This Has To Be A Joke: Music Duo Claims It Won't Sell CDs Again Until 'Piracy' Is Stopped

from the um,-huh? dept

Someone who prefers to remain anonymous sent over this odd story of a musical duo who put up a notice on the band's website claiming that, due to "piracy," they were no longer going to sell CDs. But the reasoning makes no sense at all:

NOTICE: Due to uncontrolled Music Piracy, [Our album] will no longer be sold to the general public. We refuse to cater to thieves and criminals. When the Worldwide Piracy problems is solved, then we will begin sales once again.

Notice I chopped out the name of the band/album, because this seems so outlandish that I'm wondering if it's just a publicity stunt. Or a joke. It seems like it must be, because the basic logic of the statement above is so backwards as to defy reason. By not selling a CD, you're basically telling people the only way to get the album is through unauthorized channels. At least offering the CD lets some people buy it. Claiming that not selling it is a way to avoid "catering to thieves and criminals" makes no sense, since all it does is make it that much more difficult for anyone to support the band legally. That's why I'm guessing this is some sort of joke. The band also has a Twitter account (again, not linking to it on purpose), which is filled with a ton of articles about unauthorized access to content (many of them very old articles) with commentary that is somewhat amusing for how far off the mark it is. For example, one Twitter message "blames 'piracy'" on some of Nine Inch Nails' experiments -- the ones that are making the band lots of money. So, again, I'm wondering if this is just some sort of reverse psychology attempt by a band to get people to download their stuff. Seems like there are more effective ways of doing that.

Filed Under: cds, joke, piracy

Murdoch's Daughter Recognizes That 'Piracy' Can Be Good

from the tell-your-dad... dept

Even as Rupert Murdoch is calling aggregators and other sites "pirates" and claiming that fair use can be blocked, it seems his daughter has a more enlightened view. Copycense points us to a recent talk by Elisabeth Murdoch, who owns a TV production house, where she basically admits that blocking what people want to do is a bad idea:

"Fans remain the best salesmen of our content, even if that behavior is on the borderline of piracy. Danger of the new world is that we must concede that we'll lose some control."

Nice to hear. Now, if only her Dad would listen to her before he pisses off a bunch of his best content salesmen.

Filed Under: elisabeth murdoch, piracy, promotion, rupert murdoch, selling

Still Some In The Music Business Who Believe The Impossible: Blur Manager Says 'Piracy' Can Be Stopped

from the good-luck dept

I had just been thinking that one of the nicer things about the Midem conference this year was that no one really seemed to still be complaining about "piracy" as a problem, and really seemed focused on more positive opportunities for going forward (more on that later). However, not everyone got the message, apparently. In a discussion on the "manager's role" in developing an artist in the digital era, Chris Morrison -- who manages Blur and the Gorillaz, among others -- waited until the end to start trashing "pirates." What was odd was that earlier in the panel he was talking about how much attention and free publicity the Gorillaz got when their latest single showed up on file sharing sites last week. He even seemed proud of all that free publicity, but then later in the panel, he declared that if he could find out who had put the file up first, he'd bring him into his office and have all of his colleagues "give him a good kicking." Then he went on the typical anti-unauthorized file sharing rant, saying, "I believe that piracy can be stopped and should be stopped."

Back on the first day of the event, legendary producer/musician Pharrell Williams had noted that file sharing is "like taste testing," in explaining that he wasn't worrying about it, noting that if people liked the "taste" they could then find something worth buying. But Morrison was having none of it: "It's not a taste. It's like giving them the whole bloody meal!" That's an interesting viewpoint for a manager to have, and one that makes me wonder. I can see how a record label -- who tends to really only own the recording -- could see things that way, but as a manager, he must realize that there's a lot more to sell out there than just the music itself. So, no, it's not the whole meal (bloody or not), but a taste of what the band itself has to offer. And many of the things bands have to offer are not easily copied and shared -- and any manager who wants to cope with today's digital market needs to understand that.

