Hey, if you want to make a monopoly you gotta break some Internets.

My usual take is this:

Piracy is made up of many levels. There are hardcore pirates, who would steal anything they can get and distribute it widely for whatever reasons they have, social, economic, or what have you. These are people who cannot and will not ever be changed.

At the other end of the scale, you have people who do not pirate, will not pirate, and much prefer to obtain content legally.

In the middle, well, you have the “soft middle”, with people leaning more towards piracy, more towards legal, whatever. You have opportunists, you have tag alongs, and other people who do things because they can. Think of it as the mob mentality, on a grander scale. Many people pirate because they can, because it is easy, and because there is no cost or risk involved.

Right now, the soft middle leans towards piracy because they can, because it’s easy, it works, it’s easy to find stuff, it’s easy to download it, it’s all automated and simple – and the risks are negligible.

With SOPA, there is great potential that many of the pirate sites out there today which facilitate the access, host the files, or otherwise contribute to piracy won’t be accessible from the US – at least not easily. As it becomes harder to find stuff, harder to obtain it, and more effort and risk comes into trying to get it, the soft middle will start to lean back to legal sources. This will be doubly so if these laws encourage legal alternatives to become more prevalent. Already, things like netflix and other streaming services have to some extent started that process.

Piracy won’t go away by any means. But it will not longer be (for Americans anyway) the cheap, simple alternative. Further, if the law makes it harder for pirate sites (and those “torrent search” sites) to make money, they are likely to be less and less common. Remove the economic motivations from the deal, and many of the players who are only there for the money and not for the lulz will fold up their tents and move along.

My feeling is that piracy goes from it’s probably 40% of the marketplace down to something like 20%, and that a good chunk of those people who get out of piracy end up using one or more “legal” services to fill the void, and fix many of the issues.

Further, I think that all of this is very good for independent artists, who will no longer have to compete with the high end product being “free!”, and they may be able to better attract audiences on the basis of their own content, not on someone else’s.

Go home Mario, this isn’t the time.

It’s clear that innovation is not something the entertainment industry is able to cope with. This bill isn’t about getting more money. It’s about stopping the next disruptive technology from getting off the ground. It’s probably too late to shut down You-Tube now. it’s too popular to go away quietly without people making a fuss. But if they can stop the next game-changer, no matter the nation it starts in, they can prolong their current revenue streams until the current execs get their golden parachute.

They learned a lesson from Napster. Going to court won the battle, but they still lost the war. Napster changed the way people wanted to purchase music (i.e. right now, over the Internet, rather than from Tower Records) , even though they successfully shut it down. This bill is about shutting things down faster, before people’s perspectives can change.

Right now, The Pirate Bay, Rapidshare, Filesonic, and dozens of others operate in PLAIN SIGHT, and ONLY that wacky legal loophole of separate links and hosting keeps them all from being shut down.

So when one has to LOOK hard to find infringing content, that’ll be success.

By the way: I don’t whack moles, appreciate them aerating my yard, besides that they’re cute.

However, PIRACY CAN’T BE LEFT TO INCREASE! That will most certainly bring down the very content industry that so many here claim to support.

Right now, the soft middle leans towards piracy because they can, because it’s easy, it works, it’s easy to find stuff, it’s easy to download it, it’s all automated and simple – and the risks are negligible.

Sounds like a good business model right there.

If it is bringing down the content industry, why do MPAA companies continue to post record profits?

Everyone keeps talking about Youtube as if getting rid of it would be bad. — I don’t agree. — But anyway, IS Youtube a valid “new business model”? Figures are difficult to find, as one of the top links says:

http://allthingsd.com/20110121/youtube-revenue-doubled-last-year-which-means-what/

So even your vaunted Youtube is on questionable basis!

Youtube appears thus far to be operating on its seed capital. Great example, guys.

I give money directly to the artists I like, by going to their shows and buying their merch. That’s the ONLY way to give money directly to the artists.

For the guy a few posts above, until we get a way we can *EASILY* purchase/play movies/games/music without jumping through the hoops of DRM, then and ONLY then, will pirating fully stop. Currently, it takes more effort to buy something than it takes to download, there’s where the problem REALLY lies.

If we gauged the success of every law, I bet we would find many that need to be repealed because they are either ineffective or too effective. By too effective I mean if you are making a criminal out of a large percentage of the population then you need to consider that just maybe that activity shouldn’t be illegal.

Napster caught them by surprise, they didn’t see it coming, so I have to wonder how the blind being given a bludging tools will be able to stop the next big thing, they can stop a lot of things, but if something like a Napster events occur again they are just screwed.

