Jay-Z And Kanye West Go To Ridiculous Efforts To Stop Album From Leaking

from the for-how-much-benefit? dept

One of our usual critics pointed us to a recent article at Billboard about the insane lengths that Jay-Z, Kanye West and the producers of their joint album went through to keep the album from leaking early. The whole thing sounds pretty extreme. They recorded in "pop up" studios they set up in hotel rooms, rather than at real recording studios. Then there were three key engineers who turned off all computer WiFi in the rooms. Collaborators were not allowed to hear tracks outside of the room (so no emailing around tracks for ideas). Everything had to happen in person. Meanwhile, all the work was saved on hard drives locked up in a briefcase. The drives apparently had biometric security, in that you could only access them with a fingerswipe matching fingerprints.

And, amazingly, all of this "worked." The album apparently was released on time without any leaks. Our critic said this proves that I'm a liar when I say "musicians don't care about piracy." Of course, I've never said nor implied any such thing. I know that plenty of musicians "care" about piracy. But this story first of all wasn't about "piracy" so much as it was about leaks. It's clear from the article that it wasn't about the economic threat of a pre-release, but how it fit into the marketing strategy. Jay-Z wanted to try to get people to listen to the whole album.

On top of that, all the crazy "CIA" stuff isn't what stopped the album from leaking. For all the talk of "hackers" breaking into computers and grabbing copies of tracks early, most tracks leak because of one thing: someone in the final processing chain gets the master early and leaks the tracks. The reason this album didn't leak early was because they delivered the masters as close to the release as possible. Any artist who wants to avoid leaks really just needs to do something like that, and ignore the Mission Impossible crap.

But the larger point is... is something like this even worth it? The article also notes that others may follow suit. But I'm curious if the "cost" really is worth it. It limits the creative freedom (such as emailing back and forth tracks). It does little to nothing to stop actual infringement. All it does is make sure the marketing plan goes down without anyone being able to listen to it early or help promote it on blogs and such when it comes out. If anything it seems to ignore the modern marketing strategy, where new tracks are purposely leaked to get the buzz going. I'm sure the album will do fine, given the two names attached to it. But I don't' see how this has anything to do with "piracy," and I can't see how any "benefit" outweighs the cost. I have to imagine that if other artists go down this same path, they're going to discover it's a waste of time and money for almost no benefit.

Filed Under: jay-z, kanye west, leaks, piracy

Incubus Promotes New Album With Misguided Anti-Piracy 8-Bit Video Game?

from the yeah,-that'll-win-fans dept

The band Incubus has decided that a way to attract fans to its new album is to release an 8-bit video game in which the point is to "fight music pirates," by literally punching them as they try to get and leak Incubus' new album. However, as Rob Sheridan points out, the new album has already actually leaked in real life, "so I guess the game can't be won." I think Sheridan sums it up nicely:

Seriously? How about fighting the record label dorks or manufacturing companies who let the album leak in the first place? Maybe the boss battle should be with the label exec who can't come up with a modern release plan that avoids leaks entirely?

Oddly, Mashable claims that attacking fans who are interested in the band's music is part of the band's savvy "social-media flavored album release campaign." Sorry, but calling your fans pirates, and showing how you want to beat them up doesn't seem particularly social. The whole target of the campaign just seems weird and misguided.

Filed Under: fans, incubus, leaks, pirates, video games

Definition Of Irony: Deus Ex Leak Spawns Conspiracy Theories

from the the-truth-is-out-there dept

If you don't know the story of the Deus Ex franchise, it's a good one. The original game wove a cyberpunk conspiracy thriller action game that was as critically acclaimed as it was wildly successful. That wild success spawned a wildly lame sequel that disappointed fans of the franchise. But those fans were pleased to learn that another sequel would be coming out this summer, Deus Ex: Human Revolution. There was some speculation as to whether Eidos Montreal could finally put out a worthy sequel to the original, but anticipation mounted.

You know what happened next, because it happens all the time. An early build of the game leaked onto torrent sites. The only thing stranger than the company's reaction to all this is the story of how it happened. First, let's get the legal nonsense out of the way.

