"Piracy really is not the bigger issue for our company or for our library," Lang said. "It's been a lack of exploitation, just not getting it out there."
Nice to see someone in the industry actually willing to step up and say it. He also notes that he wants his movies to be available in as many places as possible, because actual competition will be better for everyone. Interesting to see him willing to say this out loud. Wonder if he'll get a "talking to" from the MPAA folks about undermining their whole argument by admitting the truth.
Ron Rezendes points us to a story about how a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) member is pleading guilty to a single count of criminal copyright infringement for uploading screener copies of some movies that he only had access to because he was a SAG member. I still think it's a little silly that this is a criminal complaint rather than a civil complaint, but that's an issue with the law itself. What strikes me as a more important point concerning this story is the simple fact that it's a SAG actor doing the leaking. This is a lot more common than people realize. The MPAA keeps insisting that there are "evil pirates" out there trying to harm actors and others in the industry. But what that ignores is that time and time again studies have shown that a large percentage of these leaks come from actors or others in the industry. Insider leaks are a key source of such content. This doesn't make it right, or legal, or anything like that. I'm merely pointing out the whole "us vs. them" mentality pushed by the MPAA is inaccurate and misleading. Very often the "them" the MPAA wants to blame are the very people they claim they're trying to help.
Over the years we've had plenty of fun with the MPAA's bogus use of stats when it comes to "piracy" claims. They're really laughable, and it would actually be kind of funny... if policy makers and the press didn't actually believe those numbers and pass bad legislation based on them. Even the one time that the MPAA admitted its piracy stats were totally wrong, it was too late to stop a law that was passed on the basis of those bogus numbers.
Now, you may have seen an MPAA inforgraphic (pdf) that's been making the rounds for a couple weeks now. It's so chock full of debunked stats, they should throw themselves a party for how much falseness they can shove into a single graphic. Going through and debunking the various numbers yet again (most have already been debunked in the past) didn't seem worth it, but furdlog points us to a wonderful debunking on a movie review site, where someone actually does the math, and realizes that if the MPAA's numbers for "losses" are accurate, it means that your average downloader would be buying 200 more DVDs per year. Yeah, for the MPAA's numbers to make even a tiny bit of sense, downloaders would be buying new DVDs more than every other day.
So according to the MPAA, piracy cost them $58 billion last year, making movie piracy a bigger industry than the GDPs of 10 American states. To put it even starker perspective, look at it this way. The film industry gets about $10 billion from the box office, and about $30 billion from the after market of DVDs, streaming, etc. So they’re claiming that piracy costs them almost two-thirds of their business. At $10 per DVD, every household in the United States would be buying an additional 50 DVDs per year if they weren’t so busy downloading. The technical term for a statistic like that is “fictional.”
See, they also claim that 29 million adults have ever illegally downloaded a film. But since that’s only 13% of the adult population, it makes the figure even more absurd. By their own estimate, those adults in question would have on average purchased an additional 200 DVDs each year if only they were still on dial-up. The problem with these absurd figures pulled out of the air, is that even if they are an accurate measure of how many movies are being illegally downloaded, it is not a measure of loss. As has been argued countless times, a bunch of zeros and ones do not cost the industry a dime unless they actually represent something that would have been bought otherwise. Anyone think the average downloader would actually have bought 200 more DVDs? Hell, are there even 200 new DVDs released per year?
And yet, the press and politicians still quote these numbers as accurate.
If you happen to be Nigerian or passing through Nigeria and are looking for a little traveling music or something catchy enough to push the voices in your head out of the way for a few moments, don't bother turning on your radio. September 1st is "No Music Day" in Nigeria, a new tradition (since 2009!) seeking to "draw national attention to the widespread infringement of the rights of composers, song writers, performers, music publishers and other stakeholders in the music industry in Nigeria."
