Don't Focus On Why People Pirate; Focus On Why They Don't Buy

from the do-pirate-really-exist dept

Piracy has been a part of the entertainment industry for as long as content has been released on copyable media. Whenever piracy is around, content creators have attempted to fight the actions of fans sharing their favorite movies, music, games and other works with their friends. While some creators have learned to cope with piracy and have succeeded in spite of it, there are still many more that feel the need to do something. However, many of those creatives have that "something" wrong.

In an article over at Euro Gamer, Robert Florance shares his thoughts on piracy and what goes through the mind of a consumer when making a buying decision, and where content creators should target in order to maximize sales. Robert introduces us to what he considers to be the thought process of a consumer as he makes a choice to buy something.

1. HERE IS A THING I LIKE

2. DO I WANT IT? (YES)

3. DO I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT? (NO)

4. DO I WANT TO PAY FOR IT? (YES/NO)

5. YES: PAY FOR IT

6. NO: JUST TAKE IT FOR FREE

END

That's it in a nutshell. And here's the fundamental problem with the whole piracy issue. Publishers are focusing on dismantling Stage 6 of that process when they should be analysing decisions made at Stage 4.

We have written many times about how content creators can affect the result of the decision made at step four. We have written in the past about how consumers don't just look at price when making a purchasing decision, but weigh a number of currencies. By adding value through these and other currencies, a content creator can make it far easier for a consumer to choose to purchase over getting the content for free. However, if these content creators fail to add the value the consumers want, those customers will have a far more difficult time making the choice to purchase. As a result, the company making the content could fail.

"But these giant companies would have to close down. People will lose their jobs!" And yes, that's horrible. No one ever wants to see people lose their jobs. But if these companies can only stay in existence by charging their customers extortionate prices for bland, safe product, should they even be there in the first place? Are they not living on a lie? And the creative people at these companies, people who currently spend every day texturing guns and other guns and extra downloadable guns, might they not do greater work on their own? In small groups? Forming daring little companies? Working to progress gaming and earning goodwill from people who will pay and pay again to see their work?

Over the years we have seen companies lose creatives who then go on to create the content they want to make without the interference of gatekeepers. These creatives have moved on to work with enablers that help them add the right kind of value to their content, which in turn sells more to the end consumer. Will larger companies die off? If they don't adapt to changing trends in the market, yes they will. Is that a bad thing? Of course not. 

Finally, Robert explains just what a pirate actually is. He lead up to this in his intro, but it deserves its own little plug down here.

Let me tell you what a pirate actually is. It's just a word. And that word is a weapon. Corporations and governments will use that word to try to destroy our freedom and halt progress. They'll use it to try to turn us against each other. When big business talks about a pirate, it's creating a bogeyman that will be used to justify the continuation of its worst practices. We have to reject it, every time. There are no pirates. There's only me and you.

We can see these actions by corporations and governments all over the place. Whether it is SOPA, or excessive DRM, or the DMCA with its anti-circumvention clause and heavily abused takedown process, they have been used and promoted as a way to fight pirates even though there is little evidence that such measures are effective in any way. Even a company like Ubisoft, with its strong history of DRM use, has backed away from its previous position. Music rarely if ever comes bogged down by DRM anymore. However, DRM has been replaced by other excesses in copyright enforcement.

Yet, all those actions target the wrong part of the consumer decision making process. They all focus on step six when they should be focusing on adding value that leads the consumer to move to step five. Those pirates that will take content for free no matter what, if they do exist, are just not worth the hassle and burden of actions that negatively affect those who are willing to pay.

Filed Under: business models, making money, piracy

Three Artists On Piracy: Sharing, Disruption And Turning Filesharers Into Your Street Team

from the stupid-filthy-helpful-pirates dept

There's a lot of discussion here at Techdirt about filesharing. Much of the discussion focuses on various legacy industries and their efforts to fight infringement, as well as their continued cultivation of artificial scarcity, which often sends potential customers towards unapproved sources. Various artists have also weighed in on the matter, offering their perspective as those most directly affected by filesharing. Some embrace it. Others view it as a threat to their chosen professions. No matter which side they take, it's largely viewed as inevitable or inescapable. But inevitable or not, the discussion continues.

