Top Photographer On Why He Doesn't Care If His Stuff Is Pirated

from the why-can't-everyone-be-this-sensible? dept

Trey Ratcliff is an extremely successful photographer, who specializes in HDR photography. His blog Stuck in Customs is the top travel photography blog on the internet, with over a million views each week.

Naively, then, you might expect him to be a typical artistic fat-cat who regards every act of piracy of his photos as a personal insult that in a just world would be avenged by amputation of limbs and life incarceration at the minimum. Actually, he uses Creative Commons licensing for all his work, and has just written a wonderful post with the self-explanatory title "Five Reasons Why I Don't Care if My Stuff is Pirated - A New Way of Thinking", pointed out to us by Paul Newport, where he states:

All of my stuff is pirated. Everything from my HDR Video Tutorial to eBooks to Apps. Fine. It's all there on PirateBay and MegaUpload and all that stuff. Here are the reasons why I don't mind

He then goes to list five reasons that show a deep understanding of why piracy happens, and why it isn't necessarily so bad for those whose works are pirated. For example, Ratcliff points out:

Theft of bits are like the Tic Tacs that get stolen from the 7-11. It's the cost of doing business on the Internet.

That is, the actual loss is trivial (bits are practically free), and you learn to live with it because of the counterbalancing benefits. He also has a belief in the innate goodness of people:

Many people that pirate stuff now from me just don't have any money. But, they like me and want my stuff.

After all, that's why they pirate it. And if/when they eventually get their finances sorted out, they'll remember Ratcliff's generosity in allowing them to download his stuff for free without conducting a witchhunt as a result, and pay it back by buying from him. As he says:

Pirates are not cretins riddled with immoral behavior in every part of their life. These are all generally good people who would gladly support me, their friendly local neighborhood artist, if they could easily afford it. They can't now, but they will be able to some day...

He mentions another very practical reason not to dismiss pirates as the enemy:

Pirates have friends that have money. It's still word-of-mouth, the most effective friend-to-friend marketing in the world. If pirates like what you do, they'll tell their friends.

That's an important point: even if the pirates don't buy stuff now, they may well spread free publicity that drives sales elsewhere. If you vilify pirates, you are spurning an important part of your unofficial marketing department.

Finally, Ratcliff gives one central reason why he's not really that worried about piracy:

Last, and most important, as soon as I opened everything up, our business has grown and grown.

But he also notes:

piracy is not the reason that revenues are increasing, but they are not hurting revenues

The curious thing is, the same is true of the music and film industries, which continue to thrive despite all the online piracy, as Techdirt has pointed out in the past.

In other words, everything that Ratcliff says in his extremely wise post about photography also applies to music and films. But whereas he accepts the need for "A New Way of Thinking" as he puts it, and can even see that piracy is beneficial to him in many ways, the copyright industries cling to their traditional perspectives, and insist on fighting this "scourge" with ever-greater ferocity in the face of their continuing failure to expunge it – with huge collateral damage to the rest of us, as SOPA and PIPA make clear.

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Filed Under: embrace, photography, piracy, trey ratcliff, word of mouth

Movie Producers Ask Chinese Video Game Pirates If They Can Make An Official Version Of The Game

from the embracing-the-infringers dept

Sheri Candler points us to this fascinating story, where the Finnish producers of a "sci-fi Nazis-on-the-moon spoof" movie called Iron Sky have decided to try to work with a Chinese company who turned the movie into an unauthorized "pirate" video game for the iPad, to see if they could turn it into the official version of the game.

Rather than sue the company, "Iron Sky" creators are now in talks with Ziiso to make a legitimate iPad game.

"The people at Ziiso apologized to the 'Iron Sky' team in an interview conducted by the largest newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat," said "Iron Sky" director Timo Vuorensola.

"The apology and Ziiso's willingness to correct their error convinced me that we could co-operate with them on the game project. We are currently negotiating with Ziiso about revamping the game and publishing it as part of the official 'Iron Sky' merchandise."

