Tag Archives: piracy

Copyright, Music, My Stories

Living with unfairness

It’s late and I’m laying in bed. I can’t sleep so I reach over to the iPhone.

How things have changed? We are connected all the time. As I’m checking
my emails I’m thinking about the game of football my kids played on the
Saturday and the refereeing from the other teams coach. It got me a bit
upset at how the referee was coaching his team while refereeing. I started to think about how unfair it was that my boys team had to go back to half way when his team had a goal kick and when we had a goal kick he would make his players stay 5 meters away. It’s not fair is it.

The kids had a draw but they won the game in my heart and everyone else’s that watched it.

Why?

They rolled with the punches and kept on rising to the occasion. A game of football is the same as life.

We win, we lose. We feel good, we feel bad. However in football when something is not fair, the team unites and rises above and beyond their
abilities. In life, that feeling of unfairness can either cripple you or make you work harder or work differently.

How many times have I heard a person say, it’s not fair. It probably wasn’t fair to one person but it was fair to the other.

Don’t complain about it. Don’t forget about it. Learn from it and move on.

Music is a classic example when it comes to unfairness. The whole
industry is built with the cards stacked against fairness. Artist used to say how unfair the contract was that they signed or how unfair the label treated them. Then the Internet came along and now it’s the labels shouting how unfair it is. The favourite PR line, “the Internet spreads piracy and it needs to be controlled.”

Instead of rolling with it, learning from it just to rise above it, they want to control it, obliterate it as they are too lazy to innovate on their own. Spoil it for billions to protect the profits of a few. Maybe these label heads and their politician friends in their lobby group need to come and watch a junior football game, see how unfair the real world actually is.

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Copyright, Music

Creative Accounting = Piracy Losses

There is an excellent post over at the excellent Techdirt that talks about DRM’s in gaming and how it really doesn’t stop people from copying the game, however what it does do is hinder the real paying customers.

The part that got my attention is the comments about the losses due to piracy.  I am one of those people who doesn’t believe the crap the MPAA, RIAA and others spin on losses due to piracy.  If a movie comes out that i really want to watch, i will take my family and pay $80 to watch it.  If a band releases a song or an album that is worth buying, i will buy it.  There are also the bands that i buy before i even listen to a song.  I have a PAY TV subscription, that doesn’t cater for my needs and timetable, however i still keep it.

The reason why I am mentioning all of this, is that there are millions of others that are just like me.  Fans of art.  Fans of culture.  However, we the FANS of art are ignored by the legacy industries and their stupid lobby groups.  We the FANS are the PEOPLE and we form the PUBLIC.  We the PUBLIC are not mentioned when the legacy industries try to extend copyright or pass stupid far-reaching bills like SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, etc…

In the post, the Super Meat Boy developer mentions that, “Team Meat shows no loss in our year end totals due to piracy and neither should any other developer.”

That’s the whole argument in a nutshell.  How many profit and loss statements or balance sheets are issued that show a loss due to piracy.   How can the record labels or movie studios quantify accurately what a piracy loss is, so that it can be an audited item on a balance sheet.

Commentor Josef Anvil suggested the following;

Since lawmakers have swallowed the “loss” argument from the content industry and want to pass more enforcement, then they should walk the walk.  They should begin allowing companies to write off their piracy losses on their taxes every year. One year of that and we would see if governments actually believed in those “losses”.

Can you imagine that?  A few years back the MPAA stated that piracy losses amounted to $58 billion.  Imagine the taxman seeing that amount as a loss on a profit and loss statement from Disney.  I am sure it will raise a few eyebrows.  Do you reckon the losses that Bon Jovi will get on their new album What About Now is due to piracy or due to a really bad album? 

What about the losses Disney suffered on John Carter?  It’s funny that when a movie is really bad the talk about piracy disappears.  $200 million is a lot of money to lose.  Let’s blame piracy.  The money that EA Games is going to lose over its stupid DRM on Sim City. Let’s blame piracy.  The money that Bon Jovi is going to lose over its crap album.  Let’s blame the pirates.

I remember seeing that Transformers 1 (T1) and (T2) where the most pirated movies over Bit Torrent.  Guess what T1 made $710M and T2 made $840M.  T3 wasn’t even on any all time torrent list and it made $1.3 Billion.  Why is that?

Maybe because the people that downloaded a torrent of T1 and T2 became fans and paid to watch T3.  Maybe those little kids that downloaded T1 and T2 because their parents wouldn’t take them to watch it, became fans and are now old enough to go to the cinema on their own and watch it.

One thing is certain, piracy is a load of bullshit, designed by the lobby groups so that they can get stupid legislation passed that puts them back in control of the distribution.

 

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Music

CD’s and other Facts

They still have those stupid FBI Anti Piracy Warnings. Do the labels and the FBI believe that these work or deter people.

They still have that stupid sticker on the top that takes forever to get off, even after it is wrapped in plastic.

Lyric booklets are almost no more.

I still buy em from independent self release artists like Digital Summer, One Less Reason, etc as a form of support.

Bands should take a leaf out of what Coheed and Cambria did with The Afterman releases and Stone Sour with the House of Gold and Bones. Take care of your fans.

For bands that listen to what their support team tells them, don’t. Listen to your fans. They are your bosses. Know your fans and connect with them.

Piracy is here to stay. Accept it, and use it to your advantage. If you are one of those bands that has their music with the large labels, speak up when the RIAA claims its a win for artists. The RIAA represents the labels, not the artists.

Don’t wait for the label to sign you and think that once that is done you will be a star. You need to work at it..

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Music

UK Stars want anti piracy action

Just yesterday, Torrentfreak ran a post which had the following (at the bottom of the post) letter;

Isn’t it funny how Robert Plant signed it.  Yes the same Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin who ripped off other artists and didn’t credit them in during Led Zeppelin’s heydey.  Just check out the brilliant documentary “Everything is A Remix”.  vimeo.com/14912890

And now Robert Plant wants a strong domestic copyright framework, so that UK creative industries can earn a fair return on their huge investments creating original content.  Its a bit of a double standard.

But the thing i struggle to understand here, is how stronger copyrights will benefit these people.  How will censorship of the internet and litigation benefit these people.

Will it stop piracy?  Will it even reduce piracy?  I don’t think so.

Dear Prime Minister,

As the world’s focus turns to the UK this summer, there is an opportunity to stimulate growth in sectors where the UK has a competitive edge. Our creative industries represent one such sector, which creates jobs at twice the speed of the rest of the economy.

Britain’s share of the global music market is higher than ever with UK artists, led by Adele, breaking through to global stardom. As a digitally advanced nation whose language is spoken around the world, the UK is well positioned to increase its exports in the digital age. Competition in the creative sector is in talent and innovation, not labour costs or raw materials.

We can realise this potential only if we have a strong domestic copyright framework, so that UK creative industries can earn a fair return on their huge investments creating original content. Illegal activity online must be pushed to the margins. This will benefit consumers, giving confidence they are buying safely online from legal websites.

The simplest way to ensure this would be to implement swiftly the long overdue measures in the Digital Economy Act 2010; and to ensure broadband providers, search engines and online advertisers play their part in protecting consumers and creators from illegal sites.

We are proud of our cultural heritage and believe that we and our sector can play a much bigger role in supporting UK growth. To continue to create world beating creative content, we need a little bit of help from our friends.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Cowell
Roger Daltrey CBE
Professor Green
Sir Elton John CBE
The Lord Lloyd Webber
Dr Brian May CBE
Robert Plant
Roger Taylor
Tinie Tempah
Pete Townshend

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