In the interest of furthering the discussion, I'd like to draw your attention to three separate posts on the subject of filesharing, each one written by an artist with "skin in the game," as they say.

The first post is very timely, considering the recent rumor that Bruce Willis was taking Apple to court to secure his ability to pass his iTunes library on to his next-of-kin. Dessa, a rapper and member of the Doomtree Collective, draws a parallel between Monsanto and Apple and their sale of licenses rather than goods in order to better "secure" easily duplicated items and prevent sharing. Dessa also makes a further connection (filesharing to seed-sharing collectives), showing that these restrictive licenses fly in the face of normal human behavior.

Peddling a product that consumers can duplicate for free is a tricky business. With affordable consumer technology, you can now copy a song a hundred times, with no degradation in the sound quality—and most people seem to immediately recognize why that’s gonna make it harder to get paid for songs. But my first experiences with lossless, duplicable technology didn’t have anything to do with my career as a rapper. My first encounter wasn’t with a torrent site. Or a bootlegged disc. It was a tomato.

Seeds, quite obviously, are the mechanism of plant duplication. You drop a sunflower seed in wet dirt and, bang, you get a brand new one. Essentially, you just 'burned’ a sunflower. The seeds of this new plant can then be harvested and planted to create an infinite, almost lossless supply of flowers and seeds.

The connection continues. Monsanto sells licenses for the technology in the seed, not the seed itself, explicitly forbidding the resale or transfer of its seeds to unlicensed "users." iTunes does the same. Purchasers are forbidden from doing anything with their library other than what is explicitly allowed by the EULA. The right of first sale is stripped away because the purchasers have nothing to sell. They own nothing.

In addition, she points out that users agree to stipulations they'd never agree to with physical goods (as opposed to licenses), like being monitored (Apple says "technologies" will be used to verify compliance with the license terms; Monsanto's verification method is even more Big Brother-ish -- "aerial photography").

These rules and regulations can undermine our fundamental ideas of what it means to actually own something. In most of our purchasing lives, we pay for product and then we can do with it as we like... So If I’m only allowed to interact with my purchase in meticulously prescribed ways...it starts to feel less like mine. Like a pet I'm not allowed to touch or see.

Losslessly reproducible technologies are just complicated things to own... In many ways, the whole ownership model just seems poorly suited to duplicable technology... When we try to force new technology into the old model, our contracts end up sounding really, well, creepy. Instead of asking, Whose is this, who gets paid for it, and how much?, the conversation might be better reset by asking What is this, who made it, who uses it, and what’s fair?

The second post features the writing of recording artist and netlabel co-founder Bunny Intonamorous (presumably not his real name). His post goes long, spurred on by a statement made by a different set of artists, a pair that create likenesses of recording artists using the artists' own CDs.

Mirco Pagano and Moreno de Turco were quoted in the article as saying that "Piracy infects and destroys music, preventing artists to succeed and become idols as in the past."

My fury is two-fold: piracy of music prevents no-one from succeeding let alone infecting and destroying music, and also this (frankly outdated) notion that to be successful in music you have to be some kind of mega-stadium-level superstar money-machine.

There's a lot in Bunny's post (which runs a few thousand very entertaining and informative words) discussing what's wrong with these assumptions. While piracy has affected some artists ability to sell music, for the most part, that wasn't where they were making the most money anyway. Touring is where the money was and still is for many (though not all) artists. Piracy can't touch that.

The other positive aspect of piracy is that it has changed the music landscape from an industry that sold artists (and their art) to consumers, presenting the artists as "idols" and "icons," to something more democratic, more varied, and perhaps most importantly, more personal:

For better or worse (read: better) piracy is here and it's changed things. These days an artist has to have a presence over data-rich streaming sites such as soundcloud and bandcamp if they accurately want to gauge the size of their audience and tour efficiently enough to get money out of it and start building a reputation. And even then, it's risky, but it negates the main problems with piracy and money can, and will, still be made. I certainly wouldn't say that piracy is killing music. In fact, it's making a lot more music more widely available, which increases the amount of different breeding grounds there are, technically (though not necessarily) increasing the amount of interesting acts and artists out there.