Filed Under: blur, chris morrison, file sharing, gorillaz, piracy, promotion

Libraries Cost Publishers $100 Billion Per Year! Ban Them!

from the this-is-fun dept

So a whole bunch of you submitted the story last week about a "study" claiming that unauthorized downloads of books was "costing" the publishing industry $3 billion per year. I avoided the study for a variety of reasons. Mainly, the reason I ignored it was because it was done by a company selling "solutions" to the (non) "problem," Attributor is a company that has a very long history of putting out totally ridiculous studies like this to try to sell more of its pointless service. And, of course, if you looked at the details of the study, you realized how ridiculous it was -- designed solely to generate headlines. So we ignored it.

However... we feel compelled to mention it now because Slashdot points us to an absolutely brilliant response by a blogger who used the same basic methodology to point out that, according to this line of thinking, libraries are costing publishers $100 billion per year:

Hot on the heels of the story in Publisher's Weekly that "publishers could be losing out on as much $3 billion to online book piracy" comes a sudden realization of a much larger threat to the viability of the book industry. Apparently, over 2 billion books were "loaned" last year by a cabal of organizations found in nearly every American city and town. Using the same advanced projective mathematics used in the study cited by Publishers Weekly, Go To Hellman has computed that publishers could be losing sales opportunities totaling over $100 Billion per year, losses which extend back to at least the year 2000. These lost sales dwarf the online piracy reported yesterday, and indeed, even the global book publishing business itself.

From what we've been able to piece together, the book "lending" takes place in "libraries". On entering one of these dens, patrons may view a dazzling array of books, periodicals, even CDs and DVDs, all available to anyone willing to disclose valuable personal information in exchange for a "card". But there is an ominous silence pervading these ersatz sanctuaries, enforced by the stern demeanor of staff and the glares of other patrons. Although there's no admission charge and it doesn't cost anything to borrow a book, there's always the threat of an onerous overdue bill for the hapless borrower who forgets to continue the cycle of not paying for copyrighted material.

Good stuff. The blog post goes on to discuss a shifty "meeting" of so-called "librarians" set out to destroy the publishing industry. Satire at its finest. Of course will the mainstream press remember this the next time Attributor puts out some silly report? Probably not...

Filed Under: books, lending, piracy, studies
Companies: attributor

How Many Questionable Assumptions Can You Layer On Top Of Each Other To Estimate Bogus 'Losses' From Unauthorized iPhone App Downloads?

from the let-me-count-the-ways dept

A while back someone had sent me to a website I'd never heard of called 24/7 Wall St. that had a post claiming how much certain top blogs were "worth." The reason someone pointed me to it was because it had Techdirt in the list. What was amusing was that whoever wrote the article made a bunch of assumptions and every single one of them was wrong -- and some of them could have been checked with a simple look at our website. Given that every single assumption was wrong, the conclusion was equally laughable. I actually emailed them to point out a few factual errors in the post -- none of which were corrected. Since then I tend not to trust anything from that site -- though it has a habit of getting attention for similarly ridiculous "estimates," and people repeat them as if they were factual.

Allison K was the first of a whole bunch of you to send in the fact that the site is trying to "estimate" the "impact of piracy" of iPhone apps on Apple and app developers. While I commend the site on at least explaining its methodology, the more you read it, the more ridiculous it becomes. They simply layer questionable assumption upon questionable assumption upon questionable assumption, and when they get stuck, they pull out a random number. It's almost comical to read. As Allison noted, it reminds her of xkcd's famous comic of the Drake Equation, where one of the variables in the formula is defined as "Amount of bullshit you're willing to buy from Frank Drake": It's nice to have some sort of concrete numbers, because people like to have numbers to discuss. But when they're based on so many layers of questionable assumptions, they tend to do a lot more harm than good. People will assume there's some real basis for them when there is not.

