Has The Megaupload Shutdown Been Good For The Entertainment Industry?

from the thoughts? dept

One of our most vocal (yet anonymous) critics posted an off-topic comment on a totally unrelated story mocking us for not having covered the story of how Hollywood has been saved (saved!) thanks to the shutdown of Megaupload. Of course, the reason we hadn't covered the story was because we didn't know about it. He referenced a couple of French news reports, which I hadn't seen until I had some time just now to catch up on some old comments. He could have submitted the stories, but he insisted that it would be a total waste of time because we ignore any story that we disagree with. That's pretty funny, considering many, many of the stories here are ones that challenge our views. And, I'm especially interested in reports of actual data, even if it conflicts with other data we've seen in the past. In fact, I'm especially interested in such stories, because my focus is figuring out what's really happening and understanding what's actually best for culture and society. So data that actually challenges my assumptions is some of the most useful data around.

Unfortunately, the stories don't actually have any data. The first one is totally anecdotal, concerning a guy who now goes to the movie rental store to rent (physical) movies since the shutdown of Megaupload, and the second one is about claims from TV stations that their websites are getting more traffic since the shutdown of Megaupload. Both are anecdotal, not data based, and really just seem to scream out the obvious: man, does the entertainment industry do a horrible job giving consumers what they want. If Megaupload's website was offering a better experience than the TV networks' own offerings... they should be firing their web designers and starting again. As for the guy renting videos... we'll see how long that lasts.

The same commenter then left a comment with some bullet point claims. He doesn't source them, so I have no idea how accurate they are, but they seem to indicate the same point in that second article. In the few weeks after Megaupload got shut down, TV station websites got more traffic. Again, this seems to simply show how bad a job they must have been doing in the past to attract viewers to their own websites. It also means that as soon as something better comes along (and it will), people will split. Ignoring that the market is telling you something is no way to build a long-term business.

Of course, we've also seen significant other data from firms that have access to a much wider view of internet traffic, which suggested that Megaupload traffic pretty quickly shifted to other, similar sites. Of course, some of those sites have since shut down or changed models, but anyone who thinks that more such sites aren't springing up (with some keeping a lower profile) simply hasn't been paying much attention to how the internet works.

Filed Under: anecdotes, data, revenue, shutdown, streaming
Companies: megaupload

Astrolabe Drops Lawsuit Over Time Zones, Promises Not To Sue Again

from the go-go-eff dept

Back in October, you may recall that software company Astrolabe claimed copyright over the time zone database and sued the volunteer maintainers of the public time zone database that is used by basically everyone to properly set the time. ICANN took over the database, and EFF took on the case of the two volunteers who were sued. Today EFF announced that Astrolabe has dropped the case and promised not to sue going forward.

In a statement, Astrolabe said, "Astrolabe's lawsuit against Mr. Olson and Mr. Eggert was based on a flawed understanding of the law. We now recognize that historical facts are no one's property and, accordingly, are withdrawing our Complaint. We deeply regret the disruption that our lawsuit caused for the volunteers who maintain the TZ database, and for Internet users."

In other words, the EFF did a typically excellent job explaining the basics of copyright law to Astrolabe, and/or its own lawyers realized that this case was a complete loser that was going to fail badly.

Filed Under: copyright, data, facts, time zones
Companies: astrolabe, eff, icann

According To Lamar Smith, Data Or Criticism From Anyone Who Doesn't Like SOPA Isn't Valid

from the wow dept

We recently wrote about PolitiFact trashing Lamar Smith for the numbers he used in support of SOPA -- numbers that PolitiFact says grade out to "false." What I somehow missed was at the very end of that article, they ask Smith to respond to the charges that his argument was false. Amazingly, rather than respond to the actual data, Smith chose to instead attack one (of a few!) of the people that PolitiFact discussed the data with, Julian Sanchez:

After we summarized much of this research, Smith objected to Sanchez as an expert, saying in an email that because Sanchez is opposed to the anti-online-piracy act, he "cannot provide an objective or unbiased analysis." He stood by his CNN.com statement, telling us: "Since the U.S. is the largest producer of (intellectual property) that is consumed around the world, one can surmise that a significant amount of that total value is taken from the U.S. economy."

First of all, what? Considering that the numbers Smith used came from industry lobbyists in favor of the bill, doesn't that mean that Smith should be objecting to his own numbers? After all, the source of those numbers -- the Chamber of Commerce -- "cannot provide an objective or unbiased analysis." Or perhaps Smith thinks that only those in favor of SOPA can provide such an analysis.

Either way, that statement is insane. Smith honestly seems to be saying that any information -- no matter how factual -- cannot be trusted if it comes from SOPA opponents. Why doesn't he have that same skepticism towards the data that the MPAA and Chamber of Commerce handed him?