According to The Escapist, the publisher sued fifteen "John Does" for accessing the build and leaking it to the public Square Enix was displeased, lamenting (and I swear to you I'm not making this up) the estimated loss of $5,000 whole dollars! So they're bringing suit against unnamed defendents, paying whatever associated legal costs are required for such an endeavor. I'm struggling with the obvious question: why? For $5,000? What's a UK lawyer cost these days?

Interestingly, there was some question about how this whole thing happened and whether or not Square Enix had something to do with the leak. The official story is that a group of bad guys, real revolutionary types, somehow faked Italian journalist credentials to get the early build from Steam. Then, after much smokey back room discussion, uploaded the leak to torrent sites. There was some initial speculation that Square Enix may have leaked this themselves, due to what appears to be consensus that this leak helped the title in marketing and pre-sales, since fears of an unworthy sequel were laid to rest. But most are taking the lawsuit brought before the UK court over the lost $5,000 as evidence that they didn't (because such a suit makes so much more sense?).

As a side note, minus the mucking up of the legal system for all this garbage, how cool would it have been if Square did manufacture this leak and get creative with the story of how it fictionally happened? What if they got the benefit of this leak (laying fears of a crappy game to rest) while simultaneously building even more hype around the game through fictional conspiratorial intrigue? They could have mocked up interviews with internet cafe owners claiming that MiBs came in and used their property to pull off this "heist". They could have taken their cues from the movie The Fourth Kind and created fictional accounts all across the web that I can promise you Deus Ex fans would have absolutely eaten up.

Instead, we have a story about a couple of folks downloading it via Steam and a lawsuit from a video game mega-publisher claiming damages of an amount less than it would cost one of their execs to go on a European vacation.

So you tell me which is crazier, the tale of Illuminati dominance and conspiratorial intrigue woven into the Deus Ex mythos, or a company bringing legal action to court over five thousand whole dollars?

Filed Under: conspiracies, deus ex, leaks

Julian Assange Doesn't Do Irony Well: Threatens His Own Internal Leakers With $20 Million Penalty

from the that-seems-just-a-little-hypocritical dept

It's no secret that Wikileaks' Julian Assange is a man of many contradictions, who has what appears to be a vindictive and angry streak against those who disagree with him on certain plans. However, now reports are coming out that he made his own associates sign an incredibly draconian non-disclosure agreement which threatens anyone who leaks documents from within Wikileaks with the potential for a $20 million penalty. I guess, you could argue that since he recognizes how much leaking goes on, that it makes sense to put in place extreme penalties. Of course, the alternative explanation that many seem to prefer is that he's just annoying, paranoid and, at times, more than a bit hypocritical.

Filed Under: fines, julian assange, leaks
Companies: wikileaks

Leaked Documents Show How The RIAA Plans To Spend The Limewire Settlement

from the it's-not-75-trillion-but-it's-a-start dept

The RIAA believes it is on the cusp of victory in its lawsuit against Limewire, thanks mainly to its large selection of damaging charts. However, it seems to be expecting the worst, if these leaked documents are any indication. All evidence below indicates that the RIAA will be willing to settle for only $15 billion (out of a possible $55 billion). Not only that, but it already has plans in place for the dispersal of the Limewire settlement.

Explanatory Notes

First and foremost, the legal war chest must be refilled. It never sleeps and it is always hungry. Copyright won't protect itself and every battle to secure these rights has become long, uphill and against the wind.

A $15 billion payout doesn't come around every day and our executives are justly entitled to a large chunk of that ($3.15 bil.). As an added bonus (to the bonuses), all executives will be treated to a celebratory blimp ride ($2.25 bil.). This dollar amount seems high until you consider that each executive will be requiring their own blimp. Previously, the executives had shared one blimp, but in the post-Napster environment, "sharing" is obviously no longer a legal option.

Other line items include the ongoing efforts in Washington to impose the RIAA's will on the internet, research and development and the opaquely-named "Other Expenditures."

 

(1) Other Expenditures
Having run the "Stealing a Song = Stealing a Car" analogy into the ground, we need a new "go to" catchphrase. Hence, $1.05 billion should be earmarked for development of a new anti-piracy metaphor. Suggestions include:

• Stealing a song is like stealing a yacht.
• You wouldn't steal popcorn, would you?
• There's no such thing as a free lunch, free song or an infinite good.
• File sharing is as un-American as immigration, outsourcing and opium production.
• You wouldn't steal a blimp, would you?
• Stealing a song is like kidnapping an artist's children and is punishable by a sentence of 25 years to life.