And, of course, as everyone should understand by now there's no such thing as "losses" from unauthorized access. There is only a failure on the part of the company to convince people to buy. There is no line in their financial reports on "losses" from such activities -- with good reason. The only issue is a business model issue, which is that the company has not given users a good enough reason to buy, so they chose to get the product elsewhere.

Update: And it gets more ridiculous. 24/7's response was a comment below that did not address any of the concerns but simply says that I must not have made it through my high school math class. Classy. Meanwhile, Dark Helmet points us to TUAW's takedown of the numbers, where they note that based on the assumptions, 24/7 appears to be assuming that there are 510 pirated apps per device. Uh. Yeah. Check those assumptions, folks.

Filed Under: iphone apps, losses, piracy
Companies: apple

Game Marketer Insists That Every Downloaded Copy Of Modern Warfare 2 Is Stolen By Immoral Thieves

from the yeah,-not-quite dept

Just last month, we were defending Bruce Everiss over a ridiculous libel tourism attempt to have him tried for libel halfway around the world from where he lives. We still defend that post -- libel tourism is terrible -- but many in our comments pointed out that there may be more to the story, and one of the biggest things was that Everiss simply hated the fact that Evony -- the company trying to sue him -- came up with a business model that involves exactly the sort of thing we like: giving stuff away for free, and coming up with more advanced reasons to buy. That still doesn't excuse the libel claim, but Everiss does seem to have a bit of trouble understanding basic economics of digital goods. A whole bunch of you have sent in his recent rant about how many people "stole" Modern Warfare 2. It's the sort of thing we had thought went out of style years ago, when people realized that every download wasn't a lost sale, and there were lots of reasons that people might download other than a lack of "moral fiber." Everiss is having none of it, however, insisting that over 300 million dollars was "stolen" from Activision based on a "one download = one stolen copy" equation that went out of style around a decade ago:

That's right, over 300 million dollars stolen just of the one game, Modern Warfare 2, in 2009. Obviously Activision had much more stolen from them with other titles, but MW2 is by far the worst affected. According to TorrentFreak 4,100,000 copies of the PC version of MW2 were stolen and 970,000 copies of the Microsoft Xbox 360 version.

Thieves using bit torrents are indulging in the biggest orgy of theft in the history of humanity. When they can steal with no chance of getting caught then they will. How they justify this appalling lack of moral fibre to themselves is beyond me. I have heard a whole litany of empty excuses from the thieves to try and justify their actions but the fact remains that they are benefiting from other people's labour that they should have paid for but haven't. So they are thieves.

Yes, according to Mr. Everiss, "benefiting from other people's labour that they should have paid for but haven't" means you are a thief. Everiss' article is about to get traffic from us. He's about to benefit from us linking to his article. He hasn't paid us. I think he should. According to his own reasoning, he is a thief. You might spot the logical flaw in that, and it's the same in Everiss' own argument. It's that because one party believe others should pay for their work, you are to assume that that other party must pay for the work. That's not how transactions work, however. The economy is based on mutually agreeable transactions where one party only pays if they find it worthwhile to pay, and it is the job of the entity trying to make money to give people a reason to buy. Don't give them a reason? Too bad.

Everiss goes on to then talk up DRM and three strikes as the best "solutions" to piracy, suggesting that he apparently hasn't paid attention to pretty much all of technological history, and how well such "solutions" have (not) worked. He does (thankfully!) suggest that better business models are another option, but seems to think that's a lot less important than DRM and three strikes.

The first reader who sent this story in, the creatively named TechWeasel, also wrote up a rather detailed response that he tried to post as a comment to Mr. Everiss' rant, but for some reason it was not allowed, so I'll republish it here:

"I'm happy to see more attention being paid to the problem of video game piracy, but I find this analysis questionable.

