When I was four years old, my family constructed a house. I
asked my father how the builders knew what went where. And he told me about the
plans and showed me the blueprints. I was enthralled, here was a method to
build something. Draw up a master plan, order the lumber, roofing iron, and
nails and construct the family mansion one nail at a time.

Some years later I resided in the Northern Territory of
Australia and discovered the indigenous bush “Humpy”. A “Humpy is a shack built
of bits and pieces. It may have nails holding it together or it may be string. The
elements of a Humpy are essentially a mismatch of scavenged building materials.

A humpy keeps out some of the rain, some of the wind and
some of the sun. It doesn’t do any of these very well, but it does provide the
owner/builder with the perception that one is protected from the tropical elements.

Until the cyclone arrives.

In the manner of the traditional Humpy, our copyright
legislation has been cobbled together overthe last 34 years into the quagmire of citizen vilification
it is today.

Globally, legislators have been coerced gradually through
large campaign contributions into gradually altering our copyright vista.

“Just this one little step, congressman”.

Followed by, “Well it really is only a small thing. After
all, we employ thousands of people to make movies.”

Each small step seemed reasonable at the time.

Unfortunately these little steps have turned copyright from a
beneficial regime designed to protect the original creative talent, into an
oppressive regime designed to benefit only the litigants.

Copyright and Trademark issues already take up far too much
of our legal system and now with the onset of the criminalization of users and
service providers our economy is about to be stifled seriously by this one
single factor.

Using a torrent client little Johnny downloads a song or a
movie from the internet, little Johnny should be fined $150,000. Little
Johnnies parents will need to each take on an extra job to make the payments.
However, because unemployment is running at almost 20%, they won’t be able to,
so the house will get repossessed, the parents will get a divorce and all
because some planner at the RIAA decided that it was a good idea.

Does anyone in charge see a problem with this? No?

OK, how about if little Johnny is your son.

“They weren’t good parents.” (RIAA Spokesperson)

“They should have ensured that little Johnny wasn’t downloading
illegally.”

Obviously the RIAA spokesperson, has never been a parent.

The Internet is the worlds largest playground. It is full of
fun exciting adventures and traps for the unwary. It is physically impossible
to watch every action of little Johnny.

Son, don’t use Torrents to download music mp3’s OK?

Dad, can I listen to them online on Spotify?

Sure son.

Little Johnny finds that Spotify doesn’t work in Australia.

What does he do?

He probably seeks the council of his peers, who also happen
to be twelve year olds. Result, the peer consensus is to not use torrent but to
download via firefox from Rapidshare.

Johnny gets his movie or song and tells all his friends how
good Rapidshare is.

DTECNET develop a Rapidshare interdiction program and start
sniffing packets at Internet exchanges worldwide.

Result?

The RIAA send little Johnny an infringement notice and sue his
parents for $150,000.

N.B. In Australia
we don’t have the RIAA and our local equivalent organisation, Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI), don’t sue consumers.

The Solution.

The world’s economy is loosely based on a capitalist system
of demand induced by advertising.

The more advertising, the more retail sales. The more retail
sales, the healthier the economy.

For sometime I have been railing against action stopping
advertising as the method no longer desired or accepted by viewers. Around twenty-three
percent of viewing time (in Australia)
is now advertising.

Technology innovations that remove adverts at the push of a
button (TiVo and  VideoRedo) are now
threatening the entire entertainment ecosystem.

The file sharing networks, rapidshare were the enemy, now good old sneaker
net is changing that. Those USB sticks/SD Ram cards that are always in your
kids pockets? They’re the new file-sharing medium.

The marketplace? The school playground.

Rip, Copy Swap is the new mantra. Who the hell wants those
poorly videoed camera copies?

Of course, the conundrum is that with the youth of today
watching less then two hours of Television (down from four hours and eleven minutes),
advertising is loosing it’s effectiveness.

This is having a nett result on our economy through
decreasing retail sales.

Free to air broadcasters, cable companies, and radio have
all discovered that technology is impacting their ability to sell premium priced
advertising.

Yet, the content companies think the merry-go-round ride
will last forever.

They think they will always have a ready market with the broadcasters.

The content creators don’t particularly want advertisers messages
to interfere with their content (as an overlay format).

However, there may be no choice.

Thinking needs to change. The adverts need to be overlaid
and not inserted.

This will achieve two benefits.

Advertisers will once again trust broadcasters and filesharing
downloaders now become part of the advertising ecosystem and no longer need to
be criminalized.

As the advertiser do you care whether your advert is seen on
a television, computer screen or phone?

Nope. You merely want the eyeballs and the resulting sales.

The concept does need some work, for example, content being
distributed via file-sharing from small town locations are likely to have non
national advertising included.

Well, that would be a bonus. Joe’s Carwash is now famous
because the current version of Heroes that was aired in Podunk, Missouri (OK,
Podunk Alaska) just happens to have a higher trust value on the file sharing networks
than the version from Durban S.A. or the version from New York.

In fact if done correctly, the innovation could be a feature
of the entertainment.  

Already practiced by some stations for advertising upcoming attractions

 Photo Credit: SilVo,
frame from Stargate Universe 1×05 Light Hdtv Xvid-Fqm.avi              

First aired in the USA
last Friday, the 23 of October, 2009.

Also available from Syfy.com as a direct stream – on the 24^th
of October.

Downloaded via ED2K networks an estimated 182,000 times.

Downloaded via Torrents an estimated 310,000 times.

As the technology for content moves away from set-top boxes,
and into the realm of self programmed viewing from home video libraries, quite
possibly our legislators could have a look at this solution to one that is far
preferable to locking up fifty percent of the population.

As the indigenous man says in the above Youtube video, it’s
in the nature of people to share with everybody.

Like
in the shops they don’t share things.

Too much money.

Possibly he doesnt watch Stargate Universe, but how is ACTA going to help him?

This entry was posted on October 29, 2009 at 1:44 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Posted in Brands Economics Government Licensing Main Page Marketing by Tom Koltai 1 Comment