Other incidental expenditures include a much-needed re-upholstering of the executive suites and a celebratory hot tub full of money to splash around in with various members of the escort community, each of whom will be paid in full for their services, including any fees due for public performance.

 

(2) Research and Development
A lion's share of the payout will go towards the ongoing development of a time machine/wormhole to 1991 ($450 million). Many recent efforts have come close but the RIAA has yet to reach the pre-Napster days and develop a parallel timeline in which CD sales increase forever. On the plus side, it did manage to get our mom to hook up with our dad, thus ensuring our continued existence.

Other products/services on the way:

• A computer-unfriendly music delivery system, much needed in this time of digital theft. Wax cylinders have been discussed as well as a partnership with RealPlayer, whose clumsy, bug-ridden software would likely prevent music from being enjoyed on a wide variety of operating systems.
• "Lost Sales" calculation improvements, which should allow the RIAA to seek even larger damages from various file sharing services. It is hoped that we will finally reach the trillion dollar mark within the next decade. In addition, breakthroughs should also be sought in the "Shocking Graph" field, what with the recent success of the "Napster Ruined Everything" line graphs.
• A partnership with the developers of The Club to prevent music from being stolen. A possible route would be some sort of clamp that could be tightened around an ethernet cable to prevent uploading. In other words, not so much "throttling" as "strangling."
• Domain seizure technology, via the RIAA's partnership with ICE, which has already proven its ability to take thousands of sites offline despite lack of evidence or proper investigative techniques. On the front burner: cooperating with ICE's takedown of many large pharmaceutical companies who continue to make themselves rich off various anti-seizure remedies, including the weirdly-named Antivan and Dilantin.

Royalty Payments

Royalty disbursements, as expected, will be delivered in a "top down" fashion. Those artists with the most sales will receive a disproportionately large share of the proceeds. After the "Big 3" are taken care of (and a chunk of money thrown towards Paul McGuiness in hopes that some of it lands in his mouth), the remaining funds will be dispersed to yet more lawyers and an appreciable amount ($300,000 ) put towards the ongoing health of Jon Bon Jovi's remaining hair. It is hoped that he will be able to put off his eventual "Trump Hair" for another 7-10 years, thus ensuring his continued success in the field of "fairly attractive frontmen." See footnotes for royalty dispersals.

*Charting Artists

$300,000 will be divided evenly among those artists currently in the Top 40 at the point of dispersal. If said artist happen to include any of the "Big 3," well, I suppose the rest of you should just write better hits, right? There's no crying in the music industry, especially if you're unrecouped.

*Non-Charting Artists

The remainder of the RIAA's roster will split $150,000. To qualify for payment, bands/musicians must have a viable Wikipedia page (stubs and pages slated for deletion do not count) and a web presence that includes more than just a long-abandoned MySpace page. (Try Facebook.)

Filed Under: leaks, satire, settlement, spending
Companies: limewire, riaa

Lawyers For Guantanamo Detainees Not Allowed To Look At Important Leaked Evidence

from the this-is-stupid dept

In the business world, if you sign a non-disclosure agreement, it's well accepted that if the information covered in that agreement later becomes public through other means, you are no longer bound by the agreement. This makes sense. After all, why should anyone be forced to clam up about information that's already public. And, yet, for no good reason at all, it seems our government prefers a system where everyone is supposed to keep their head in the sand about public info. Witness the mind-numbingly bizarre claim that lawyers for Guantanamo detainees are not allowed to look at the documents that a bunch of newspapers released earlier this week (the documents allegedly came from Wikileaks, but apparently Wikileaks itself did not release them to the newspapers). Yes, these documents are all over the news and are widely available from multiple sources... yet the government has warned the lawyers not to look:

On Monday, hours after WikiLeaks, The New York Times and other news organizations began publishing the documents online, the Justice Department informed Guantanamo defense lawyers that the documents remained legally classified even after they were made public.

Because the lawyers have security clearances, they are obligated to treat the readily available files "in accordance with all relevant security precautions and safeguards" -- handling them, for example, only in secure government facilities, said the notice from the department's Court Security Office.

