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Tagged: piracy

February 24, 2012

  • Gamasutra: Lars Doucet’s Blog – Piracy and the four currencies
    Worth reading:

    So, let’s start with my favorite example, Dragon Age II. On release, the game cost:

    $M 60
    $T 5
    $P 100
    $I 0

    This game was expensive, it took forever to install and deal with the invasive DRM, which was only slightly more fun than getting groped by the TSA in the comfort of your own home. The only thing that was cheap about the game was that buying it was “the right thing to do,” wasn’t illegal, and it didn’t make the player feel guilty. The only way this service competed with piracy was in the $I cost.

    By comparison, pirate sites were offering the game for the low, low price of :

    $M 0
    $T 0.5
    $P 5
    $I 10

    It cost no money, and the only time spent was downloading the game file. There was some pain-in-the-butt, ie, the player could accidentally download malware, needed to know how to use bittorent (easy for us geeks, not so for average joe/jane), and was constantly being hassled by lurid ads and pop-ups. Finally, there was the integrity cost that piracy is illegal, and in some sense, “morally wrong.”

    Spending one costs a tiny part of your soul.

    What if Dragon Age II had this price instead?

    $M 60
    $T 0.5
    $P 0.5
    $I 0

    Ie, what if buying Dragon Age II was as easy as entering payment information, downloading the game, and running it? Now the game looks pretty competitive – it’s actually less of a pain-in-the-butt than pirating it, and it doesn’t “cost” any moral integrity or ask you to break any laws, either!

  • Da Chip
    “Two Daft Punk Albums Remixed as 8-Bit Nintendo Songs”

    too good.

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December 20, 2011

Spanish novelist quits writing because of piracy

An award-winning Spanish novelist claims that the illegal downloading of ebooks has forced her to give up writing and start looking for a new job.

“People are making millions out of online piracy by setting up in places like Belize, which is where the money goes,” Etxebarria said. “They are a powerful lobby and our government doesn’t dare legislate.”

Her latest novel, The Contents of Silence, was published in October and … is not available as a legal ebook but can be downloaded in pdf format from numerous websites. The print edition costs more than €20.

- Guardian: Spanish novelist Lucía Etxebarria quits writing in piracy protest

Lucía Etxebarria on Amazon.com Kindle vs Other

Lucía Etxebarria on Amazon.com Kindle vs Other

So people want to read Lucía Etxebarria’s books digitally, but they are not available digitally except as pirated copies, so instead of making them available she decides to stop writing? Comes back to how I feel about the lazy route. Make legal as easy as illegal and a I don’t think cost will be a barrier to people willing to pay. People unwilling to pay won’t pay either way. Ignore them.

See also: How much should an ebook cost?

“In a market where the marginal cost is close to zero, prices tend to race to zero as well … Except when there are no substitutes … So our analysis begins with the notion that there will be at least two price points for ebooks. One will be super cheap, perhaps a dollar, for ebooks where there are substitutes …  But what about books where there is no obvious substitute[?] … Here, we need to take a moment and think about the nature of a substitute. Of course, there is no substitute for Neil. On the other hand, at $100 a book, most of us would make do and move on to our second choice. So there is a substitute, just not a perfect one or an easy one.”

[Update] See also “Striking Spanish author sparks digital publishing debate”

“Constantine too believes that there ways to survive in the constantly changing environment of literary publishing.
“[Etxebarria] might as well simply publish as ebooks herself as well, and at least get some income from these legal versions. It’s what I’m doing now.”

December 15, 2011

  • Busted: BitTorrent Pirates at Sony, Universal and Fox | TorrentFreak
    “Buma/Stemra issued a press release stating that their IP-addresses were spoofed. A very unlikely scenario, but one that will be welcomed by BitTorrent pirates worldwide. In fact, they’d encourage Sony, Universal and Fox to say something similar. After all, if it’s so easy to spoof an IP-address, then accused file-sharers can use this same defense against copyright holders. Checkmate?”

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December 14, 2011

Spotify & Artists & Royalties & Piracy

Purely for selfish reasons I like artists earning a living. If they don’t earn they might go and get crappy jobs that don’t allow them to make the books and music and films I like.

But I’m lazy. Like water I will follow the easiest route to that art. Stick a film on when I can see where I can see it and I’ll go and see it. Same with books, I do digital; stick it in on Amazon or your own site and I’ll download and read it. And music, give me a no brainer option to pay (Emusic, Spotify  subscription, Amazon mp3 download) and I’m there.

And now the genie is out of the bottle. I don’t want to go back to getting myself into town to search for an album that may or maybe not be in the shop at a price I may or may not want to pay.