As someone who only inadvertently listens to the radio, I can safely state that for many people, a day without a radio broadcast is like Thursday. Or Friday. Or other days of the week. However, for those that do, September 1st will be the day that most will find something else to do rather than listen to an assortment of talking heads speaking loudly about the abuse of the aforementioned traveling music, all the while packing metaphorical 7-piece luggage sets for their listeners' suprise guilt trips. Perhaps, for example, you might listen to music via a computer or personal listening device which isn't subject to the whims of people accusing you of being a criminal. And, let's not get started discussing the possible irony of this effort probably pushing more people to spend their day listening to unlicensed music, rather than licensed music on the radio...
But it's not just the listeners that are due for a long miserable day of self-righteousness. If you happen to be on the "supply" side of the "debate," you'd better eat early and often. In fact, you probably should have started carb loading or whatever a couple of weeks ago. (Apologies for the late notice.)
No Music Day 2009 was preceded by a huge rally of Nigerian artistes held at the National Theatre in Lagos and a weeklong Hunger Strike campaign waged by top Nigerian artistes across the nation.
All in all, it sounds like a great day for alleged pirates (yep, that would be everybody listening) and literally starving artists alike. If you can't make it to Nigeria in time for the "festivities," keep in mind that it only happens once a year, which should give you plenty of time to make plans to be elsewhere during "You're-All-A-Bunch-of-Thieves-Fest 2K12."
Call me crazy (or worse), but couldn't this be handled in a much more "fan friendly" way? Instead of spending the day talking about everything that's wrong with the Nigerian music industry, wouldn't it be better to play some songs and invite the artists to talk about their work and what it means to them? This could be a chance to give smaller artists a chance to be heard and grow their fan bases. Maybe musicians connecting with the public would be more productive than artists treating their audiences like selfish children who need a once-a-year time out.
Exactly as we predicted, when the Fox Network hid its TV shows online behind various paywalls and delays, the rate of infringement on those shows shot way up. Eriq Gardner, over at THResq spoke to a Communications VP at Fox to get his response about all those people going to unauthorized means to get their content, and in true "Communications VP" fashion, Scott Grogin deftly ignores the key question and focuses on a secondary claim from the original TorrentFreak article, the suggestion that these delays were about getting people to watch TV live:
The TorrentFreak blog post is a little over the top. The story indicates that we 'took this drastic step in the hope of getting more people to watch shows live and thus make more revenue.' Nothing could be further from the truth.
Authenticating viewers is not about making sure they only watch live...in fact, quite the opposite—we support a 'TV Everywhere' proposition and are working with our distribution partners to benefit our businesses. It's about receiving fair value so we can continue to produce this expensive and high quality programming. We are pursuing a strategy where the 90+ million households who pay to watch our programming via cable/satellite/telco will ultimately receive maximum benefit. They can watch live, via DVR, on VOD, online, or through one of the various tablet apps that allow in-home viewing.
We are actively in negotiations with all cable/satellite/telco providers regarding authentication of their customers. We hope to announce several more agreements before the start of the new television season in mid-September.
The issue of watching "live" or not is really a side matter, and was perhaps a bit of hyperbole from TorrentFreak. What those guys clearly meant was that this is a weak effort by Fox to keep people watching via TV or via a big cable/satellite provider. And, I'm sorry, but this line is pure bull:
We are pursuing a strategy where the 90+ million households who pay to watch our programming via cable/satellite/telco will ultimately receive maximum benefit.
Anyone who claims that to offer maximum benefit to one set of people, you have to take away features from others isn't being particularly honest. To offer maximum benefit, you offer maximum benefit. Could Fox offer new additional features to such subscribers? Sure. That would be interesting and perhaps a good strategy. But taking the content away, when it's so readily available via unauthorized means doesn't help provide maximum benefit to subscribers at all. It drives more people to unauthorized means of access (where Fox gets no money at all), and actually takes away value from those subscribers. That's because one reason why people watch hit shows right away is so they can discuss them with friends. Fox has now made it more difficult to discuss with friends because it's that much harder to watch its shows.