In fact piracy of music software has broken down boundaries even further. Not only can people hear and experience a wider range of inspirational existing music, but now musical creation has become more widely available.

Just as there are those whose musical stasis prompts them to ask questions about who the next "Dylan" or "Led Zeppelin" or "Beatles" will be, there are those who wonder how today's severely fractured market and wealth of distractions will ever produce another 25-million-album seller like Michael Jackson (or even $35K a year). Those that blame this lack of multimillionaire chart dominators solely on piracy, rather than on underlying cultural shifts, economic woes, a multitude of new distractions and other disruptions are merely settling for a convenient whipping boy, rather than actually working on fixing their problems.

And this is one of many reasons I really appreciate how piracy has changed the face of musical culture (along with the internet in general, of course): it has forced musicians to stop the whole rock 'n' roll, "untouchable", get-the-fuck-away-from-me attitude that beleaguered "legends" for some time, and encouraged artists to interact with their fans. This not only creates entirely new platforms for interaction other than just through audio, but has also de-fangs and de-mystifies these people, which then decreases the amount of "artist anxiety" someone faces when looking to create.

Yearning for idols and blaming piracy for today's "weak" music market is nothing more than rose-tinted nostalgia rewriting the history of the recording industry, turning it from an exploitative commercial venture into the deflowered victim of millions of basement dwellers. Those who rail against the "level playing field" are constantly working to conform this disruption to fit their favored narrative.

My biggest gripe with the whole "legends" argument, however, is that there needs to be some form of monopoly on 1) record sales, and 2) the public consciousness in terms of music. The second point, I fear, is the impulse of monoculture - that same impulse that abhorred subcultures in times past (which is slowly also being eroded, thankfully - be who you want! choose your friends! etc. - another wondrous example of what technology can bring you). Either way the suggestion is that, the way musical culture has been headed for the past few years is utterly wrong.

Granted, musical culture and money are in a strange state of flux at the moment, but the trends have been leaning towards a more aware, more (arguably) moral state of business: that you pay for what you enjoy so that these musicians - who generally tend to be very thankful - get if not all the cash you gave them, then at least a fairly sizeable chunk.

There's a thought: Support your favorite artists directly, rather than hoping a small portion of your $14.99 makes its way to them after passing through an entire office full of unrelated staff and a multi-level supply chain.

The final stop on this filesharing three-fer is over at Feral Intensity, home of self-published author Gayla Drummond. If you're not familiar with her, all you need to know is this: she is one of the few authors who came to the defense of LendInk during the Twitter-fed witch hunt.

Drummond begins her filesharing saga by describing herself as someone who originally felt piracy was "bad," but unlike others, she didn't just make the assumption and move on :

I researched to discover what the major reasons for piracy were, and came up with three: availability, DRM, and price.

Her reaction?

As a result, I distributed my work to as many sites as possible, made it DRM free where I was able to, and experimented with pricing to find what people were willing to pay for it. I stated more than once that I was totally okay with people loaning my ebooks to others (before lending systems on Amazon, etc), but did ask that they please not put my work on file sharing sites.

This is a refreshing change of pace from so many other stories that begin and end with "there's no excuse for piracy" and result in the ratcheting up of various piracy countermeasures until they reach the "draconian" level. However, the story continues:

Then someone did. Tria’s Tale ended up on one in January 2011.

My reaction was something along the lines of ‘Jeeze, the one thing I ask people not to do!’ and then it was ‘Oh, well’. Except when I checked the file sharing site, I discovered they required people to pay a membership fee in order to download anything. That got my back up; the site was making money from offering access to my, and others’, content. They weren’t selling the actual files themselves, just access to them. That was not okay with me. I sent a DMCA notice and within 72 hours, the site removed the link to Tria’s Tale.

So far, par for the course. Sharing is one thing, piracy is quite another, etc. DMCA served and content removed. Except... this isn't the end of Drummond's brush with piracy. First, she noticed this:

I can’t say whether it’s related or not, since I actually just realized it last night, but my sales doubled in 2011. That link was only up for 10 days at the most, but for all I know, it was related to the sales increase.

Anecdotal. Correlation and causation, etc. It would be easy to dismiss this as a coincidence, but rather than just wave it away, Drummond decided to pursue this angle. Discouraged by a lack of feedback and the grind of self-publishing and self-promotion, she decided to turn over her books to the dark side. Her thought process was basically: why kill myself handling all the promotional work when so many others are willing to do it for me?