Furthermore, his decision to stick by his comments is doubly insane. The fact that the US is the largest producer of intellectual property that is consumed around the world... does not, in fact, mean that any counterfeiting is "the total value taken from the US economy." Is this guy serious? PolitiFact flat out points out that it's false, with data to back it up, and shows exactly how Smith is blatantly lying about the data... and Smith's response is to restate the error and insist that the thing already proven false must be true?!?

Smith's constituents should demand better. Having an elected official who lives in a fantasy world where facts are ignored is not a good thing.

Filed Under: bias, data, evidence, julian sanchez, lamar smith, pipa, sopa

iPhone Data Debunks Recording Industry's Report On How French Three Strikes Law Increased Sales

from the correlation-is-not-causation dept

The annual Digital Music Report (pdf) of the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is a curiously conflicted production. On the one hand, it must celebrate "a healthy 8 per cent increase in our digital revenues in 2011 -- the first time the annual growth rate has risen since records began in 2004 "; on the other, it must continue to push the party line about how the industry is being destroyed by piracy.

The IFPI has a stab a reconciling that contradiction, writing: "The truth is that record companies are building a successful digital music business in spite of the environment in which they operate, not because of it." However, it desperately needs some proof of that statement, because otherwise the simplest explanation is that piracy is not a serious problem, and that the recording industry is thriving, just like the rest of the creative industries.

The IFPI probably thinks it has found some proof in the French HADOPI experience, which, according its report, demonstrates that introducing three-strikes measures against unauthorized sharing boosts digital sales.

A new academic study -- The Effect of Graduated Response Anti-Piracy Laws on Music Sales: Evidence from an Event Study in France, by Danaher et al -- has also found evidence that Hadopi has had a positive impact on iTunes sales in France. The authors studied sales of digital singles and album downloads on iTunes from July 2008, before the law was adopted, until six months after the start of notices. They developed an estimate of what French iTunes sales would have looked like in the absence of Hadopi by studying a control group of similar markets.

The analysis found that French iTunes sales saw a significant uplift at exactly the period when awareness of Hadopi was at its highest, in Spring 2009, when the law was being debated in the National Assembly. This effect was maintained throughout the period studied. French iTunes sales were 22.5 per cent higher for singles and 25 per cent higher for digital albums than they would have been, on average, in the absence of Hadopi.

Taking a look at the study (pdf) provides some details of how the research was carried out:

For this study, we obtained a panel of total weekly iTunes sales units for a number of European countries including France. Our data extend from July 2008 to May 2011, and we observe separately both track unit sales and album unit sales. The data were obtained directly from the four major music labels -- EMI, Sony, Universal, and Warner -- and aggregated to reflect total iTunes sales for the majors.

In an attempt to observe the effect of HADOPI, these sales were compared with a control group of five other European countries that didn't introduce similar legislation: the UK, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Belgium. By looking for differences between these two data sets, the researchers hoped to observe the effects of the three-strikes legislation on sales of digital music, using a Google Trends graph of searches for the word "HADOPI" as a proxy for awareness of that legislation, both before and after it was passed.

The graph of iTunes sales for France clearly diverges from that of the control group, lying consistently above it. The divergence begins around about the time that HADOPI was first presented to the French National Assembly, increases slightly, and then decreases a little after the first warning letters were sent out. From this, the researchers deduce that the discussion around HADOPI caused significantly increased sales of iTunes compared to the control countries:

these estimates indicate that French track sales units rose about 25.5% in the control group after March 1, 2009 but by 48% in France, indicating that French iTunes track sales were 22.5% higher on average than they would have been in the absence of HADOPI. Similarly, album sales units rose by 42% in the control group but 67% in France, indicating that HADOPI increased iTunes album sales an average 25% per week in France.

That's a plausible explanation if you believe that piracy is stopping people from buying digital music, but it's not the only one. The French newspaper Le Monde decided to use the same technique of comparing the rise in iTunes sales with Google Trends, but with a different search term. Since iTunes is intimately bound up with Apple's products, Le Monde thought to take a look at the trend for "iPhone" searches on Google.

What it found were five very pronounced peaks in the French searches that corresponded exactly with five (smaller) peaks in iTunes sales, and also to five well-defined external events: the launch of the Iphone 3GS and iPhone 4, and three Christmas seasons. The effect was so marked in France because it was starting from a lower base: according to the researchers, the average sales of iTunes in France were 450,000 per week, while in the UK they were 2,900,000 per week. So an alternative explanation for those impressive increases in sales is simply the uplift in iPhone ownership generated by new launches and the holidays in an immature market with plenty of room for growth.

The researchers do offer one other piece of evidence for the uplift in sales being due to the crackdown on piracy:

EMI surveys of French citizens show that that Rap and Hip Hop are the most heavily pirated genres, even relative to popularity in legal sales channels. While Rock and Pop experience average levels of piracy, the data also indicate that genres such as Classical, Christian, Folk, and Jazz experience significantly lower levels of piracy.

