Most young people today have grown up on MP3's and that is what their ears have been trained to consider "normal." There was a study a couple of years ago where they asked people of different ages to pick between music recorded as normal MP3's and high quality recordings. Young people preferred the clipped and compressed MP3 sounds, saying it was more natural.
That does not bode well for the hope of mass repurchasing of music collections.
The videos from Ted.com usually have a sponsor's splash screen at the start and then a rather lengthy trailer ad. It gives another revenue stream, and some of the advertising trailers are themselves very interesting.
>>The solution, of course, is not to build a million dollar game, but a cheaper game that is actually good.
The content industry has been slow to embrace that concept. We hear cries from the movie industry that new business models will make it impossible to produce $200 million movies. Lots of industry egos are based on the concept that you have not arrived in Hollywood until you have worked on a $200 million movie. They have all forgotten that the objective is to make good movies. Good movies and expensive movies are not necessarily the same thing. If a movie is good and develops a fan base there will be ways to monetize it.
One problem for both games and movies is that when you are spending massive amounts of money, you can't take chances. Therefore we see a lot of sequels in both the game and movie industry. They simply can't afford to take changes because of the size of the investments. It is the small independent outfits that are doing the innovation.
When a company has a massive fixed development cost and a near-zero marginal cost of production, it has a huge problem. Its operation is flying in the face of basic economics. The only way this type of business can exist for long is to rely on artificial monopolies, and the easiest way to accomplish artificial monopolies is with government support.
Economics always wins in the end. Either the artificial monopolies go away or the system becomes totally dysfunctional. I think that rampant piracy is one of the symptoms of a legal system that is far out of whack.
>> Taking drugs is illegal and testing for drug use is not. How is this different? How is scanning one's Facebook stream not "testing" for illegal activity?
Presumably a drug test only tests for use of illegal drugs. If you get turned down for a job because of a drug test you can at least challenge the test.
Checking your online persona is entirely different. Are they looking to see whether you "liked" things that are perfectly legal but the government reviewer doesn't like?
Plus, they now have my password and account credentials, so they can actually alter my material or cause problems. They really don't like you? Take your password to a public hotspot and send a threatening email to the President or do a hundred other things that cause you trouble.
There are huge differences between a mandatory drug test and surrendering your online persona.
>>Sequels (including prequels and spin-offs) comprise over a fifth of the currently scheduled nationwide releases, tallying 27. Last year, there were 19, and the previous high was 24 in 2003.
It could be argued that one of the best ways to promote a sequel would be to encourage piracy of the previous episodes.
It strikes me as very odd that the movie industry is so big to promote censorship or at least the promote use of the tools of censorship. Members of the MPAA are probably at greater risk of feeling censorship that any other part of society. Of course, they see it as their political hacks doing the censoring. That makes it feel safe. For now.
However, that might change in the future. Suppose Tea Partiers take the White House. All of a sudden the movie industry might find itself facing the same tools being used to take down any site that hosts a movie that "promotes homosexuality" or whatever cause happens to be popular at the moment. How about taking down all films that promote anything on the liberal agenda because it is a threat to America? What happens if a liberal administration decides that the Tea Party is a threat and seizes their websites along with any sites that host movies about Sarah Palin?
The MPAA is working hard to get the tools of censorship considered normal and healthy. I hope that those tools don't get used against the MPAA and the rest of us in the future.
Maybe Dodd will reform the MPAA. He will remain true to the ideas he expressed in the Senate and convince the MPAA that they need to abandon their obsession with piracy and concern themselves with other issues that desperately need attention if they are to survive.
Dang. I'm having those fantasies again. Now I have to call the doctor and have him increase my medications.
I agree that it would be nice to poke fun at the arguments, but the current set of critics have made themselves such easy targets. They seem for the most part to have run out of good material, or perhaps the industry is just finding it harder these days to find shills with a brain.
I am a firm believer that good critics help any cause. Critics force people to think rather than just posting the usual rhetoric and "preaching to the choir." When you know that every sentence you write is likely to be dissected by smart critics, it makes you more careful about everything you write. You think things through, and you don't say things that you know you can't defend.
So, here is a plea to AC, AJ, et. al. Please step it up a notch. We are counting on you to make TechDirt stronger.
>>Yes, let's ignore the fact that TSA was given special powers to PROTECT people,
The issue is that most of what they are doing does not protect people. And all to often those "special powers" are being used to the detriment of the people they are supposed to be trying to protect.
>>Wholesale copying is not protected speech, and there is no prior restraint.
The copying might not be protected speech, but there was a lot of free speech taking place on some of the seized websites. There were blogs with commentary about music, the recording industry, P2P issues, and a whole lot of other stuff. In fact, on some of the sites blogs were the primary site content.
Depending on what is being copied, copying could also be considered free speech. If the items copied included documentaries or politically themed music it could possibly be considered prior restraint to suppress them without meeting very strict legal mandates, even if they were infringing.
