Techdirt. Stories filed under "retractions" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "retractions"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Thu, 28 Feb 2013 08:50:00 PST Game Of Thrones Director: I'm 100% Opposed To The Piracy I Just Said Helps My Show Survive Timothy Geigner http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130227/08153622137/game-thrones-director-im-100-opposed-to-piracy-i-just-said-helps-my-show-survive.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130227/08153622137/game-thrones-director-im-100-opposed-to-piracy-i-just-said-helps-my-show-survive.shtml Game Of Thrones director David Petrarca, for instance. Remember early last year when we mentioned that the show was on track to become the most pirated television show of 2012? And how the success of the show might actually be a result of piracy, rather than its cause?

Well, ChurchHatesTucker writes in to tell us that Petrarca recently opined that piracy is at least partially responsible for the success of the show, providing an avenue through which more people talk about it and comment on it within greater society.
Panel mediator Rosemary Neill noted Game of Thrones was the most pirated show of 2012 and that 10 per cent of the downloads came from Australia. But Petrarca shrugged and said the illegal downloads did not matter because such shows thrived on "cultural buzz" and capitalised on the social commentary they generated.

"That's how they survive," he told the crowd gathered at the University of Western Australia.
Yes, in addition to allowing late-comers to catch up on episodes in preparation for new seasons, piracy helps keep the show in the societal bloodstream, keeps the buzz going, and generally creates more excitement and awareness of the product as a whole. If HBO could manage to provide a more innovative method for delivering the show to those that want it, likely the boon could be even greater. Still, Petrarca noted that HBO is doing well with their subscriber base.
He said HBO alone had 26 million subscribers in the US and 60 million worldwide, which meant there was plenty of money filtering in and allowing the channel to produce high quality content despite any illegal downloading.
While this all sounds reasonable, I wouldn't want to be accused of not presenting the other side of the argument on whether or not piracy helps or hurts this sort of media. So, here to present a rebuttal to David Petrarca... is David Petrarca. He recently had a Twitter exchange with our own Glyn Moody, including these highlights.
I am 100% against illegal downloading. I said that downloading creates buzz but def am NOT in support of illegal downloads. The issue is a distribution system that gets content to viewers legally in a timely manner. People want to pay if made available.
While it should be noted that he certainly isn't being belligerent here, and he in fact notes that if a great distribution option is available fans will pay for content, it's difficult to square the first part of this statement with what he said in the article. Remember, he was specifically responding to a question about piracy (not authorized downloads) and then responded that it helped create social buzz for shows like his and "that's how they survive." But he is "NOT in support of illegal downloads?" I think I understand this to mean that he simply thinks the ideal solution is the kind of distribution platform that would drive nearly everyone away from piracy, by providing widely available, authorized downloads, and with that I'd agree. Still, in the absence of that great system, which HBO certainly doesn't offer, why staunchly state that you're 100% against piracy when you've already said it's helped you survive? I assume that Petrarca likes surviving, but perhaps I'm wrong?

Or, perhaps, the sudden attention that the original story was getting created pressure for him to walk back those statements. Glyn was not the only one that Petrarca reached out to with identical statements:
Perhaps it's possible that, like many in the entertainment industry, Petrarca recognized that infringing copies were, in fact, good for his show, but that actually saying that leads to backlash from within. We've asked Petrarca whether or not he heard from anyone at HBO regarding his original comments, and will update this post accordingly should we hear back.

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]]> getting-it http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130227/08153622137 Wed, 7 Nov 2012 17:00:00 PST DailyDirt: Bad Science Is Coming to Get Us Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100904/22445810905/dailydirt-bad-science-is-coming-to-get-us.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100904/22445810905/dailydirt-bad-science-is-coming-to-get-us.shtml
  • The number of retractions from scientific journals has increased tenfold over the past decade. But it's not clear how much is misconduct and how much is honest scientific mistake... [url]
  • Data detective Uri Simonsohn has published his statistical methods for exposing the suspicious data of social psychologists. Lies, damn lies and statistics... but at least statistics can be used to ferret out the lies. [url]
  • Apparently, the UK is notorious for its bad science journalism. We're talking "labvertisements" -- industry/product-funded science stories about (possibly fake) studies conducted by questionable scientists with dubious methods. But at least they're honest about it and take their research with a huge grain of salt. The US just re-packages many of these reports as serious news. [url]
    • If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

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    ]]>     urls-we-dig-up http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100904/22445810905     Wed, 23 Jun 2010 11:44:03 PDT Sunday Times: Pay Up To Have Us Tell You How We Were Totally Wrong In Our Climate Change Story Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100621/1607089906.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100621/1607089906.shtml issued a massive retraction. While the Sunday Times has simply disappeared the original article from the web (article? what article?), the retraction is behind the paywall. This is leading some to question the journalistic ethics here. If you put out a huge, publicly-accessible, fear-mongering report that accuses researchers of relying on junk science... and it turns out to be totally wrong, doesn't there seem to be something wrong about then putting the retraction behind a paywall? I recognize that the Sunday Times' strategy is for all of its content to be paywalled, but there are times when you make an exception. This seems like an important one.

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    ]]>     that's-worth-paying-for? http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100621/1607089906