Of course, we've talked about the Iron Sky producers in the past, and their history suggests that they're really open to embracing such things, rather than freaking out about them. They're the same folks who created the amazing Star Wreck film years ago for free. They then turned the massive success of that into Iron Sky, which was funded with $10 million in a hybrid funding model that combined some traditional financing along with a ton of fan support by allowing fans to buy "War Bonds" to crowdfund part of the movie.

These are clearly folks who always look to embrace what people out there want... rather than freak out and try to block others.

Filed Under: business models, china, embrace, iron sky, movies, video games

Gaming Company Sees Massive User & Revenue Growth Because Of Piracy

from the pirates-unite dept

There is a very strong divergence in the games industry. On one hand we have developers and publishers who look at piracy as a cancer that needs to be cut out and on the other we have those who look at it as an opportunity. We illustrated this point recently with a mock debate between Ubisoft and Valve. Edge brings news of yet another player in the games industry who has joined with Valve in treating pirates as underserved customers rather than thieves.

John Goodale, Unity's general manager of Asia, told Edge that Unity has seen a 258.7% growth in revenue in Asia over the last year. He puts much of this growth down to piracy of the Unity3D development platform.

How can it possibly make money from people "stealing" its products? It does so by selling additional content to the users whether legit or not.

It's not talked about often, but we have a product called Asset Server that allows large teams to share assets more effectively, and according to the sales reports that I get we sell far more Asset Server in Asia than we do in the west.

As far as I can tell, Unity is looking at those who pirate its software in much the same way it looks at those who download the free version of the software, as customers. Goodale explains the flexibility he has been given in reaching out to the Asian market is the primary driver of this success:

Throughout my 25 years of doing business in Asia, I've seen very few companies be so dedicated to that region, or give me the flexibility and tools that I need to be successful. And as a result, I am just having way too much fun!

I really hope this line of thinking grows and penetrates the games industry even deeper. It is something I have argued and debated multiple times on games industry news sites and blogs. There are many people who feel the same way and many more who are dead set on treating piracy as a criminal offense. I don't blame them for the way the feel as it is their livelihood at stake. Yet, I can't understand their desire to hold onto an ideal that in the long run will fail -- especially when there are so many examples, like this one, of a company discovering it can make more money by adapting, rather than by trying to stop infringement.

Filed Under: asia, copyright, embrace, infringement
Companies: unity

More Independent Film Makers Embrace News Of Their Film Being Pirated

from the good-exposure dept

Alan Gerow was the first of a few folks to send in the news that some independent filmmakers not only discovered that their film, Ink, had ended up being widely available via Bittorrent, but that they were quite happy about the exposure. Alan sends over the email that the filmmakers sent out:

Dear Fans and Friends,

Over the weekend something pretty extraordinary happened. Ink got ripped off. Someone bit torrented the movie (we knew this would happen) and they posted it on every pirate site out there. What we didn't expect was that within 24 hours Ink would blow up. Ink became the number 1 most downloaded movie on several sites having been downloaded somewhere between 150,000 to 200,000 times as far as we can tell. Knowing there's absolutely nothing we can do about it, we've embraced the piracy and are just happy Ink is getting unprecedented exposure.

As a result, Ink is now ranked #16 on IMDb's movie meter and is currently one of the top 20 most popular movies in the world.

This all started as a result of the completely underground buzz that you've each helped us create. We've had no distributor, no real advertising and yet the word of mouth that you've generated has made the film blow up as soon as it became available worldwide. So many of you came to see the movie multiple times, bringing friends and family and many of you have bought the DVD and Blu-ray from us. All of this built up and built up and suddenly it exploded.

We don't know exactly where this will all lead, but the exposure is unquestionably a positive thing.

Ink hits Netflix, Blockbuster, iTunes and many more tomorrow! Remember to get your signed copies, t-shirts and posters at the Ink Store.

Thank you so much for the constant love and support.

Jamin and Kiowa
Double Edge Films"

Again, we've seen this with other films as well, but it's always nice to see filmmakers who realize it doesn't make sense to freak out, but to look for ways to take advantage of this as a promotional opportunity.

Filed Under: bittorrent, embrace, file sharing, films, ink