Frak, I think I will write a comic about Napster events that sounds cool LoL

The beauty of bills which legislate morality is that they are to be judged not by efficiency or effectiveness, but rather by the moral character they instill. Even if the industry loses sales due to SOPA, the fact that they get to punish those dirty dirty pirates has become an obsession. Pirates are the evil boogeymen that the industry can explain away all of its problems with, not the fact that they consistently fail to provide services to their users.

So the success of SOPA is not in what it does or if it is effective, but rather if it even gets passed.

Easy: When donations to my re-election increases.

I don’t necessarily agree. My dad who is in his 70’s got a Kindle about a year ago. He immediately complained to me that a lot of the ebooks are priced as much or higher than physical books. Now he is an engineer and not a business major and he knows that digital content should not be priced anywhere near physical content. Especially after I schooled him on the fact that he doesn’t really own that content.

Ironically the tech community bought these over reaching measures on themselves by rejecting ANY copyright based potential business models for the future. That left the old school copyright based industries no choice but to fight for its survival. You guys should have compromised and used your “intellect” to incorporate the new with the old – instead you said “screw copyrights” – BIG mistake.

Let’s assume YouTube is not yet profitable. Why would that make getting rid of it good? It’s like you don’t even understand fundamentally why it’s brought up as an example of a site that could be shut down by SOPA but absolutely should not be. It’s got nothing to do with profitability of their business model and everything to do with the free exchange of culture.

Name calling and defaming is your response?

You so just killed ANY point you were trying to make.

What are you smoking? There are entire tech company graveyards of companies that have tried to work with entertainment companies to build copyright based business models. In most cases, the entertainment industry has gone back a second time to the negotiating table after the business achieves some level of success and either:

a) jack up licensing rates to where neither the distributors go out of business and nobody makes money, or

b) demands that the usefulness of the technology be curtailed (features removed [e.g. hulu], or more release windows)

Almost every instance makes it look like the entertainment industry has less interest in making money, and more interest in controlling everything.

“Right now, the soft middle leans towards piracy because they can, because it’s easy, it works, it’s easy to find stuff, it’s easy to download it, it’s all automated and simple – and the risks are negligible. “

Correct, now the problem is stricter laws isn’t the way to fight this. Offering a easy to use legal alternative is. They want people to go back to just watching broadcast TV, its not going to happen they tasted the future. Provide more legal alternatives that are fast, convenient, easy to use, don’t require the installation of rootkits, does’t have crippling DRM and isnt subject to windowing and piracy will decline sharply.

People want to watch something, they type it into google and 1MM hits come where they can watch it online. It is not their fault that none of those options are legal. People love netflix and they loved Hulu before the industry started crippling it. Instead of spending billions trying to hold back the flood the money should be investing in embracing new technology and finding new ways to generate revenue while providing customers what they want and what they know is possible.

Oh well ‘Pirate’ is in the name? Well that’s all the proof we need, shut those fuckers down! What’s that you say? They’re not in our jurisdiction and it’s the users that are actually doing something wrong? Well going after individual users in an age where literally anyone with a computer can mass copy content on the same scale that someone with a massively expensive printing press could have in the 1700s is hard and expensive for copyright holders (the poor dears). How should we respond to this abject ubiquity of devices literally designed to create and curate copies of digital information? Should we change an archaic law that was based on the economics of several centuries ago that worked chiefly because there were huge extra-legal barriers to entry in the infringement market? Fuck no, let’s find an easy target like a website to go after and just fuck their shit up to take out our frustration.

anyone who thinks that when ‘stuff’ isn’t freely avaiable people will go out and buy whatever, is living in a dream world. atm ‘stuff’ is downloaded, tried, watched or listened to. the decision is then made as to whether that ‘stuff’ is worth buying or not. if it is, it’s bought, if it isn’t, it isn’t. what the introducers and supporters of SOPA and it’s like always forget is that if something is bought and not liked, it can’t be taken back for a refund. if something can be tried first, there is at least a chance of it being bought. without that option to try or return for a refund, people will be very selective on what they spend their money. a hell of a lot of ‘stuff’ wont even be given a second glance!

“If Services like Netflix, and I would add Hulu, Spotify, Pandora etc to that, have already started the process of turning the soft middle from piracy, why do we need SOPA? Why not just create more services that are “easy, work, easy to find stuff, easy to download it, all automated and simple”? Wouldn’t that be the better solution to legislating the Soft Middle out of piracy?”

My feeling is that the answer here lies in the cost of actually doing it legally, meeting regulations, accepting liability, and all of other pesky things that happen when you actually want to run it like a business. These services are still somewhat held up on the costs of content, because while they are generally past the critical mass point of getting enough people to visit so they can exist, few of them are showing truly profitable models.