Therefore, they argued, if the increase in sales were due to reductions in piracy, they would expect "the increase in Rap sales to be larger than that for Rock and Pop and the increase for Classical, Christian, etc. to be quite low." And that is precisely what is observed. Conclusive proof? Maybe not.

As the Le Monde analysis points out, another explanation is that many recent iPhone purchasers are younger people, who are generally the most interested in acquiring the latest technology as soon as it comes out. And younger people, by and large, listen to more Rap than Classical or Christian music, which would explain the difference in the increase across genres.

Spending so much effort here on exploring one research report might seem excessive, but it matters. The IFPI is already branding this supposed increase in digital music sales -- quantified by the researchers at $18.6 million annually for France -- the "HADOPI Effect". In the months to come, you can bet that the recording industry's representatives and lobbyists will be visiting governments and showing them this "proof" that three-strikes really "works" -- and demanding they follow suit to "protect" the artists.

What's ironic is that the IFPI report spends many of its pages discussing a much more sensible way of reducing unauthorized sharing: offering high-quality music streaming services instead, as recent market research from Scandinavia indicates. Unfortunately, the recording industry is so obsessed with punishing pirates that it can't see that its future lies in promoting innovation, not legislation.

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

Filed Under: data, france, hadopi, iphones, research, sales

DailyDirt: Cameras For Science

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

You almost can't make it to the cover of a major scientific publication like Science or Nature without a really cool picture to present your data. It seems that everyone likes pretty pictures, even scientists. So here are a few science projects with some interesting camera equipment.

• The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has created the largest digital camera ever -- at a cost of about $165 million. This 3.2 gigapixel camera will be used in a new telescope being built on a Chilean mountaintop. [url]
• Modifying a cheap digital camera to take infrared pictures was only part of a project aimed at mapping the photosynthetic activity around Asheville, North Carolina. Putting the cameras on balloons and merging the pictures together with Photosynth has created a nice collection of data for studying environmental and economic sustainability issues. [url]
• MIT researchers have created a camera system capable of capturing images at a trillion frames per second. It's so fast it can actually track the movement of light as it travels -- under specific conditions, of course. [url]
• To discover more interesting photography-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: cameras, data, digital images, photosynth, telescope
Companies: mit, slac

Congressional Research Service Shows Hollywood Is Thriving

from the shouldn't-congress-wonder-why-they-need-sopa/pipa? dept

The Congressional Research Service is the research arm of Congress that is widely respected as presenting (non-partisan) high quality, extremely credible research for folks in Congress. In fact, the quality is so good, that many are annoyed that the output of their research, despite being public domain, is rarely made available to the public. The only way that information is released is if the elected official who requested it decides to release it. Thankfully, some of our elected officials do just that.

Recently, Senator Ron Wyden asked CRS if it could explore the state of the movie industry today as compared to 1995 on a variety of different criteria. You can read the full report embedded below, but here are a few key points. First off, despite the industry's regular attempt to play up its contribution to GDP and employment, the report found that the combined GDP contribution of both the "motion picture and sound recording" industries was a whopping 0.4% in 2009. Back in 1995... it was also 0.4%. As for employment, Hollywood loves to claim that it employs millions of people. One popular number is that 19 million people have jobs in "IP-intensive industries." Of course, we've discussed how misleading a term that is, as they lump in all sorts of jobs that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with copyright. So, how many people are actually employed in the movie industry? Not that many. 374,000 in 2010 -- and that includes both full and part time workers. And that's really not much different from the 392,000 in 1998. So it's not like the industry has been losing employees in droves as they imply. Furthermore, that's only slightly more than the number of jobs that Facebook's app platform alone is estimated to have created. Hell, we've seen reports that have said eBay alone created 750,000 small business jobs. Perhaps Hollywood isn't as big a part of the economy as it likes to claim.

Similarly exaggerated? Its dire straits. Let's take a look at box office revenue: Also interesting is the look at CEO pay at the major movie studios, then and now. It seems that Disney's CEO (Robert Iger) made $29,617,964 in 2010, compared to Michael Eisner's mere $10 million back in 1994. Time Warner? CEO Jeffrey Bewkes made $26,303,071 in 2010, while his predecessor Gerald Levin made $5 million in 1994. CRS apparently couldn't find past data on the other studios, but in the present, it looks like their execs are all cashing in. News Corps' Rupert Murdoch made $33,292,753. Viacom's Chairman, Sumner Redstone, made $15,033,630, while its CEO Philippe Dauman famously made $84,515,308. NBC Universal was still under GE in 2010, whose CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, brought in $21,428,765. Then there's Sony, whose CEO was the pauper of the bunch, having his salary and bonus cut to a mere $4.3 million due to "financial problems stemming from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami."