When everything you’re doing isn’t producing the desired results, it’s time to try something different.

That is why I’ve become a ‘self-pirate’.

I want readers. Readers who will enjoy my work and let me know in some fashion. So when Ashen made his suggestion to me after the Lendink mess, I said YES.

While he was busy doing the heavy work of file prep and ‘seeding’ (the FSM bless him for putting up with my stupid questions and general cluelessness!), Google alerts notified me that The Contract Bride was mentioned on a certain forum. I always check out my Google alerts, and went for a look.

Lo and behold, file sharing links to it had been posted.

For just a second, I was all petulant about it: ‘That’s not one of the titles I picked out!’, but I got over that and ran with it because someone thought it good enough to recommend to others, AND THAT IS WHAT I WANT! Joined the forum to leave a comment with a link to a newly created page on my author site.

The next day, I had 3 new sales on Amazon and had received a donation from someone from that forum. That is the most action I’ve seen in a single day in regards to my ebooks since March, people.

It has been said that filesharers purchase more music, ebooks, etc. than non-filesharers. The argument goes back and forth on this, but one thing's for sure: pirates know how to get your work in front of thousands of people you'd never reach otherwise.

Don’t get me wrong, I by no means think doing this is going to catapult me into fame and fortune. But file sharing is widespread, and may possibly be the most effective, least time consuming method of getting my work in front of eyeballs.

It’s not any different than offering freebies through Amazon’s Select program or other sites when you decide to put your own work out there, and it’s certainly not going to have anymore negative of an effect than doing that. It’s a different platform with content hungry people.

It's not exactly advertising but it's certainly better than locking your creative efforts up behind DRM or endless legal threats. And if you feel piracy is unstoppable/inevitable (no matter which side you come down on "morally"), why not start seeding your own stuff? If you think you can't stop someone else from doing it, get a step ahead of them and become your own worst enemy/best friend. Let the system work for you.

Drummond's put her money where her mouth is:

Wanna pirate some of my ebooks? Go here.

As she points out, the Harry Potter books were being passed around on the internet long before official ebook versions were (finally) made available and yet, millions of copies were sold.

Filesharing will continue to be villainized by certain industries and members of various creative fields, many of whom would rather find someone to blame than actually deal with massive disruption. But to see only the negative is to miss out on a lot of the positive effects while also scapegoating potential fans.

Filed Under: artists, culture, piracy

Piracy Is A Cultural Opportunity; Embrace It

from the sharing-is-fun dept

Piracy has become a force of nature in the entertainment world. No matter what you make or how you release it, there are pirates waiting around the corner to try to get it for free. No matter what you try to stop this from happening, you just can't -- much like a storm, you have no control over its movements and power. All that is left is to embrace it and hope to harness the storm's power for your own benefit.

This is what Daniel Cook from Spry Fox has decided is best. In a reprint of his comments at Gamasutra, Daniel explains that piracy is a fun activity that can be harnessed for good.

Being a 'pirate' was being part of a community. You and your friends shared games like social gaming gifts on Facebook. It didn't cost you anything to copy a game and give it to someone. A game was a social token to chat about, a gesture of kindness to reciprocate. A key takeaway from that time is that copying and sharing vast quantities of digital goods is a deeply fun, social and highly useful activity. This is a new thing, a new behavior in a post-scarcity world.

This is perhaps the most commonly ignored or overlooked aspect of piracy by those who want to end it. For many people, sharing games, movies and music is a fun activity that allows them to share what they love with their friends. Despite what those who seek to stop piracy think, there is very little animosity involved in the activity. It is this love of sharing that can be, as Daniel puts it, hacked for the benefit of the creator.

With shareware, we hacked the copying behavior. People would play the random floppies and some of clever programs would say "Hey! Did you know that you can pay for this?" And a small portion of users did. 'Pirate' and 'consumer' are not mutually exclusive properties. In our capitalist society, almost everyone (with a few notable exceptions) is trained to buy stuff. People who like checking out new software for free are really just another audience of potential consumers.