>>Mike's derision assumes that the "for the children" argument was just pretext. What if they were actually targeting child porn?
What was their priority? They protected music, movies, and live streams of the Superbowl before they got around to protecting the children.
This looks like another "save the children" grandstand. Lots of press releases, and it does nothing to protect the children. The pornographers are still operating the sites under different names, and they are still exploiting the children they abuse just as much as they did before.
No one around here is trying to defend child pornography, but there are a lot of us that are deeply suspicious of government actions that sound good and do nothing.
>>And, one of the counterpoints that people have argued is that those rulings only apply to porn, but not copyright (no one has a good explanation of why that would be, but we'll leave that aside).
That should be obvious to anyone who reads here regularly. The industry views copyright infringement as a much more serious crime than child porn, so IP laws should abide by a lower standard and can ignore pesky issues like prior restraint and the First and Fourth Amendments. All authoritarians know that child porn serves a useful purpose -- it allows all sorts of government actions to have the excuse that we are just protecting the children. If child porn went away you would destroy innumerable grandstands and questionable power grabs that hide behind "We must protect the children" while actually doing nothing that effectively protects the children.
>>A bit like the US Immigration forms "Are you, or have you ever, been involved in plans to overthrow the US Government" or words to that effect.
I figure that the only people who check that are people who are just joking or who check it by mistake. I wonder how much money the government has had to spend running down bogus answers to this question.
Unfortunately, you probably are not far from the truth. The established trajectory of the actions would put Techdirt in the path of an eventual take down. The pattern of the seizures seems to ignore any freedom of speech issues or the overall legality of the site in question. The only common thread in the seizures is that established industries consider the site inconvenient. Techdirt has had several links to file locker services which the industry considers piracy (never mind that the courts disagree). TD has also had links to multiple artists and works which are not actually under industry copyright, but which various collection societies still claim the right to demand royalties on. Those actions make it guilty of inducing infringement in the eyes of many in the industry.
The knowledge that TD would probably fight a seizure directly is the one thing that might prevent its shutdown. I just hope that Bradley Manning didn't confess under torture that he had any prior contacts with Mike.
On the post: Record Labels Planning Yet Another Way To Try To Get You To Rebuy Music You Already 'Bought'
Quality
That does not bode well for the hope of mass repurchasing of music collections.
On the post: Case Study: How TED Learned That 'Giving It Away' Increased Both Popularity And Revenue
Another revenue stream
On the post: Maybe Super Cheap Video Games Are Helping, Not Destroying, The Video Game Industry
Re: Re: And with a marginal cost of zero...
The content industry has been slow to embrace that concept. We hear cries from the movie industry that new business models will make it impossible to produce $200 million movies. Lots of industry egos are based on the concept that you have not arrived in Hollywood until you have worked on a $200 million movie. They have all forgotten that the objective is to make good movies. Good movies and expensive movies are not necessarily the same thing. If a movie is good and develops a fan base there will be ways to monetize it.
One problem for both games and movies is that when you are spending massive amounts of money, you can't take chances. Therefore we see a lot of sequels in both the game and movie industry. They simply can't afford to take changes because of the size of the investments. It is the small independent outfits that are doing the innovation.
When a company has a massive fixed development cost and a near-zero marginal cost of production, it has a huge problem. Its operation is flying in the face of basic economics. The only way this type of business can exist for long is to rely on artificial monopolies, and the easiest way to accomplish artificial monopolies is with government support.
Economics always wins in the end. Either the artificial monopolies go away or the system becomes totally dysfunctional. I think that rampant piracy is one of the symptoms of a legal system that is far out of whack.
On the post: Maybe Super Cheap Video Games Are Helping, Not Destroying, The Video Game Industry
Coincidence or magic?
To the uninformed, basic economics in action can appear indistinguishable from magic.
On the post: The Amount Of Content Created In Spite Of Copyright Is Staggering
On the post: Why Is The MPAA's Top Priority 'Fighting Piracy' Rather Than Helping The Film Industry Thrive?
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think I am already on the list.
On the post: Maryland Corrections Agency Demanding All Social Media Passwords Of Potential Hires
Re: Drug Test?
Presumably a drug test only tests for use of illegal drugs. If you get turned down for a job because of a drug test you can at least challenge the test.
Checking your online persona is entirely different. Are they looking to see whether you "liked" things that are perfectly legal but the government reviewer doesn't like?
Plus, they now have my password and account credentials, so they can actually alter my material or cause problems. They really don't like you? Take your password to a public hotspot and send a threatening email to the President or do a hundred other things that cause you trouble.
There are huge differences between a mandatory drug test and surrendering your online persona.
On the post: Why Is The MPAA's Top Priority 'Fighting Piracy' Rather Than Helping The Film Industry Thrive?
