them. They saw their game out there for free, reacted awesomely, and offered up their own way to download it for free. This response hits every major way I would have advised them to react to the torrent. They left all threats in their pockets, embraced those wanting to play the game (even for free), used it as a promotional tool as well as a way to crowdsource market and product data, and even threw in a bit of humor to boot. I don't know that I could have crafted the response better myself.

The response to their actions has been as swift as it has been universally positive. A Reddit discussion broke out almost immediately and Sean Hogan, the developer above, immediately jumped in to prove that his forward-thinking Pirate Bay comment wasn't some one-off bit of clarity.

"Yeah, piracy is inevitable so it's better to embrace it – plus, it gives lots of people who couldn't normally afford the game the opportunity to play it – and I think when you're a small group of developers (only my friend Jon and I made Anodyne), it's better to have lots of people able to experience your game," he wrote.

The publicity is of course a wonderful thing. Anodyne can only benefit from the positive reaction this story is creating, potentially leading to placement within Steam. But the story doesn't stop there. Because if you go searching for that original Anodyne listing on the Pirate Bay, you'll find it doesn't exist any longer. The site is notorious for refusing to remove such links, so the overwhelming likelihood is that it was taken down by the uploader. If so, this case no longer only serves as evidence that treating pirates well can be lucrative, but also that treating them well can cause them to second guess their decision to offer the content in the first place. Which, of course, throws the entire mantra that pirates are evil kids who just want everything for free into a logical tailspin. In any case, this is a textbook example of how to react to piracy.

Filed Under: awesome, connect with fans, developers, human, open, piracy, video games
Companies: anodyne, the pirate bay