Music Matters has just released the latest in its string of anti-piracy PSAs, most of which feature recording artists explaining how music has affected their lives. This one features some excellent animation, along with a nice selection of tracks, and it details one person's lifelong relationship with the Beatles' music. It closes by stating that loving a band is a shared experience that brings many people together. All in all, it's a well done tribute that John Lennon certainly would have approved.
Of course, it's tough to watch this promo, which celebrates "sharing" music, without feeling a bit like you're being beaten over the head with an extremely heavy irony stick wielded by someone who has no idea how hard they're swinging it. For starters, Unnamed Protagonist states that he first heard the Beatles' music when it "floated through his window." As picturesque as this scenario may be, the end result will most likely be dismayed gasps from the BMIs and the ASCAPs of the world, who hate to see a public performance go unpunished.
In fact, the video seems to be making the opposite point of the one it's intended to make. It shows just how important sharing is to make culture culture. You've got really mixed messages here. The Beatles are a shared experience, but sharing it with others outside of the way they want you to share it is bad -- even as the (nameless) person profiled clearly enjoys the Beatles in his own way. Like hearing it through the window. Or out in the street with his evicted belongings. Or surrounded by friends in an unlicensed open air venue.
On top of that, the Beatles seem like a really odd choice for such a PSA.
Whatever level a person's love for the Beatles might be, it's pretty tough to find much reciprocation from the band itself, which spent most of the last decade making sure that the only digital copies of their music available were illegal copies. The band also spent a fair amount of time shooting down licensing requests and otherwise making their catalog about as approachable as a badger covered in live hand grenades.
Between the Beatles' "yes, we love you, too but only through very selective channels" and Music Matters' "music is a good thing but only through selective channels," the whole idea of music being a communal experience, one that relies on sharing, kind of gets lost. Even worse, because this is a Music Matters promo aimed at reducing piracy, the message shifts from "Music matters because it's shared," to "Don't share music because, together, we can keep music from mattering."
California dubstep/bass artist Bassnectar has built a solid following over the past decade, culminating in appearances at major music festivals, including Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo and the Ultra Music Festival. Despite his loaded touring schedule, Bassnectar (a.k.a. Lorin Ashton) still keeps in touch with his fans (30K on Soundcloud, 550K on Facebook) via his regular Fan Bass Q&A feature.
An anonymous fan recently asked a question that's on the minds of artists all over the creative spectrum:
What do you think about the people that leak and download your music (or any music) without paying?
When we sent out promos of "Divergent Spectrum" we knew without a doubt it would get leaked. It is kind of an honor that enough people care, that they want to get it and share it as soon as possible. Instead of worrying about it, we just figured "Let's let people decide what they want to do." If they want to support me, let's make it easy for them to do so. We created a presale option, and added a stack of exclusive Bonus Material (loops, bits, outtakes, sketches, ...kind of like the "Special Features" on a DVD) as a gift to everyone who did this, knowing it was an act of love and support for them to pre-order something they could just download for free.
There are two key points to this statement, points that other artists (or more often, their default representatives -- label spokesmen, royalty collection agencies, etc. ) tend to ignore when discussing piracy. One: a leaked album is a sign of interest. Very few people will track down a leaked album from an artist they have no interest in. Two: make it easy for fans to support the artist, preferably directly. The more paranoid you are about leaked albums and "lost sales," the less likely it is that your music is easily found and purchased.
Bassnectar goes on from there, letting his fans (both paying and non-paying) know how thrilled he is with being Bassnectar:
For me, I am so incredibly grateful for everything in my life right now, i can't really ask for more. We have sold out nearly every single show in the past year, and the legion of bass heads is growing every day. I am honored that people want to explore my music. I am honored that they want to share it with their friends. I am not worried about being supported, because I feel so much support each day, in so many different forms.
