Forbes’s Paul Tassi argues that piracy is, first and foremost, a service problem:
So, what to do? Go the other direction. Realize piracy is a service problem. Right now, from the browser window in which I’m writing this article, it is possible to download and start watching a movie for free in a few swift clicks.
(This is all purely theoretical of course)
1. Move mouse to click on Pirate Bay bookmark
2. Type in “The Hangover 2? (awful movie, but a new release for the sake of the example)
3. Click on result with highest seeds
4. Click download torrent
5. Auto open uTorrent
6. Wait ten minutes to download
7. Play movie, own it forever
He also cites price. I am sympathetic to this argument, but I have become increasingly less so over the years. In large part because it ignores the existence of the music industry.
Namely, the music industry has something very much like what he’s talking about. Except that it’s a buffet. I have subscribed to Rhapsody since 2005 and with it comes a lifetime’s library of listening. As much as I want, whenever I want. It does require a computer, but if I want to listen to it in my car, I can buy it with less hassle than I can download an illicit copy of it. And now, with Spotify, you can listen to music for free. In short, the music industry has (reluctantly, belatedly) done everything that has been asked of it.
Has piracy abated? I don’t know, but I don’t think it has. If it has, I haven’t heard about it. (Note: I am not saying that piracy is to blame for the industry’s doldrums.) Instead, we’re hearing the same things about the music industry we’ve heard all along. Namely, that they’re just going to have to deal with it.
And you know what? They are. The only way to really crush down on it would be burning the village to save it. Or rather, burning the Internet down to protect their turf. I have my doubts that even SOPA/PIPA would have been sufficient.
Now, to get back to movies, I don’t disagree with Tassi’s plan, in the overall. Not as a way to combat piracy in any meaningful sense, but as a way to make a few extra bucks.
The music industry isn’t actually necessary for music. As music has become easier and cheaper to produce at professional-sounding levels, they can actually outsource and crowdsource their artist selection and focus more on the real service they provide, which is promotion (and, to a lesser extent, distribution). And that’s something of a zero-sum game where everybody can make due with less as long as everybody is spending less (at least I think).
Movies are in a bit of a different predicament, because we need movie-makers and networks in a way that we don’t need the record industry. Good movies, and good TV shows, tend to be pretty expensive. Ultimately, there has to be a way for them to recoup those costs. The good news is that movies have more at their disposal to do so. Initial release. International release. Video release. Commercials on television. Music has other forms of revenue, too (licensing), but it has fewer bases.
So I am not particularly worried about the destruction of Hollywood. And at least tentatively, I am actually inclined to say the same of the movie/TV industry as I do the music industry. A worst case scenario, if it were to come to fruition, though, is far worse for video entertainment than audio. But it doesn’t seem to be affected. While theater movies seem to be getting more and more conservative, (something I might attribute to piracy, if it weren’t for…) secondary movies seem to be proliferating. Look at the average Redbox or Safeway rental stand and you’ll see a lot of movies with recognizable names still getting made. And when these movies to straight to video, that’s a pretty strong suggestion of a strong market for such things, which is precisely where piracy should cut the deepest.
So, who knows what tomorrow brings. I’d still like to see Tassi’s service. Somehow, this is all going to have to get organized. I think it’s unfortunate that the Netflix model has taken the lead on this. Not because I don’t like the Netflix (streaming model). I do! But the all-you-can-watch is problematic and as people get used to it, the notion of paying for individual movies (even at a dollar or two) becomes increasingly foreign. That leaves us in a model where everything is a stable and everything will be spread out between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and so on. And worse, there will be little in the way of content reliability. You can (more or less) count on Rhapsody to have this month what it had last month. You can’t found on Hulu. Which itself may be enough for people to say “Hey, if I download it, it’ll be there as long as I don’t delete it.”
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7 Responses to Pirate Play
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I wasn’t able to get Rhapsody to work. It was always skipping or repeating parts of songs. As for Spotify it’s rather nosy, insisting you have a Facebook page and then insisting you share your friend’s list with it.
Sounds rather…suspicious.
I’ll confess – I’m a pirate. Not much of one, but a little bit. I even twist the facts to keep my self-image as a pirate with a heart of gold.
The only reasons that I pirate music* is that I want to make sure it’s available when I want it – and there is no legal way for me to get it. That way I’m not tethered to a network if I want to hear something, and not at the mercy of some executive’s decision**. And my wants tend toward the obscure, so I really think something that is available for me to stream now may not be later. Probably not the case if I want to hear a Lady Gaga song.
Here’s an example. I think this performance from a website that presents Americana-type music is amazing: http://musicfog.com/home/2010/12/18/raul-malo-one-more-angel.html
I want to be able to play that at will, and be pleasantly surprised when it comes up on shuffle. I could have just downloaded the video and converted it to mp3.
But I want the performers to get rewarded, and the people who record and post the music, too. It was not an option to buy a copy of the performance, because of issues with the record label. I could buy the song from the album from Amazon, but there is no reward to the website, since they don’t have an amazon affiliate link. So I had my wife buy the song using the iTunes link, and send it to me (illegal?). I took this step so at least a little spare change*** goes to Raul Malo and Musicfog. I then converted from whatever Apple’s format is to mp3 (illegal?), and found that version to be almost unlistenable. Finally I downloaded the video (illegal?) and converted the audio to mp3 (illegal?), and…
…Got what I wanted in the first place.
If I cared much about movies, I would be the perfect example of what the linked article described – someone who would rather not pirate.
If I stop writing about myself for a second:
The Amazon movie streaming is already using the model described in the linked article – instant streaming for just a dollar or two. TV series are more expensive, though.
A4
*Music exclusively for me, no movies.
**We have a Netflix subscription, and have lost access without warning to TV series before we finished watching them.
***I literally by music with spare change that I convert to Amazon gift cards, as a way to stop me from buying too much.
Rhapsody and Spotify both sign licensing deals with the content rightsholders. They’re “free” the same way that radio is free, i.e. advertisers pay for it to operate because the service lets them play ads at you. (Or you could pay for a subscription and cover the cost yourself.)
I pay for Rhapsody. To my knowledge, they don’t have the free option that Spotify does.
Yes, Spotify is free in the sense that it is advertiser supported.
I wasn’t able to get Rhapsody to work. It was always skipping or repeating parts of songs. As for Spotify it’s rather nosy, insisting you have a Facebook page and then insisting you share your friend’s list with it.
I’m not sure that it’s required that you have a Facebook account. I think it just makes setting up an account easier. I don’t share my plays.
Why didn’t Rhapsody work?
I tried check out Spotify a while back, and I could intall it, but seemed to require a Facebook account. Maybe I’ll try again. I’ve heard high praise.
Trumwill, am I right to think that when you stop paying for Rhapsody, or they go out of business, you will lose access to that music, and play counts, etc.?
A4
I tried check out Spotify a while back, and I could intall it, but seemed to require a Facebook account. Maybe I’ll try again. I’ve heard high praise.
Huh. Maybe I’m wrong on that. I tied it to my Facebook account, but it didn’t seem like I had do. Maybe if I’d tried to do it without Facebook, I’d have seen that it was more complicated than it appeared.
Trumwill, am I right to think that when you stop paying for Rhapsody, or they go out of business, you will lose access to that music, and play counts, etc.?
That is accurate (unless you rip the music as it is playing, which is technically possible though not legal). It’s purely a subscription service. Zune has a thing where you sign up for a monthly service and you get a certain number of MP3s for free every month.