1) One pirated game does not equal one lost sale. People pirate games for a number of reasons (the litany of excuses referred to in the article), and not all of those reasons amount to "I would totally buy this game if I couldn't download it for free." First, there is no mechanism in the video game publishing industry to redress a lack of customer satisfaction. If somebody shells out $60 for a game and ends up not liking it or being plagued by technical issues, they can't get their money back like they can for most goods. Thus, a tempting solution is to download a copy of the game almost as a trial version, and then to purchase if it turns out to be worth the price. This is only one example. Another reason to pirate is if legitimately available versions of the game are censored in the user's country (India, China and Australia are heavy on the censorship), thus denying the user the ability to pay for a legimate copy. I am not speaking to the ethics of these reasons, but only trying to point out the fallacy behind the "1 download = 1 lost sale" argument.

2) Where are all the great DS games? Being written for platforms that don't require the same degree of game design tailoring (two screens, touchscreen w/stylus, low hardware requirements), or which have online distribution channels and thus lower overhead (i.e. WiiWare, iPhone, PSN, XBL). Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

3) Technical protection is not the best solution, because it punishes legitimate users and drives them away. I did not buy Spore specifically because of its use of invasive DRM (SecuROM) and I have passed over several other games because of their DRM or activation limits. I own multiple computers and often reinstall games when swapping parts. These are lost sales.

4) A mandate for ISPs to stop torrents through disconnection of their customers is akin to the power company cutting off the electricity to somebody's house because their usage patterns match those of somebody else who runs heat lamps. Internet access is a utility that's essential for education and work. This is why we have due process. Companies lack the expertise to make these judgments and it would be a financial and ethical burden on them to force them to.

There are some good points here, such as business model migration towards subscriptions or microtransactions. This is the way to go, moving forward. The idea is to minimize deadweight loss - let the publishers do whatever they can to ensure that everyone pays as much as they are willing to for their games, while having the best experience possible. Zynga, the maker of Farmville, Mafia Wars and a host of other Facebook and iPhone games, is doing a good job with this. So is Turbine, the maker of Dungeons and Dragons Online - free to play, with microtransactions for items, perks and other features.

ATVI chose to launch the PC version of MW2 with total understanding that it was a lesser version, that the PC as a platform wasn't worth the work of adding features that PC gamers expect from their games (dedicated servers, ability to mod, high degree of settings flexibility). As a PC gamer, I reject that, and chose not to buy (or pirate) the game. Others chose to pirate it, probably in part as a form of protest, but also because the neutered PC version of the game just wasn't worth the price tag that ATVI slapped on it. Good God, Activision doesn't even make $59.99 off a copy of a game purchased at Best Buy; at least make the math believable. I understand that this stance on the issue is a little too complicated to land easily beneath the headline Bruce chose, but an issue this complicated deserves more analysis."

Filed Under: bruce everiss, file sharing, modern warfare 2, piracy

Sony Won't Support Its Own Movie For An Oscar Over Misplaced Piracy Fears

from the that-evil-internet-again dept

One of Jack Valenti's final battles while still in charge of the MPAA was his silly, misguided war on DVD screeners. Screeners are copies of the movie (on DVD, obviously) that are sent out to people to view (to "screen") for awards shows and the like. Valenti freaked out that since these screeners went out before the official DVDs were out, they would lead to people uploading them online, creating a piracy problem. Of course, that assumed two incorrect things: that those movies weren't already online and that adding one more copy would create any sort of "problem." Valenti lost his initial battle to forbid studios from sending out DVD screeners, but what came next were a series of convoluted attempts to stop "piracy" via the screeners -- including sending DVDs that could only play in special players. Two years ago, studios finally realized how ridiculous and cumbersome this process was, so it dropped the special DVD player requirement, and instead went with a watermarking option. But that's crazy expensive. Each DVD screener now needs to be individually watermarked and tracked.