Re: Re:
It could be argued that one of the best ways to promote a sequel would be to encourage piracy of the previous episodes.
On the post: Why Is The MPAA's Top Priority 'Fighting Piracy' Rather Than Helping The Film Industry Thrive?
When Censorship comes home
However, that might change in the future. Suppose Tea Partiers take the White House. All of a sudden the movie industry might find itself facing the same tools being used to take down any site that hosts a movie that "promotes homosexuality" or whatever cause happens to be popular at the moment. How about taking down all films that promote anything on the liberal agenda because it is a threat to America? What happens if a liberal administration decides that the Tea Party is a threat and seizes their websites along with any sites that host movies about Sarah Palin?
The MPAA is working hard to get the tools of censorship considered normal and healthy. I hope that those tools don't get used against the MPAA and the rest of us in the future.
On the post: Chris Dodd Breaking Promise Not To Become A Lobbyist Just Weeks After Leaving Senate; Joining MPAA As Top Lobbyist
Maybe...
Dang. I'm having those fantasies again. Now I have to call the doctor and have him increase my medications.
On the post: James Earl Jones Reciting Justin Bieber Lyrics On TV... Copyright Infringement Or Not?
What would Darth Vader say
On the post: Most Insightful, Funniest Comments Of The Week On Techdirt
Re:
I am a firm believer that good critics help any cause. Critics force people to think rather than just posting the usual rhetoric and "preaching to the choir." When you know that every sentence you write is likely to be dissected by smart critics, it makes you more careful about everything you write. You think things through, and you don't say things that you know you can't defend.
So, here is a plea to AC, AJ, et. al. Please step it up a notch. We are counting on you to make TechDirt stronger.
On the post: Did Watson Succeed On Jeopardy By Infringing Copyrights?
AI
On the post: TSA Agents Caught Stealing From Passengers & Helping Subordinates Steal As Well
Re: Re:
The issue is that most of what they are doing does not protect people. And all to often those "special powers" are being used to the detriment of the people they are supposed to be trying to protect.
On the post: Once Again, Why Homeland Security's Domain Name Seizures Are Almost Certainly Not Legal
Re:
The copying might not be protected speech, but there was a lot of free speech taking place on some of the seized websites. There were blogs with commentary about music, the recording industry, P2P issues, and a whole lot of other stuff. In fact, on some of the sites blogs were the primary site content.
Depending on what is being copied, copying could also be considered free speech. If the items copied included documentaries or politically themed music it could possibly be considered prior restraint to suppress them without meeting very strict legal mandates, even if they were infringing.
On the post: Death Of Nokia's 'Comes With Music' Shows That 'Free' With DRM Is A Losing Proposition
Re:
Well placed campaign contributions.
On the post: Did Homeland Security Seize... And Then Unseize... A Dynamic DNS Domain?
Re: Re: Re:
What was their priority? They protected music, movies, and live streams of the Superbowl before they got around to protecting the children.
This looks like another "save the children" grandstand. Lots of press releases, and it does nothing to protect the children. The pornographers are still operating the sites under different names, and they are still exploiting the children they abuse just as much as they did before.
No one around here is trying to defend child pornography, but there are a lot of us that are deeply suspicious of government actions that sound good and do nothing.
On the post: Did Homeland Security Seize... And Then Unseize... A Dynamic DNS Domain?
Relative importance
That should be obvious to anyone who reads here regularly. The industry views copyright infringement as a much more serious crime than child porn, so IP laws should abide by a lower standard and can ignore pesky issues like prior restraint and the First and Fourth Amendments. All authoritarians know that child porn serves a useful purpose -- it allows all sorts of government actions to have the excuse that we are just protecting the children. If child porn went away you would destroy innumerable grandstands and questionable power grabs that hide behind "We must protect the children" while actually doing nothing that effectively protects the children.
On the post: UK Law Enforcement Also Looking To Be Able To Seize Domains
Re: Re:
I figure that the only people who check that are people who are just joking or who check it by mistake. I wonder how much money the government has had to spend running down bogus answers to this question.
On the post: UK Law Enforcement Also Looking To Be Able To Seize Domains
Re:
Unfortunately, you probably are not far from the truth. The established trajectory of the actions would put Techdirt in the path of an eventual take down. The pattern of the seizures seems to ignore any freedom of speech issues or the overall legality of the site in question. The only common thread in the seizures is that established industries consider the site inconvenient. Techdirt has had several links to file locker services which the industry considers piracy (never mind that the courts disagree). TD has also had links to multiple artists and works which are not actually under industry copyright, but which various collection societies still claim the right to demand royalties on. Those actions make it guilty of inducing infringement in the eyes of many in the industry.
The knowledge that TD would probably fight a seizure directly is the one thing that might prevent its shutdown. I just hope that Bradley Manning didn't confess under torture that he had any prior contacts with Mike.
Next >>