It was just recently that Ubisoft learned a similar lesson. That the percentage of people who pay for single purchase games is about the same as those that pay in free to play games. If you want people to pay for games, one of the best ways to get them to do so is to let them experience the game first and for free. By giving fans the ability to share the games with others who may not have heard about it on their own, you can expand the pool of potential paying customers.

Unfortunately, there are many creators and gatekeepers out there that want to vilify such behavior. They can't fathom that someone is playing, listening, reading, watching their work without paying for it. They see no benefit in it. This mindset has dangerous outcomes for their paying customers.

It has been a really confusing time for businesses. Some lashed out by labeling consumers as evil, some tried to protect the old ways with DRM. Relationships with customers...who see themselves as just having fun sharing cool stuff...became antagonistic. 30 years. When you raise kids in a warzone, they grow up parroting propaganda. No wonder the conversation is polarized.

It is actions like adding DRM, anti-piracy ads and threatening fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars that will end up costing the entertainment industry more in the long run. As those in the industry seek to threaten and lash out at paying customers, many of those customers will begin to lash out as well. They will end up doing exactly what the industry wants to stop, pirate. For many purchasers of games, it often starts by downloading cracks for games in order to remove restrictive DRM. But there is a lot that can be done to turn the tide.

Detach yourself from the emotions of history. Give up the past forms of what games were. Adapt to the current environment with one eye firmly fixed upon the future.

People copying digital goods as an inherently joyful social activity is an opportunity. It is an artistic opportunity. It is a business opportunity. It is a cultural opportunity.

There are opportunities out there that many creators have found and are enjoying. It can be things like adding a "Cockroach Edition" to your payment options. It can be adding pirate hats to all your characters and putting the game on the Pirate Bay. It could be giving players the ability to set their own price. It could be anything really. By embracing the sharing culture of your fans, you can expand you fan base and increase the potential to make a living.

Filed Under: culture, opportunity, piracy

Doctor Who Travels Through Time To Stop Australian Pirates By Giving Them What They Want

from the sonic-screwdrivers-can-do-anything dept

For the longest time, we have written that one of the biggest reasons people pirate is because they are potential customers who are underserved. As creators have come to this realization, they have been better able to capture revenue from those customers as their needs have been met. One entertainment industry that still seems to be struggling with this concept is that of television. While networks have made great strides in providing more online content for viewers, many networks still insist on absurd restrictions and windows, even when they make absolutely no sense. Yet, some are learning.

HuwOS sent in news that ABC in Australia has learned that waiting a week after the UK airs Doctor Who to release any version in Australia is a recipe for piracy. As a result of this realization, ABC has decided to release episodes of Doctor Who on its ABC iview service mere hours after the show airs in the UK and a full week before it airs in Australia. In a world that seems to pride itself on 8 day or even one month delays (I'm looking at you Syfy), this is simply unfathomable. But not for ABC's Brendan Dahill.

ABC1 controller Brendan Dahill said the decision to air the show online before television was motivated by a desire to reduce piracy, as well as fulfill the needs of drooling Whovians, who have waited almost a year for the new series.

" Piracy is wrong, as you are denying someone their rights and income for their intellectual property," Mr Dahill said. "The fact that it is happening is indicative that as broadcasters we are not meeting demand for a segment of the population.

"So as broadcasters we need to find convenient ways of making programs available via legal means to discourage the need for piracy."

Imagine that. Providing convenient and timely access to content reducing piracy. Most shows, particularly popular shows like Doctor Who, tend to show up on less legal services mere minutes after airing for those tired of waiting for the networks to catch up with their needs. Waiting at least a week after airing in another territory to make the show available would definitely result in a good number of potential viewers having already seen the show prior to legal options becoming available. Yet, making this move toward reducing piracy by making content available, ABC will be capturing more legal views and the revenue that comes with it.

One can only hope that other networks learn this lesson at some point. Yet, that may be a bit of an uphill battle as Brendan notes.

But he also acknowledged that the ABC did not have to compete for ratings like other channels, allowing it to make broadcasting decisions that provide convenience and choice for its audience.

Funny how that works. When you are not bogged down by often unreliable statistics like ratings, you can provide services that your customers want. Its this rethinking of what brings about success in the digital age that will truly maximize revenue.