The NY Times, rightly, calls this "absurdist." I'd call it out right stupid. It's head-in-the-sandism. If the information is public, live with it. It's public. Pretending that public information is not public doesn't help anyone. It just makes it look like the government is in denial and not dealing with reality. Frankly, I'd much prefer a government that can deal with reality to one that tells everyone to cover their eyes and ears and pretend reality doesn't exist.

Of course, this is not the first time we've seen this. With just Wikileaks, we saw it a few months ago when parts of the federal government barred employees from looking at the site and its leaks, using the identical rationale. So, despite the fact that everyone else in the world could easily see those documents, the ones who it might impact the most have to pretend that the documents are not actually public.

It's government playing make believe.

It's also not unlike the ridiculous hoops the government made lawyers go through in the al-Haramain case, in which the government accidentally leaked a document proving that it had wiretapped without a warrant. And despite the fact that the document had been leaked, it was required that lawyers for al-Haramain pretend the documents were still secret, leading to an absolutely insane process by which the lawyers had to destroy all of the copies they had of this info, and could only refer to it obliquely from memory, with a Justice Department official watching over them, with the ability to force them to stop talking about certain aspects.

None of this makes any sense. Just like we have "security theater," this appears to be "classification theater." These documents are not classified any more. Period. Pretending they are is a charade that the government is putting on which everyone knows is a lie. Isn't it time we had our government stop pretending and start dealing with reality?

Filed Under: government, guantanamo, leaks, reality, secrecy

Court Seals Unclassified Document In Whistleblower Case... After Gov't Falsely Says It's Classified

from the attack-on-leakers dept

We've discussed how, despite all his talk of "transparency" and the importance of whistleblowers, President Obama has been the most aggressive president ever in terms of attacking any whistleblowers. The administration has brought more indictments for leaking than all other presidents combined. Think about that for a second.

In one such case, against former NSA employee Thomas Drake (accused of leaking NSA info to the press), the feds are now trying to falsely claim that unclassified documents are classified -- which is actually a key point in the legal fight. Slashdot points us to the latest news in which Drake's lawyers submitted some evidence to the court concerning how the NSA classifies documents. Drake's team is arguing that nothing he had in his home or which was sent to the press was "classified," and that the NSA is falsely claiming unclassified works were classified. So here's the issue: the feds asked to court to seal the exhibits, claiming they were classified:

"As grounds [for sealing the records], the information contained within the exhibits derives from NSA. As the holder of the privilege for this information, NSA has classified the documents as 'FOUO', which means 'For Official Use Only.' This means that the information is not for public dissemination. Until such time as NSA downgrades the information to 'Unclassified,' the exhibits should not be publicly filed,"

And, as seems to happen all too often, the judge immediately agreed, sealing the "official use only" filings. Except, here's the thing, contrary to the statement above, "FOUO" documents are, by definition, not classified. As the report linked above points out, under DoD regulation 5200.1-R (pdf) "By definition, information must be unclassified in order to be designated FOUO."

In fact, one "sealed" document, which is still available (pdf) on the Federation of American Scientists web site, quite clearly shows that the document itself is marked unclassified: And, in a way, this actually proves the whole point of Drake's defense team. The government wants to pretend that unclassified documents that he had were classified. And, apparently without any sense of irony at all, it demonstrated its own problem of falsely claiming unclassified documents were classified, by claiming an unclassified document about how the government classifies documents... was classified! (Say that three times fast). What's troubling, of course, is that the court seemed to just accept the claim that this clearly unclassified document was classified and ordered the seal.

Filed Under: classified, leaks, nsa, thomas drake, unclassified, whistleblowers

Feds Got Reporter's Phone, Credit Card & Bank Records In Trying To Track Leaker

from the going-too-far dept

Back in January, when I saw Daniel Ellsberg speak, one of the things he noted was how much more aggressive the Obama administration appeared to be in going after leakers than any previous administration. Ellsberg's theory -- which he admitted was based on just his intuition -- was that President Obama is actually quite embarrassed by some of the things he's doing and is, thus, more aggressive in trying to stop leaks, knowing that his actions are damaging his reputation. I don't know if that's true, but there is growing evidence of the level of questionable activities from the Obama administration even in going after leakers. Ellsberg noted at the time that the Obama administration has brought more indictments for leaking than all other presidents combined before him.