The more users they have, the wider their reach, the less it costs on a per user basis to do things.

We also need a marketplace that can support many pandoras, many netflix, many hulus… and more beyond that.

Here’s a great example: If the people who currently pirate TV episodes instead viewed them from the original sources (network websites), they would increase the traffic to these sites, and make them more obviously useful, perhaps more profitable, and certainly encourage them to do more with it.

It’s a little complicated, and you have to look at a lot of numbers to understand the situation. Only a certain percentage of people stream videos at all outside of youtube, at least from official and legal sources. Now, if you can move some of the people who are currently using illegal services, and get them into legal alternatives, then things will likely work out better in the long run for everyone.

As long as their is a source that doesn’t have to deal with the real costs of operation, and doesn’t have to support the artists or creators, and doesn’t have to pay taxes or be a good citizen, then it will be hard to get people to convert – everyone likes a free lunch!

I hear the RIAA & MPAA have great math skills. I am sure we can trust them.

The problem I see with establishing a metric, is what baseline is to be used?

If we start with the ‘industry’ numbers, it might take a 100 years of growth to actually meet the current levels, let alone exceed them. And I believe that they will bitch every year because their ‘growth’ is actually ‘catching up’ with past ‘losses’, and will continue to add new annual losses and then bitch the increases are not big enough to correct their ‘due’.

Since Congress is ignoring their own numbers, I believe that if any metric is established, it will be skewed in the way the movie industry reports profit on billion dollar grossing movies as $0.00.

I personnally blame the schools for all this infringment. If we cant read or write we wouldnt be able to infringe using the internet. Everyone will be better off.

Maybe a useful metric would be how much profit is made from piracy (ie from fees to filelocker type sites and video streaming sites). Don’t know how you could adequately measure that though.

Even assuming that your predictions are true, is that reduction in piracy rate worth the cost? I know trolls dismiss this as FUD, but we really are talking about shutting down the free (as in speech) internet here and turning it into a a corporate wild west, where big business can unilaterally shut down legitimate, noninfringing competitors and political enemies by simply sending an email. Sure, those entities can theoretically sue — but only the well-funded can do that.

SOPA is a huge step into taking the internet away from the people (except to the extent that big business allows the people to use it) and turning it into interactive cable TV. That’s the death of the internet, or at least the parts of the internet that have real social value.

I maintain that the cost is not only too high, it is criminally high, particularly when it’s not the only possible solution. It is immoral to saddle the majority of people with such a burden only to support an aging, inflexible business that contributes comparatively little of value either financially or socially.

Name calling and defaming is your response?

You so just killed ANY point you were trying to make.

What name calling?

Anyway since you missed the point on the first go, it is that Google & Co just sold you out supporting a bill that uses ad networks and payment providers as the weapons against rogue sites. My further point is that you’re really screwed now because those guys are only ones giving your point of view any gravitas at all.

I’m the same. I pirate nothing, but there comes a point at which piracy becomes political statement. I think we are teetering on that point.

Wayne, I think part of the problem is that the business isn’t there yet, because the marketplace I think isn’t 100% settled. That is pretty much set to change in the next little while.

Disney is perhaps one of the hard cases, because they are the most cautious when it comes to putting their product out there in any format, let alone digital. I was able to find it for sale on Itunes, if that helps you out. That would probably be the first place I would look, not the last.

“I also have an issue with the “probably 40% of the marketplace quote”. Is that just your gut feeling or do you have any statistics to back that number up.”

This is based on many of the different studies that have come out, most of which show that anywhere from 20-40% of people “download”. It’s also based somewhat on looking at the drop in recorded music sales, which are off 58%. Even allowing for some “natural” drop, there is clearly a big number of people in the middle willing to download. So the number isn’t scientific, it is an approximation – as is the idea of dropping it to 20%. It’s not hard numbers, just a way of describing a situation that is somewhat hard to put in absolute numbers.

SOPA does nothing of the sort.

It doesn’t shut down the internet, it doesn’t take it away from the people, it doesn’t none of that.

Sorry if you feel that way.

I would think that artists should be rejoicing, especially the independent ones. Here is a clear chance to work without all the piracy around, without all the crap and without having to fight against hollywood / label music getting jammed into people’s hands for free. It’s time for them to up their game, get their projects out there, and enjoy a playing field that is leveled out and lets them profit from their lower costs and niche markets.

The indies suffer with piracy as the majors do, for different reasons. When people have to choose $10 for a DVD or, $1 (or even free) for a download of some new indie movie, maybe they will take the indie movie. If the hollywood movie is free, what do you use to encourage people to check out the indies?

