I was slammed into reality the other day by the fact that a Solicitor that I have known for many years who dealt in the area of the law known as Trade marks which falls under the auspices of Intellectual Property Law, got some basic knowledge about the Australian Copyright Legislation wrong. (No 'P' it's not you and no 'N' it's not you either.)

I don’t think he’s a bad solicitor, I just don’t think the copyright legislation is very accurate in it’s drafting in regards to the speed of technological innovations and the drafters understanding of those technologies. So for persons who live in a quill pen mentality age, both the the law and computer tech can be a very daunting topic. Especially when the competing topic (IT) has at least as many mysterious acronyms and traps for the unwary, as the law; and of course, I am referring to Information Technology with a specific sub title of Internet Protocol Communications. 

 

As a result, quite often the law lags behind the reality of technology. Some examples;

 

in the 1969 Copyright Act, it was illegal to have a photocopier in your home(It has been suggested to nme that this might be incorrect - checking.....)

and for years VCR’s were technically illegal in Australia.

and today (proposed), the DVD writer in your home computer actually allows police to confiscate the computer because you have an “infringing device” that can create “pirate” copies. (See references below.)

 

Therefore most Australians are breaking or have broken the law in some manner.

 

So today I thought I would have a go at the Australian Copyright FAQ Version II. Version 1 is on the AG site, here.

 

Disclaimer:

I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. Readers should hire a lawyer to interpret my responses before carrying out or relying on any of the recommendations contained herein.

To be clear, Perhaps I should borrow the words of the Australian Attorney General’s site:

 

“Therefore, before relying on the material, users should independently verify its accuracy, completeness, relevance for their purposes and that it is up-to-date.

Before any action or decision is taken on the basis of any material on this website the user should obtain appropriate independent professional advice.

Links to other websites are provided for the user's convenience and do not constitute endorsement of material at those sites, or any associated organisation, product or service.”

 

 

	Question	Answer	Reason	Commonsense
1	I purchased a CD; can I rip my CD’s onto my iPod?	Maybe	If it has DRM you maybe in breach of the Law if you remove the DRM.	You purchased the CD legally. The content owner applied a morally illegal restriction. Rip-it. The law is morally wrong to restrict your personal listening requirements. section 109A
2	I borrowed a CD from the Library/friend, can I rip it?	No	It’s illegal	You know it’s illegal.
3	I rented a DVD from Blockbuster Video - Can I rip it?	No	It’s illegal	You know it’s illegal.
4	I purchased a DVD, can I rip my DVD’s onto my Computer?	Maybe	If it has DRM you maybe in breach of the Law if you remove the DRM.	You purchased the DVD legally. The content applied a morally illegal restriction. Rip-it. The law is morally wrong to restrict your personal viewing requirements. Sections 47J and 110AA
5	I have a Foxtel IQ and I time shifted a movie. Can I transfer it to another device.	Yes.	Timeshifting is permitted provided only residents of your home address are the beneficiaries of the time/device shifting.	The law says that you may keep the copy for a time, but not indefinitely. The law in my opinion is wrong and should be changed. However, a Foxtel IQ hard-disk has a MTBF† of 1,000,000 hours, so I would suggest that you may not keep the copy for longer than 122 years. Sections 47J and 110AA
6	I want to download a copy of of my favourite TV show from tvu.org.ru because it’s not yet available in Australia.	Don’t do it. Look for a site that streams the content legally.	It’s illegal	You know it’s illegal.
7	I want to capture an analogue copy of a video that is legally streamed on the internet	Maybe	Currently it is technically illegal.	Sure. If it’s for personal use for members of your immediate family in the house within you reside.
8	I want to capture some TV programs off Channel 7 and remove the adverts with VideoRedo and keep it on my media player so that anyone at my home can view it.	Sure	Legal	See commonsense comments in 5 above.
9	I have an iPod/iPhone full of music. I regularly attend parties and we hook the device upto the stereo of wherever we are and let the music forth…	Nope.	It’s a public broadcast.	Do it anyway. The Act was not designed for this type of public broadcast restriction.
10	Why can’t I download movies via torrent when they are legally available via legal online streaming sites?	I don’t know.	But you can’t.	So Don’t. But write a letter about it to sam.ahlin@ag.gov.au If the Government don’t know there’s a problem, they won’t change the legislation. (Actually, I have written to Sam and received a helpful and responsive answer, so he’s approachable.)
11	I’m an amateur film-maker and like to remix scenes from movies to tell a story. I then like to share the results with my friends via Youtube	Maybe.	Depending on how much of the movie you use	A better idea would be to remix only from Public Domain videos. Start here: publicdomainflicks
12	I use BitTorrent because it’s faster than the Web, what can I download with BitTorrent?	Anything that is marked Public Domain or GPL maybe downloaded with BitTorrent.	It’s Legal	Try this site: publicdomaintorrents

 

There are a number of Public sites on the Internet full of legally available content.

The number of PD films and music available via the internet is about to grow dramatically with artists, actors, directors and producers serving  copyright termination notices.

 

Why?

 

Well we have to look at the worlds main content creator to understand that, the USA.

 

In 1976, the US Congress gave creators of movies and music the right to terminate their copyright agreements. These rights allow the original creators to serve notice on the publishers to terminate the copyright grant.