Given that, it seems that some studios are simply deciding not to support certain movies for the Academy Awards. johnjac points us to the news that folks involved with the movie Moon are pissed off that Sony won't send out DVD screeners for the movie, as they were hoping that actor Sam Rockwell might get an Oscar nod for his part in the movie. Sony claims that it's just too expensive to do the watermarking.

It's really no surprise that this comes from Sony Pictures, whose CEO, Michael Lynton, is on record as saying that nothing good has come from the internet, and then when questioned on that statement, stands by it. So I guess that Lynton doesn't use the internet, or he would know, as pointed out in the Slashfilm link above, that perfectly good copies of the movie -- sans watermark -- are already widely available for download. In other words, there's no reason whatsoever to waste money watermarking the DVDs. It won't make a difference. Yet, because of Lynton and his crew's misguided fears, Sony Pictures won't support this particular movie.

Filed Under: academy awards, dvds, piracy, screeners
Companies: sony pictures

Finnish Indie Record Label Says It Won't Sign Any New Bands Unless The Gov't Stops Piracy

from the yeah,-that'll-work dept

If you want to see the ultimate in the "entitlement" mentality of the old record labels, check out this report of a Finnish indie label posted an angry rant to its website threatening that it won't sign any new artists until the government somehow stops piracy. Good luck with that plan. Let's see if anyone actually cares. You basically have a business, that refuses to adapt, insisting that it will now go out of business unless the government somehow does the impossible and stops market forces from doing what they do. The proper response is to just let the label go out of business. If it can't adapt, then it should die. Simple as that.

What's really unfortunate, of course, is that I just got back from Norway a couple months ago, and was so impressed with the optimism and enthusiasm from various folks in the music industry around the Nordic countries (including quite a few from Finland). Apparently, the folks from Lion Music didn't attend that event.

Filed Under: finland, piracy, record labels

Could Wolverine's Leaking Have Helped It At The Box Office?

from the seems-possible dept

We still can't understand why Fox studios acted the way it did over the leak of the Wolverine movie. There were so many better options that didn't involve freaking out and eventually wasting FBI resources. We did note, when the movie was released, what a fantastic opening weekend it had. Of course, some argued that it would have had an even better opening weekend without the leak, but, of course, no one knows for sure.

However, Ross Pruden points us to an interesting analysis by Reid Rosefelt trying to more carefully analyze the leak's impact on Wolverine. Rosefelt compares Wolverine's opening weekend to lots of other highly touted movies, and then even breaks out the movies that were "the latest installment of a very lucrative franchise" (of which there were a bunch this year). In that class, Wolverine earned a lot more than any of those other similar movies, with the exceptions of Twilight and Transformers -- and, again, it's worth remembering that Wolverine got dreadful reviews. But it is worth noting that Wolverine outgrossed other highly touted "franchise" movies like Harry Potter's latest and Star Trek -- both of which got much better reviews.

Rosefelt also does a nice job pointing out how silly Hollywood's new favorite line is whenever anyone points out the record year at the box office. We've seen it from our usual cast of Hollywood insiders who frequent the comments here, where they say that the box office doesn't matter. Piracy is really impacting DVD sales and that's what will kill Hollywood. Of course, this is funny on a variety of levels, starting with the fact if Hollywood had had its way, the DVD player would never have existed, because home video machines (you may recall) were the "Boston Strangler" to the movie industry. It's also amusing because Hollywood has been working hard to prevent one of the biggest DVD buyers, Redbox, from buying its DVDs. Rosefelt points out that the data does show that DVD sales are down, but notes that rentals are way up. It appears that people just find it easier to rent than to buy -- and a large part of that may be uncertainty over HD format (and the ridiculous price put on many Blu-ray discs). Once again, it's looking like the decline in DVD sales might not be the fault of piracy, but of the industry and its own practices yet again.

Again, none of this shows for certain that the Wolverine leak helped at the box office, but it's hard to take seriously any argument that it was harmed. Wolverine did massively well at the box office and outshone many other movies from equally popular franchises, which received much better reviews.