On principle though, I do think it is important for ALL ARTISTS to make it easy for people to support what they love. And it is important for those who love the art to decide how they can support art and artists, and allow it to continue.
There it is again: "make it easy for people to support what they love." Hitching your music to major label's whims, proprietary systems, various rights agencies and digital rights management "tools" does nothing but make it harder for fans to support you, much less share the experience with others.
He also hammers home a point made over and over again here at Techdirt: spending time and energy attempting to prevent piracy will only leave you tired and frustrated. The music world doesn't work the way it used to, relying on "top down" distribution. At the same time, he makes a genuine request: if you love an artist, find a way to support them.
In 2011, art and culture exist as DIGITAL MEDIA, and it is naive to think it will not be leaked or downloaded or shared or "stolen" repeatedly. It is just a fact of life. People need to decide for themselves if they want to steal or not. And if they *DO* then they can decide if and how to follow up with support. If you download leaked music, and you enjoy it, why not go buy an official copy? It seems fair. You are not obligated to do this, it is just a choice. Do you enjoy the artist? IF YOU ENJOY, THEN SUPPORT. If not, then simply carry on. It takes a LOT of time and energy for artists to create their craft, and even more time and energy for them to prepare a release, and to distribute it. You can support what you love in many ways, and in a sense you vote with your dollar.
It's that simple. An artist's best weapons against piracy aren't takedown notices and legislation. The best weapon is still an honest connection with your fans (paying or not). Simply talking to them directly about you and your work does more for your bottom line than a million anti-piracy screeds. Even better, give them a reason to buy and as many ways to buy as possible.
I'll leave you with this choice clip of Bassnectar in action, sporting the finest head of heavy metal hair to ever find itself in front of a tableful of electronic noisemakers:
Blenster points us to this fascinating post by Jonathan Akwue, in which he discusses how a piece of artwork he created a few decades ago actually became "famous," because of a bootleg poster maker who made a ton of unauthorized posters that got around quickly. Here's the image, which you may have seen (I definitely recall seeing it in the past, but had no idea of its background):
Akwue talks about the process that resulted in the creation of the poster (that's him in front of it with his son above), and how he was even worried about the potential for bootleg copies of the poster. And, not surprisingly, he was upset when it first was bootlegged. But in retrospect he realizes that the bootlegger was much more efficient at getting his poster distributed and that helped him:
But something else happened. Among a certain set of people I became (almost) famous – or at least my picture did. Stan’s distribution network was far more extensive than I could have imagined. As a result the image cropped up in all sorts of places, from inner-city street corners to suburban offices. A friend spotted it on TV hanging on the wall of an architect’s home in New York. My brother found a reproduction in a street market in Switzerland.
The bootlegged copies didn’t entirely kill the market for the legitimate ones either. As the unauthorized prints were unsigned, the limited edition of 500 was sold to those who were willing to pay extra for a signed copy.
In the end, he compares this to similar cases in the internet era, such as with Adam Mansbach's Go the F**k to Sleep, and realizes that perhaps the bootlegging wasn't so bad:
I only ever met Stan once, in a council flat in Greenwich that served as a base for his bootlegging operations. I have no idea what happened to him, or if he got his comeuppance in the end. But if I did meet him again I’m not sure what I’d say. Perhaps it should be ‘Thanks’.
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.
Last week we wrote about Janko Roettger's GigaOm post concerning the fact that file sharing continues to grow. We focused on how the MPAA and the RIAA might be declaring "victory" too soon. Amusingly, the MPAA's Alex Swartsel took offense to Janko's article and posted one of the organization's typically laughable responses, in which they attempt to scold Janko for his "intellectually dishonest" claim that file sharing is "socially acceptable." Let's just say that between the Swartsel and Janko, one of the two is in denial, and it's not Janko.