If the only social value on the internet for you was pirated content and websites packed with infringing material, then yes, you are going to be sad. You don’t have my sympathy though, how can I feel for you when it’s just your free lunch that is over?

Thanks for stopping by.

These services are still somewhat held up on the costs of content, because while they are generally past the critical mass point of getting enough people to visit so they can exist, few of them are showing truly profitable models.

With the exception of Pandora, all of their models were turning a profit. The problem is that Big Content feels entitled to more profit (even though they are making more gross and more net every year).

We also need a marketplace that can support many pandoras, many netflix, many hulus

Why? If these platforms are available to every content producer and every consumer why do we need “others”? This sounds like the thinking of a non-Internet business mind. I’m not saying competition would be bad, only that there is no imperative for their to be alternatives if the platform can serve the needs of both producers and consumers.

Here’s a great example: If the people who currently pirate TV episodes instead viewed them from the original sources (network websites), they would increase the traffic to these sites, and make them more obviously useful, perhaps more profitable, and certainly encourage them to do more with it.

Once you can find me any major network site that has even 5% of their content available on their website then this becomes a reasonable discussion. In addition to the lack of content, there is also some technical considerations, here is a short list: I don’t want to download your custom player (use a standard codec), I don’t want the video to randomly start over forcing me to re-watch commercials, if I have to leave your site I don’t want to be stuck re-watching 5 minutes of commercials in order to seek (or fast forward if you prefer), I don’t want your website/video player/whatever to freak out and stop playing because I’m unable to connect to the advertising server (I’m not talking about intentional blocks here, I’m talking about that Hulu thing where you watch 45 seconds of a screen telling you that they can’t contact the ad network), I want the shows online available in HD (720p or greater please), I don’t want to create an account to watch “mature content” (I’ve never had to log into my TV), needless to say I could go on.

As long as their is a source that doesn’t have to deal with the real costs of operation, and doesn’t have to support the artists or creators, and doesn’t have to pay taxes or be a good citizen, then it will be hard to get people to convert – everyone likes a free lunch!

I understand what you’re trying to say, but I couldn’t disagree more. Even the best pirate sites are usually fairly crappy: they have tons of ads, the episodes vary in quality, they are not all well organized, etc. Getting people to convert to legal alternatives is actually fairly simple and very profitable, just look at Netflix. The problem facing Netflix is that content companies want to control distribution, they don’t care what is most profitable (or at least they don’t realize that they have made it their second priority).

If the MPAA or the RIAA were to spend even 1/10 of the money they have spent on lobbying, litigating, “re-educating”, etc. building a quality, useful, legal service then we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

If congress had any clue they would be looking to pass legislation which forces copyright holders to make content available at 1 rate for any distributor. You can pick any amount you want $7.00 per person, $1,000,000 for unlimited access, $0.02 for every minute watched – it doesn’t matter, as long as everyone was given equal access you would see huge growth around the content industry.

/sorry for any spelling or grammar errors, this is too long to check.

Wayne, I think part of the problem is that the business isn’t there yet, because the marketplace I think isn’t 100% settled.

How much longer does it take and why? How long after Napster took it the industry to come up with iTunes? What took you so long?

That will most certainly bring down the very content industry that so many here claim to support.

Like I wrote above: we’ve been hearing this songs for more than 10 years now and the sky still hasn’t fallen. And as long as 1.5 M/ep is possible and there’s yet another record year at box office, I simply can’t take any of these horror visions seriously.

SOPA will only make the entertainment industry fail harder by throwing many of their loyal customers in jail because they didn’t follow the RUUUUUUURS.

Well Big Media, have fun trying to make record profits (if any money) when the people who aren’t in prison, shipped to some “re-education” camp, or fallen victim to some other undeserved fate wouldn’t even watch or listen to your products if they were paid $20.

Further, IFPI stats, using documents posted from 2000-2010 shows a drop in recorded music sales including online at 58%.

Of course it would be easier to measure recorded music sales if the RIAA still reported their financials. But they stopped reporting publicly when news sources started including the numbers while talking about piracy court cases.

Doesn’t look good to sue your customers when profits are on the rise.

I’m kind of surprised by this article…

“How will you gauge SOAP’s success?” I think the whole point is that regardless of if it’s passed with a full bill of health, it won’t succeed.

Sure the law would get through and the world would have to lube up, but regardless of how many big-bad-infringers are caught, the copyright industries will still bleat, “PIRATE! PIRATE! LOOK AT OUR PROFITS! THEY’RE EVER SO LOW!” Then they’ll push for another law that will make it illegal to turn on your car radio, without a supervisor from the copyright industry there to watch and time your use.