Filed Under: australia, consumers, doctor who, online video, piracy

Why People Pirate: The Story Of Avatar

from the three-years-later dept

When I began thinking about writing this post, I wanted to start with the opening line "Remember Avatar?" Then I stopped, shook my head, and figured that such an opening line would be ridiculous. After all, Avatar is the highest worldwide grossing movie of all time. Despite everyone on the planet apparently believing that the movie was based on something they had themselves done, the movie essentially ushered in the era of the 3D movie experience for our generation. I mean, come on, it's Avatar.

But then I thought about it a little longer. When's the last time I heard anyone talk about this groundbreaking movie? Months ago? Years ago? Wait, when did this thing come out? 2009? Is that really correct? Is anyone really thinking about this movie anymore? So, because of all those questions, I give you this:

Remember Avatar? You should, for all the reasons mentioned above, but you may see the movie mentioned again now that Fox will finally release the 3D Collector's Edition Blu-Ray of the film. It's one hell of a release window for the 3D version of the movie. And some, like Gizmodo, are pointing to story of how it happened to explain why people turn to infringment for the entertainment they want.

On April 22, 2010, [Avatar] is released on DVD. It's now August 14, 2012. In what world does it make sense for the movie that basically defibrillated the entire notion of 3D movies to take three damn years to make a wide release on 3D Blu-ray? Ours, apparently.

Here's how we got here: Panasonic got in bed with Avatar early on, promoting the film with 103 trucks with giant 3D TVs on them. That was kind of cool, actually. But then, it turned out you could only buy the 3D Blu-ray with a Panasonic 3D TV. Which turned out to cost, all things considered, about 300 damn dollars for a $30 Blu-ray, no matter how you spun it. Totally dumb, totally anti-consumer.

So, through a complicated series of exclusive contract hoops, Fox essentially set up a monetary obstacle course all the way back in late 2010. If you wanted Avatar in 3D, you had to buy a television at a price that far exceeded any added value from the movie. You know who likes obstacle courses built almost two years ago? Time-travelling hamsters, that's who. Last time I checked, there aren't a great deal of time-travelling hamsters paying for movies.

And neither were the people who wanted the 3D version of Avatar, apparently. Panasonic posted huge losses in the television space. Avatar went on to become the most pirated movie of all time. And the Gizmodo piece points the finger directly at Fox:

All of this matters. Especially right now. Demonoid just went down for the count. The RIAA and MPAA want the US to stomp on the Pirate Bay the same way. And we're just a few months removed from the Supreme Court declining to hear an appeal for a $675,000 fine levied against Joel Tenenbaum for, as a teen, downloading a few dozen songs. The subtext is clear. It's not even subtext—it's super-text. We are the assholes. It's our fault that movies are bad and the music industry can't figure out how to monetize itself. And the copyright gestapo is coming for us. That's the message, the threat, looming over every idiotic decision that pushes us closer to BitTorrent.

And in the meantime, as all of this anti-consumer-ish-ness is being dolled up in a wig and a makeup and called "a business model", fans of Avatar will finally be able to get the movie in 3D in October. Yes, a movie designed to be watched with cardboard skittles goggles on your head wasn't available across the board for three damned years. That isn't a release window. It's a message to the movie's fans:

Fox doesn't give a damn about you.

Filed Under: 3d, avatar, piracy, windows

Indian Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap: 'Piracy Helps Deliver The Filmmaker's Message To The Masses'

from the Kashyap-has-never-seen-a-half-empty-glass-in-his-life dept

There have been plenty of artists inside and outside the system recognizing that, yeah, it sucks to not get paid for every copy of your work, but on the bright side, at least people are watching/listening/reading. Hit children's book Go The F**k to Sleep built buzz with unpaid copies roaming the internet. A former WB record exec claims "File sharing leads to more sales." Canadian rap star Drake leaking tracks all over the internet to get fans listening and talking. Why? Because the more people you can expose to your art, the better. But if you ask Hollywood about file sharing you get the alphabet in response: SOPA, PIPA, E-PARASITE, TPP, ACTA. Piracy is killing the motion picture industry, full stop.