The part that the MPAA takes issue with is the following part from Janko's post:
The U.S. credit ratings downgrade, tumbling stocks and international instability have made not just financial analysts nervous this week. Consumers are also starting to wonder whether we’re about to enter another recession. Whenever that happens, people start to tighten their belts and cut unnecessary expenses -- like paying for movies and TV shows.... With memories of the housing slump still fresh, many people could simply return to BitTorrent and download movies for free instead of going to the movies or paying for VOD.
It's pretty clear that there is no statement of support or cheering on or anything here. Janko is simply reporting a simple fact. Some group of people will continue to find unauthorized means of accessing content a better deal than authorized offerings. I don't see how that's objectionable at all. It's a pretty easy prediction to make because who honestly doesn't think it's true?
But, to the MPAA, this is "intellectually dishonest" and the equivalent of Janko supporting "shoplifting clothing." Wow. You know what would be intellectually dishonest? Pretending that lots of people don't use file sharing would be intellectually dishonest. Pretending that a bad economy combined with dumb moves by movie studios might drive fewer people to unauthorized file sharing would be intellectually dishonest. Repeating blatant falsehoods from the MPAA would be intellectually dishonest. Comparing stealing of physical goods to someone making a copy of a digital file would be intellectually dishonest. Calling out a reporter for accurately making a point would be intellectually dishonest.
What's not intellectually dishonest is accurately reporting what's happening.
But the MPAA and Swartsel are so in denial that apparently they've decided to "shoot the messenger." This is all too typical of the MPAA. Rather than adapt and deal with reality, the folks there like to pretend the world is a very different place and will attack any messenger who shows otherwise. Honestly, Swartsel's post reads the same way an MPAA blog post would have read a decade ago if it had a blog back then. It's full of misleading or downright incorrect claims:
T-shirts and jeans aren’t made out of zeroes and ones, at least not yet. But just because movies and TV shows and songs can now be packaged and distributed as data, not just as film reels or vinyl records or DVDs, and can be acquired or distributed with a few clicks of a mouse, doesn’t mean that the labor and time and money that went into making them is any less meaningful.
No one -- especially not Janko -- has claimed that "the labor and time and money that went into making" movies is "less meaningful." Swartsel is simply changing the topic because she can't actually argue against what Janko has said -- because it's accurate. So she's pretending he said something entirely different. The fact that labor and time and money goes into something doesn't make a difference. I put "labor and time and money" into Techdirt, and then it's my job to figure out how to make a living out of it. It does me no good to sit around and say "but I worked hard -- now pay me."
No one cares how hard you worked or how much money you spent. People buy things based on the market. They buy things based on the intersection of supply and demand -- and this is an economics lesson that the MPAA and Swartsel apparently remain ignorant of.
We doubt many people will subscribe to the kind of intellectual dishonesty that suggests that it’s fine – or really, that it’s inevitable – to steal as a way of saving. But it’s troubling that by suggesting that stolen content available on rogue sites and elsewhere is just another substitute good, Roettgers is tacitly arguing that content theft is legitimate and socially acceptable.
He made no such argument, tacitly or not. I will, however, make the argument that for a very large segment of the population, it absolutely is socially acceptable. It is not socially acceptable to me. I don't engage in it myself and never have. But it's intellectually dishonest to pretend that many, many people don't find it socially acceptable. If the MPAA were really concerned about adapting to the changing market, the first step would be actually recognizing that. But that's not how the MPAA works. It works by denying reality, and then running to Congress to get them to change the laws because its member studios don't want to have to change. Tellingly, it appears that Swartsel's last job was... working for Congress.
It would be nice, just once, if the MPAA (and the RIAA) could actually be intellectually honest. If the folks there could admit some basic facts: the market has changed and many, many people find unauthorized file sharing socially acceptable. If you start at that point, and then say, "now what do we do about it?" you can come up with all sorts of productive answers. But that's not what they do at all. They just keep trying to demonize it, and don't seem to realize that every time they insist reality isn't real, people trust them even less.