Filed Under: box office, leak, piracy, wolverine

Bono: We Should Use China's Censorship As An Example Of How To Stop Piracy

from the out-with-the-old... dept

It's no secret that Paul McGuinness, U2's longtime manager, has been making bizarre and easily refuted claims that everyone but the music industry is at fault for not making U2 even richer than it is. And that's because they're all conspiring to bring piracy to the world, which is destroying music revenue while pumping up the revenue of lots of other companies. Of course, none of that is true. Music-based revenues continue to climb quite nicely, and the revenue that ISPs and Google and others are making from "piracy" is barely worth mentioning. Does anyone really think that broadband would have noticeably fewer customers without music piracy going around?

Still, there had been some question about what U2's outspoken frontman, Bono, felt about these issues. Back in 2008, he did say that he mostly agreed with McGuinness that somehow ISPs were to blame for all of this. Then, in early 2009, there was an amusing interview where he basically said that piracy is bad, but he couldn't really speak out against it because he was too rich, and people would point that out.

Apparently he forgot that part.

As pretty much all of you are sending in, Bono has posted his regular NY Times column, about 10 big things that are important for the next 10 years and apparently, protecting his royalties... I mean... stomping out piracy makes it to number two on the list. It's the same McGuinness blather, of course. Apparently, piracy is really all the ISPs' fault:

A decade's worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators -- in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can't live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us -- and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

Hmm. So, apparently all the money that people used to spend on music, they now spend on internet connections? If only there were some evidence to back that up. But, as we noted, the music business has been growing, just not the sales of CDs. Considering how much U2 made on its last tour, you would think that Bono would be aware of this. As for his claim that the internet is harming the up-and-coming songwriters, again, all this shows is how incredibly out of touch Bono is. In the past, the "young, fledgling songwriter" couldn't live off ticket or t-shirt sales either. He had to hope that he got the lucky golden ticket from a record label and that they didn't then crush his spirit and originality before discarding him as an unrecouped has-been.

Today, however, the opportunities for the young, fledgling songwriter to build a following, build a business model and make a living have grown tremendously. Ask Jonathan Coulton. Or Corey Smith. Or Matthew Ebel. Or Moto Boy. Or any one of thousands of other songwriters who didn't go the major label route, but have figured out ways to make a living (or better) that simply would not have been possible just a few years ago.

So what's Bono's solution to this non-problem? Apparently it's for ISPs to spy on what everyone does and to fork over money they get to the musicians (well, he says musicians, but what he really means is the major record labels):

But we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content.

Now, Bono is technically (beyond his role with U2) a venture partner at the venture capital firm Elevation Partners, and you would think that would require some basic level of technological knowhow. But, you get the feeling Elevation brought him on for his star power, rather than his keen technology insights, or he might realize that neither America's efforts to stop child pornography, nor China's efforts to suppress online dissent have worked very well. Neither has shown that it's "perfectly possible to track content." In fact, they've shown the reverse. They've shown that the more you try to track people, the further underground they go.

And is Bono really (really?) suggesting that we force ISPs to use the same tactics used to try to silence dissent in China to protect his royalties? Yikes.

Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product.

The problem here is that, again, Bono seems to equate file sharing with a loss of money or decrease in output from the wider creative industries. He's flat out wrong. The overall industries continue to grow. It's just a small group of the more powerful middlemen, who have refused to adapt and change with the times, who are stuck in the past. And it's because of their own unwillingness to adapt, that they may be losing some money. But the creative output, and the economic impact of those overall industries continue to grow, no matter how confused some rockstar on a crusade might be about them.

So if we're looking for big trends over the next ten years, how about we learn to stop listening to out of touch rockstars who insist they know stuff they are clearly uninformed about (or, rather, informed by a few biased and factually-challenged parties)?

Filed Under: bono, censorship, china, copyright, piracy, u2