Contrast that with this statement from Indian filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who works in a country where piracy is omnipresent, rather than just an over-inflated set of numbers to wave at easily impressed Congressmen:

While chatting about his experiences in Kanpur, where he's spent some part of his life while he was studying for the IIT entrance test, the topic veers to the menace of piracy in Indian cinema. But surprisingly, Anurag is one of the few filmmakers who feel that piracy is justified. "Main aaj jo kuch hoon, piracy ki wajah se hi hoon. It was through pirated versions of my movies that people got to see my work," he says and goes on to elaborate, "I feel that cinema is something that should reach the maximum number of people. If the audience does not get to see affordable cinema, it will turn to cheaper, pirated entertainment."

Unlike the hysteria we're used to, often conflated with knockoff fire extinguishers and child pornography, Anurag views piracy as more than simply a necessary evil, but an actual necessity. That is, if your aim is to have your work seen by as many people as possible. Obviously, if your aim instead is to do everything in your power to make sure that every set of eyeballs that come in contact with your work have paid upfront, then you'll take a much dimmer view of file sharing.

Anurag's not done yet, either:

"If we want to see a successful Hollywood today, often we have to take the help of piracy because it's not necessary that that film is legally available in your city. That's why filmmakers need to understand that their work should reach more and more people, because today cinema is not all about entertainment. In fact, I feel that we filmmakers should use cinema as a tool to make a strong impact on society. And if people are watching such meaningful cinema through piracy, I believe it only helps to deliver the filmmaker's message to the masses."

All very good points. First and foremost: sometimes you don't have a legal option because of licensing issues, regional blocking, "you people are all pirates," GEMA wants its cut, etc. But beyond the logistics is the fact that if you're an artist and you want to have an impact on people, it behooves you to get your creations in front of as many people as possible.

Here's a filmmaker working in a country where piracy is an absolute given, so much so that the government has taken some very surprising steps in an effort to curb it, including blocking file lockers and video sites at the ISP level. And yet, despite massive infringement, all he sees is the upside. He's doing this for a living and yet he's not loudly wondering where his boom mike operator will get his next meal or saying something asinine about a future full of cat videos, all the while attempting to recast record box office receipts as the Fifth Horseman of the Creative Apocalypse.

And before you write off Kashyap as just some dude you've never heard of from somewhere else, here's a brief recap of his work (via the Wiki):

As a filmmaker, he is known for Black Friday (2004), a controversial and award-winning Hindi film about the 1993 Bombay bombings, followed by No Smoking (2007), Dev D (2009) Gulaal (2009) That Girl in Yellow Boots (2011) and Gangs of Wasseypur (2012).

As a screenwriter, he wrote the scripts for the Filmfare Award-winning Satya (1998) and the Academy Award-nominated Canadian film Water (2005).

In 1999, Kashyap won the Best Screenplay award for Satya at the Star Screen Awards. The next year, his short film Last Train to Mahakali won the Special Jury Award at the same awards. His feature film debut Black Friday won the Grand Jury Prize at the 3rd Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (2005), and was a nominee for the "Golden Leopard" (Best Film) at the 57th Locarno International Film Festival (2004).

He was listed on the The DNA power list: Top 50 influentials, a list of 50 most influential Indians in 2011. Kashyap currently serves on the board of Mumbai-based NGO, Aangan Trust, which helps protect vulnerable children around India.

It seems that those who value their own work as art over commerce are the ones who see how file sharing can pay dividends in the long run. Those who tend to view their work as a P&L sheet can only see the negative. You don't have to like or condone piracy to see the possible upside. Kashyap almost seems to view it as a distribution system that reaches places he can't, free of charge. Hollywood, however, seems to be too busy playing the victim to draw that same conclusion.

Filed Under: anurag kashyap, india, marketing, movies, piracy

The Economist Shreds BSA Cloud Credentials Piracy Numbers

from the more-bs-from-the-bsa dept

If my time at Techdirt has taught me anything, it's that anti-piracy groups will pull more numbers out of their collective behinds than The Count from Sesame Street. It's a strange tactic, if only because once they are caught cow-pooping their own figures it seems to indicate that the problem is not nearly what they're claiming and therefore their response and policy recommendations no longer worth considering. Unfortunately, many members of the esteemed 4th Branch are inclined to simply parrot these fudged stats and report them as news.