So it pisses me off when I read…

“[A] growing number of big acts (from Adele to the Black Keys) have withheld their new albums from the service, while artists such as Mercury nominee Jon Hopkins are bemoaning low royalty payments, something which has also prompted many smaller independent labels to withdraw their catalogues.” guardian.co.uk

…following closely on the tails of…

“[T]he stark reality that every digital-music subscription service such as Spotify, Rhapsody, MOG, Rdio, and others must confront … are being made public. The specifics are even more onerous than the hot dog example cited above. Together they doom online audio companies to a life of subjugation to the labels …

With most other businesses, if a supplier makes unreasonable demands, a retailer can turn to other providers. Since copyright law gives record labels and publishers a government-granted monopoly, no such option is possible with music. Digital vendors have only two options: Accept the terms or not include those songs in their offering.” gigaom.com

Which leaves me feeling (‘cos I’m to lazy to do real research, but not lazy enough to not read those articles) that artists get shafted by the labels, and music services like Spotify get shafted by the labels, and artists blame the music services and withdraw their music, and then lazy people go and download their music illegally and the labels say “See how bad the internet is? We’re struggling, sorry we can only give you shit royalties, blame music services and piracy”.

And yet if you skip the labels and make good stuff, people too lazy to shop in the old real world will happily pay…

Related: Louis CK Makes $200,000 Profit in Four Days With Online Video

 

August 14, 2011

The Pirates

“The Pirate Bay website made money by illegally offering major-label albums, even as music sales declined to less than half of what they were 10 years ago.” The Guardian, Sunday 14 August 2011

I don’t think The Pirate Bay actually offers anything. I think it’s a mistake to compare it to a flea market with stalls selling illegal cd’s or dvd’s. The Pirate Bay is more akin to a bulletin board linking those who have and those who want. Where the products being linked to initially is interesting – what compels someone to buy something and then give it away for free? Especially something they haven’t produced themselves? And if an artist creates something but gives it away, what is the moral position on someone else then giving it away for free?

When newspapers give away DVD’s of films, they must have paid the film companies something. But the consumer gets something for a fraction of what it would have cost to have bought it. “Let Him Have It” is currently on Amazon.co.uk  for around a fiver. But I have a copy from a newspaper that cost me a pound or so. Did the newspaper make up the difference?

A newspaper must have seen that cost as worth it to get me to try their paper, in a way that is similar to an artist giving away something they have created to gain publicity. Cory Doctorow, for example. You can buy his books – which I have – and you can download his books for free – which I have. In some cases I have done both; a copy of his book on my shelf, but a copy on my Kindle to re-read.

But I think it’s a mistake to compare The Pirate Bay to that model. They aren’t a flea market stall selling other people’s books and films for their own gain. They have stepped in between someone with something and someone who wants something, and profit from it. But to say they don’t do it at a cost to themselves is wrong – servers and court costs and time. That all costs. But they must profit from it, or else they would have stopped.

“[The] problem is rampant piracy – unauthorised distribution that doesn’t benefit creators or the companies that invest in them. It also puts pressure on media companies to accept online distribution deals that don’t cover their costs.” The Guardian, Sunday 14 August 2011

What we need is for the people producing what people want to be able to offer a means redistribution that enables them to gain again. They shouldn’t have to accept a means that doesn’t cover their costs, but to ignore finding a solution while they fight those in court who profit from it illegally is a mistake.

“People who illegally download music from the internet also spend more money on music than anyone else, according to a new study.” – Independent, Sunday, 1 November 2009

I believe people who can pay want to pay, and those who can’t never will. You prosecute shoplifters, yes, but you keep prices competitive and reasonable to enable those who want to shop to buy. To punish people who try something for free but who are also potential customers is a mistake. I think that the study that found that some of the biggest pirates are also some of the biggest legal consumers shows that products given away for free in the hope that a consumer will then buy that product in the future is a better approach that locking your product away in DRM.

Steal This Comic

Steal This Comic, XKCD


Ginger Wildheart: The Triple Album Project

Ginger Wildheart: The Triple Album Project

Take The Wildhearts. I first heard them from a friend who have ripped a cd and gave me the mp3′s. I then downloaded a few more albums. And then went on to buy the albums, and see the band live more times than I can remember, and buy t-shirts, and be one of the 2335 people who are funding Ginger’s current Pledge Music project sight unseen (or unheard). Should Ginger (the singer of the Wildhearts) have to give away his music for free? No. He needs to earn a living. But should he worry about someone illegally giving away a copy of the cd for free once we have all paid for it and it has been produced? I think not. For all the illegal downloads there is publicity and potential new fans. Not everyone of them, but then I don’t buy every albums of every artist I hear on the radio. But the ones I hear that I like and do I think would prefer I became a future fan than having the music they created be securely locked down and unheard on the off chance that one day I randomly decide to pay the full price and give them a try.

Subhumans, Underworld, Camden

We just need to find different means of linking those who want and those who create. And I hope that the film studios who pay directors and actors and sound engineers step up and find a better way of doing that then letting sites like The Pirate Bay do that instead. If we can get a film or TV show or album from them instead as easily and effortlessly as we can from The Pirate Bay, then illegal sites may always exist, but I think they will become irrelevant. I can’t remeber the last time I swopped mp3′s with someone. Now I send them a Spotify link – a service I pay for, although I understand that the artists gain a fraction of what they could from an album sale from Spotify, but have faith – I go to your gigs and buy t-shirts.

How much do music artists earn online?

By the way, I wrote this in response to the Guardian article “How the internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers“. I pay to receive the Guardian (and Observer) daily on a Kindle. And it doesn’t come with a free DVD.