It’s a quest for the powerful to get more powerful. That’s all it’s ever been.

This bill is taking a “nuke the ant hill” approach to pest control.

Ever tried to kill an Ant nest ? you basically HAVE to “nuke” it, and just like with piracy if you just put a stick in the Ant nest hole you just get them upset, and they attack you.

No to kill an ant nest you have to destroy the ‘complete nest’, anything less and you have have a whole bunch of very angry ants against you.

you might not use a nuke but you will certainly need a WMD !!

I can’t remember my financial maths. Is a hojillion more or less than a bajillion???

That’s not possible. Under SOPA, getting a new country would be outlawed since it might facilitate infringement. They’re going to shut down all forms of transport since it might contribute to moving around discs or hard drives that might contain infringing material.

Search for jory2 in the forums and you will understand the hatred those idiots feel for archive.org.

How Will You Gauge SOPA’s Success?

Look at the number of articles that Mike has been posting about SOPA, and look at the amount of comments whinning about it.

It has allready achieved what it set out to do.. and all you CAN DO ABOUT IT, is have a little cry.. or a big cry..

What is equally clear is the level of influence Techdirt has to ANY industry..

It is almost as if if Masnick does not agree with it, it MUST be a good and effective idea.

ok, but doesn’t explain:
US Movie revenue: http://www.the-numbers.com/market/
1995 = $5.29bn
2011 = $9.98bn

Gahh, they really need to make the Author tag stick out better. It gets lost in the text on the left side.

Thanks for the correction.

I am here every day. Just most times there is more “shouting down” going on, and not enough listening. Thanks for listening, that is more than half the battle right there!

I don’t remember where I saw it, but recently I read a story that the record labels were basically on their last steps to stopping shiny disc production altogether, perhaps moving to a smaller format (like USB key) or just straight digital download. They are not there yet, but they are clearly preparing for the day that it happens. I suspect many of them are looking at the net income of cutting out many of the middlemen (like retailers, distribution, etc) and being able to focus on product for sale.

Potentially, the shiny disc version will be rare enough to merit a higher price, sort of like Vinyl is today.

“The flipside to these streaming services is that, for some users, the stream is the end product. Netflix and Spotify will be all they need, which won’t help the content industries in their quest for sales increases. “

I think that recent deals with Netflix shows that the movie people are more than willing to embrace the new technology if there is enough money in it. Moving people from pirating to using netflix, as an example, will by a net gain for the studios, directly or indirectly. I think much of this is about breaking the cycle of piracy, more than anything else.

“We don’t have tons of data available on HADOPI and various three-to-whatever strikes programs yet, but if the “soft middle” is truly shifting away from piracy, the results have yet to indicate that they’re shifting back towards physical goods and their accompanying margins. If anything, they’re headed for streaming services or other digital options. “

Well, the only numbers I saw that might have indicated this is when IPRED came into play. In that case, in that region, in that country, recorded music sales shot up for a period of time, until people either found alternatives or found way to route around the problem. Since we have never been in a “less than open” situation in the US, we don’t know the true long term effects.

“The bottom line (in my mind) is that simply pressuring the easily swayed won’t be enough for the industries behind this legislation, which will lead to increasingly vague definitions of “rogue site” or “piracy.” “

I am suspecting that there will be a fair bit of confusion, but I am also expecting that the most obvious offenders (TPB, Megaupload, and the like) will find themselves unavailable in the US market. I also suspect that there will be some people trying to create “work arounds”, but that one or two of them will get nailed and the rest will cower and hide, and over a period of time, things will stabilize at a different point than we have today, and likely at a different point than anyone here considers. There is a ton of space between the two points, so who knows?

It’s called bandcamp.com…lol. Everyone selling their stuff gets 85-90% of the profit. The site only takes a small portion to upkeep their service.

But the labels will die soon…unless if they actually listen to their consumers (AND us musicians) and decide that it should either be an even 50-50 split or the artist gets the lion’s share. Because the shit compensation for the artist is the reason a lot of people I know just pirate label music.

This is the fundamental issue at hand, the entertainment industry is asking to be protected from free enterprise. Artists are making and selling their own music because they realize that a platinum selling, label driven album makes them very little money vs. a privately marketed (via social media, YouTube, etc.). SOPA at it’s core is protection for an antiquated business model and an inefficient product delivery model by outlawing innovation.

The traditional MBA program axiom of business that says “Adapt or die” is being circumvented. Long live 8-track and Super 8!!!

You’re welcome to do that now. Write ’em a check and mail it, put the name of the song in the memo line. That’s irrelevant to the question at hand.