It doesn't sound like things are that bad these days in Hollywood. So why do we need massive legal changes again?

Filed Under: business, congressional research service, copyright, data, hollywood, movies, pipa, protect ip, sopa, thriving

Who Owns The Data Collected About You From Devices Inside Your Body?

from the this-time-it's-really-personal dept

People have started to wake up to the fact that companies like Google and Facebook hold huge quantities of data about their users. That raises questions about who owns what there, and to what extent users should be allowed access. Now Hugo Campos is asking the same question about a different kind of personal data � that being collected by a cardiac defibrillator implanted in his chest:

"I have this complex little computer implanted in my body, but I have no access to it," says Campos. "The best that patients can do is get a printout of the report given to the doctor, and that's designed for doctors, not patients. Patients are left in the dark."

As the open data movement has shown, the great thing about releasing raw datasets is that it enables people to come up with new and unexpected uses for them. It seems likely that providing access to the data stream from implanted devices would similarly allow all kinds of innovation in the field of digital personalized medicine, which is currently developing rapidly.

That's likely to become more of an issue as the computing power of implanted devices increases, the data becomes richer, and as people start to monitor and even control aspects of their health through software running on smartphones, say. Naturally, they -- and the coders writing apps -- will want full access to the data pouring out of any equipment connected to them or inside them.

As Campos asks:

"Who owns the data collected in my body?" he says. "Should it benefit the company, so they can use it for post-market surveillance? Or me, so that I can make better decisions about my health?"

It's the same kind of question that people are increasingly asking about Google and Facebook, but this time it might literally be a matter of life or death.

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

Filed Under: data, devices, privacy

Google Reveals 70% Increase In Requests For Content Removal; Including Law Enforcement Wanting To Hide Police Brutality

from the censorship-by-any-other-name dept

Google has released its latest "transparency report" which seeks to reveal aggregate data on requests for user information and content takedowns from around the world. Much of the press coverage focuses on the fact that requests on user info was up 29% from January 1, 2011 to June 30, 2011, compared to the previous segment of data (July 1 through December 31, 2010). But even more interesting is the fact that the number of "content removal requests" jumped up by 70%. It appears lots of folks would like to censor Google. And, some of those attempts seem really questionable:

We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.

It's good to see that Google did not roll over for such requests, though it really feels like when law enforcement seeks to censor content that is embarrassing to them, that kind of info should be made public explicitly. Otherwise, there's no incentive for law enforcement officials to stop asking.

Filed Under: censorship, data, info requests, law enforcement, takedowns
Companies: google

Astrolabe Claims It Holds Copyright On Timezone Data; Sues Maintainers Of Public Timezone Database

from the you-can't-copyright-facts dept

Wow! Via Slashdot, we discover that a company named Astrolabe, which appears to make astrology software, has ridiculously decided to sue the maintainers of the timezone database that nearly every Unix and Linux platform uses to set clocks to local time. Astrolabe apparently bought the rights to the database from The American Atlas, which is cited as a source in the timezone database. But... there's a problem: you can't copyright facts. And it's difficult to see how this information is anything but factual. We have the full legal filing embedded below, but the best analysis comes from The Daily Parker's Dave Braverman who breaks down the legal issues as follows:

1. Is data about when time zone rules changed throughout history protected under copyright?
2. If so, who owns it?
3. If someone owns it, is the Olson database a derivative work under copyright law?
4. If the Olson database does, in fact, derive from the work in question, is it a fair use?
5. Just how stupid are these astrologists, anyway?

Of course, I'm pretty sure the answer to question (1) is no, which would answer all the rest of the questions, except for the final one. One assumes that Arthur Olson and Paul Eggert -- the two guys being sued -- will be pretty quick to file for dismissal, and one hopes that a judge tosses this one out quickly. It will also be interesting to see if the NIH and UCLA get involved. Olson works for the NIH and Eggert for UCLA -- and the timezone database is hosted by both organizations. Each of them, easily, could claim sovereign immunity (which may be why they're not included in the suit directly). Still, I can't see this getting very far... and wonder if it's at the level of ridiculousness that Astrolabe's lawyers might face sanctions for bringing such a ridiculous lawsuit.

Braverman, in his writeup, notes that if the case actually does get anywhere, it could create a massive nuisance for anyone who uses Linux. But he also points out how incredibly short-sighted the lawsuit is:

What's even stupider about this lawsuit is that comments in the database encourage people to buy the book. So even if Astrolabe owns the copyright to the facts about time zone rules�a troubling proposition�their republication in the Olson database increases the likelihood that they'll make money off it.

Once again, however, we see copyright holders thinking that you should pay them to advertise their works.

Filed Under: arthur olson, copyright, data, facts, paul eggert, timezones
Companies: astrolabe