The latest is the report that came out late last week that the government, in going after leakers, got access to reporter James Risen's phone records, bank details and credit card statements. As the report notes, this is pretty extreme:

Although there have been other public controversies over subpoenas -- real and threatened -- to reporters in recent years, there have been few, if any, cases in which it has been documented that federal prosecutors obtained the bank records and credit reports of journalists.

It's not entirely clear if all of these activities took place under the Obama administration or previous administrations, but multiple people quoted in the article say this kind of activity has been much more common in the Obama Justice Department. For a President who has positioned himself as being a big supporter of press freedoms, this looks really hypocritical. Spying on reporters is bad. As the report notes, Risen was subpoenaed directly twice, but both times a judge reasonably quashed the subpoenas. So, for the administration to basically go around all that and get records from others is pretty bad.

Filed Under: feds, journalists, leaks, privacy, sources, whistleblowing

Crytek Manages Not To Lose Their Minds Despite Crysis 2 Leak

from the baby-steps,-baby-steps,-baby-steps dept

Leaks happen. They just do. They're unfortunate, they're rarely complete products, and it's understandable that a content producer would be less than thrilled about it. But they happen. Time and time again, we witness examples of content companies losing their minds over these leaks, whether it's Ubisoft murdering their reputation by reacting to leaks with ineffective DRM, or Fox taking a long hard look at how the leaked version of Wolverine did nothing to stymie huge box office returns and therefore decided to get the FBI involved to arrest the leaker. It seems that when these leaks happen, the reaction is emotional rather than cognitive.

Enter Crytek, developer of the immensely anticipated Crysis 2 game. As was seemingly inevitable, Edge was among others that reported the game was leaked. And not just some early build of the game either, but rather both versions (the 3D version and the non-3D version) were made available via torrent sites. The download included the full games (requiring nearly a full blu-ray disk's worth of storage for the 3D version), online capability, and even the DRM signing keys.

So, we all know what the reaction was coming from Crytek execs, right? Piracy killed them, left them bleeding in a gutter, the victim of a violent crime. The sky is falling. The action allowed a wormhole to open up and demons are now killing our women and children. Puppies everywhere keeled over dead. America has fallen to the terrorists/communists/atheists/robots/Satan/etc. Corn farmers everywhere are committing mass ritual suicide, knowing that they'll never earn a livable wage. Right?

Turns out, not so much. Harken back to what Mike suggested about how Fox should have responded to the Wolverine leak:

"Hey Wolverine fans! We know that you're all looking forward to the release of the movie next month. We're excited too! By now you may have heard that an early totally unfinished version has been leaked online. It's missing a whole bunch of stuff -- including some amazing special effects -- and honestly, this version isn't a finished product at all. We think you'll get a much better overall experience by waiting for the full finished product, but we certainly understand that some of you just can't wait (trust us, we feel the same way!). If that's the case, please, feel free to check it out, but please remember that this isn't even close to the final version. If anything, think of this as a "behind-the-scenes" peek of just what a movie looks like before all the real "movie magic" gets put in there. If you do check it out, we hope you'll join us May 1st to check out the finalized version as well on the big screen the way we intended for you to see this awesome movie. It's just a month away!"

In this case, Crytek CEO Cevat Yerli actually did make a similarly reasonable address to the company's fans on the Crysis 2 forums:

"Despite this unfortunate incident, we can assure you that PC gaming is very important to us and will always be important to Crytek in the future. We are all still focused on delivering a great gaming experience to our true and honest fans. I hope you will enjoy Crysis 2 on PC, as we think it is our best PC game yet!"

Huh. You know what, that actually sounds eerily similar to Mike's suggestion. Maybe not quite so optimistic and glowing, but pretty damn close. And I think this message is perfect. Tell the fans that, while you don't approve of what happened, they're still important to you, you're going to create for their PC gaming needs, and even throw in a comment about rewarding their dedication as real, paying fans. Perfect. And judging by the response from the company's fans in the comments section of the forum, his notes are ringing true with them.

So cheers to you, Cevat. You could have gone crazy and reacted emotionally, but you didn't. You made a reasoned statement. While it's sad that such level-headedness is rare enough to deserve note, I salute you nonetheless.

Filed Under: crysis 2, leaks, piracy, response
Companies: crytek