Fortunately, The Economist is willing to call out the BS the BSA put out about the scary uber-dangers of cloud piracy (ooooooooh!).

Let's start with the BSA claims, shall we? Did you realize that 30% of people in wealthy nations and 45% of people in less-wealthy nations "have a liklihood of sharing log-in credentials for paid [cloud] services?" That's the conclusion drawn by the BSA's latest study. And if that seems like a lofty number to you, it may be because it's utter bullshit.

The Economist begins by correcting the BSA's pretend numbers:

"The percentages come from a question in which people were asked if they had ever shared their log-in details for paid services. Some 15% of people in rich countries and 34% in poor countries said they had for personal use. For business use, it was 30% and 45% respectively...Moreover the respondents were only those who had paid for cloud services, which was a fraction of users. Cloud services are generally based on a “freemium” model, whereby basic use costs nothing and a premium version is paid for. According to the BSA's own data, only half of computer users tap cloud services, of which only one-third use it for business, of which two-thirds pay. Of the small subset that remain, the minority share log-ins. This changes things considerably. If the BSA figures were adjusted for all this, the potential piracy figures could be as low as between 2% and 6% of users—as much as 20 times less than the group claims. (The BSA's data is online here.)"

In other words, through the magic of pretending like only a small subset of data is the entire data, the BSA has magically turned the number two into the number thirty. This would be laudable if those numbers were fish, the readers were hungry, and the BSA was trying to claim it had perfected what I lovingly refer to as "Jesus' Fish Fry Miracle", but they aren't, dear readers. No, they're going to policy makers with this nonsense.

And that isn't even the end of the story. The piece also points out that the BSA's survey failed to ask what might just be an important question: does sharing log-in credentials with a friend violate that service's TOS? If it doesn't, that isn't piracy. But the BSA doesn't bother to ask that question because they don't care, they're just looking for numbers that support their conclusions, here.

The article then points out a couple of other ommissions on the BSA's part:

"There are other anomalies. The BSA only considered PC use, when many people use cloud services over tablets and mobile phones, especially in poor places. And the survey, of 14,702 people in 33 countries, presumes to speak with confidence about the “developing” world but not a single African country is represented—an odd omission, since it is a fast growing market."

In short, these BSA claims are a "study" in the same way that snake-handling is a "religion": it isn't.

Filed Under: copyright, economist, losses, piracy, software, stats
Companies: bsa

MTV Europe Has Things To Say About Piracy And/Or Loading Bars Being Bad For Musicians

from the there's-a-'soylent-green'-joke-in-there-and-i'm-going-to-go-get dept

I don't know what a good anti-piracy ad looks like. I don't think I've ever seen one. Most of these promos come across with all the subtlety of a stereotypical Jewish grandmother bearing a sledgehammer, continually bashing the observer over the head with guilt and terrible physical theft metaphors. This new ad is different. Not better, but at least not more of the same. Hat tip to Dave Awesome Allen for pointing this out via his blog post entitled "Yeah, this will really work." (Yes. His middle name is actually "Awesome" and it's because of things like this. Also because of Gang of Four, Shriekback and the Elastic Purejoy. )

It's not much to look at from a distance:



But, fortunately, Huh Magazine has a selection of closeup shots to better show how piracy is swiftly turning musicians blue.

In the following two closeups, a few details stand out, which we decided to highlight for discussion purposes:



[1] A man who looks suspiciously like Kim Dotcom as portrayed by Rex Ryan gestures wildly at the cowering musicians while unwittingly providing user names and passwords to the onlooking Anonymous member. 

[2] Fanservice.

[3] Lyle Lovett is menaced by an eyeless worlock who uses his magicks to unsettle Lovett's hairpiece.



[1] A Hindu techie delivers a new monitor.

[2] A man requests a refund for his defective power strip, gesturing at the distinct lack of sockets.

[3] H8trs gonna h8.

A set of striking images to be sure, reminding each and every one of us John Q. Downloaders that your computer's hard drive is made out of people, and each download is slowly (depending on ISP) drowning them. Which is bad, because most of them own expensive electronic devices.

Filed Under: advertising, huh?, piracy
Companies: mtv, viacom