 

What does THAT mean?

 

OK, it’s simple, when a new artist or filmmaker creates a work, he needs marketing to ensure it’s success. He/she normally assign their rights in the copyright to obtain financing by a major label or studio so that the work can become successful. Those rights are now slowly coming to an end.

 

35 years from 1976 is 2013. Which is the year that we will start to see the BIG lawsuits. Hollywood of course doesn’t want to see the end to their ownership of their libraries so will doubtlessly fight each and every copyright distribution termination notice.

 

So all this legislation is really about Hollywood tying up the assets before the floodgates are open in four years time.

Yep. It’s not about ensuring new content, it’s about corralling keeping and milking the old.

Our legislators need to understand that very few of them will ever grasp the speed of techological change. Well until the current milleniumites become legislators. Until then, the only hope that copyright legislation has of keeping up with reality is open and complete discussion with the public. Not in hiddden away unadvertised meetings

Upcoming event worthy of Mention.

 

Copyright Symposium 15 & 16 October 2009

 

What: 14th Biennial Copyright Law and Practice Symposium (hosted by the Australian Copyright Council and the Copyright Society of Australia)

When: 15 & 16 October 2009
Where: Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

Details of symposium here. 

Book Here

 

Glossary:

†MTBF Mean Time Between Failure, usually an indication of how long the manufacturer considers the disk will operate.

 

References:

 

The Australian Attorney Generals Page on Copyright

http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/agd.nsf/page/Copyright

 

Draft Copyright Infringement Notice Scheme Guidelines – PDF 239KB

Specifically:

 

‘infringing device’      

19. The term ‘infringing device’ is defined in the Copyright Amendment Regulations 2006 (in relation to an offence of strict liability against a provision of Division 5 of Part V of the Act) to mean ‘a device that is alleged to have been made to be used for making an infringing copy of a work or other subject-matter and that is alleged to have been involved in the commission of the offence’.

20. Example: This could include a DVD burner in some circumstances.

 

Copyright Battle Comes Home

Eriq Gardner IP Law & Business - October 08, 2009

http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202434372952&pos=ataglance

Hat tip to Bruce Arnold for the correction on Trademark and possibly the Photocopier machine reference being incorrect.

If you’re on the way to Chicago this weekend, why not catch a movie – Choose this one (Chicago weekend plans) and the producer will buy you a beer.

 

Tucker Max, American author turned Film Producer is about to bring his latest novel onto cinema screens in Chicago and he wants the whole world to be a part of his excitement.

 

What is the novel about ? Well, in 2002, Tucker started blogging about his younger alcohol dazed exploits. The blog readership grew so big that eventually Tucker wrote a book: "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell".

 

But Tucker is doing it the hard way. The way that Independent movie producers throughout the world are familiar with.

 

In his own words...

 

Why are we doing this like this?

 

1. Helps us build word of mouth: I have believed since day one we have a great movie that people will love, and the way to market great movies is to do it through word of mouth. Put it in front of people, let them see it, and have them tell their friends how much they liked it. That’s why we did the premiere tour. There is no better way to market quality, and by starting with a smaller release, it allows word of mouth to build and develop. This strategy has worked great with movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Juno.”

 

2. Money: I have written about this before, but we are doing something very risky, but very remarkable if we pull it off: We are self-distributing this movie. We don’t have a studio paying for everything (and thus taking all the profits), which means we have to raise all the money necessary to book theaters, make prints, and pay for advertising, and that is very expensive. Just to give you an idea of what we’re working with, “The Hangover” had a pre-release P&A spend of 40 million. We have about 5 million. Quite frankly, we can’t afford to do a 2000 screen release off the bat, that would require money we don’t have. If the movie does well in it’s first weekend (which I fully expect), then raising more money to finance the wide release is easy; if not, then it will be very hard.

 

-Chicago for opening weekend: We have the most theaters in the Chicagoland area the first weekend because that it is our expansion test area. And yes, Nils and I will be in Chicago for opening weekend, and Friday night we will be at Faith and Whiskey, Saturday, we’ll be at McFaddens. Details tomorrow.

 

-Canadian Release: Our Canadian distributor has decided to do the Canadian release in two weeks. I think this is stupid, but like I have explained 100 times, we have no control over foreign distribution. In ANY country.

 

And seriously: STOP ASKING ABOUT FOREIGN RELEASE. We sold the foreign rights to foreign distributors. They release it when they want. We have NOTHING to do with it. That’s the way film works: Foreign distributors control foreign release dates.

 

-Other foreign release: Again, we have no control over foreign release at all. None. They can go day and date, they can wait a year, they can just send it straight to DVD, they can do anything they want. That is the way foreign release work, and asking me about when they are coming out is pointless. I don’t know and it’s not up to me. If you live outside the US and are desperate to see the movie and can’t find the release date in your country, then just pirate the movie and watch it online. I am serious. I have no issue with that.

To find out more about Tucker and his methodology of selling his movie to the world click here http://www.ihopetheyservebeerinhell.com/about/

It’s a good read. Especially if you are Film Producer – working alone – on a limited budget.

 

 

Credits:

Hat tip to enigmax  at Torrentfreak on September 24, 2009  http://torrentfreak.com/tucker-max-live-outside-the-us-please-pirate-my-movie-090924/

When I first signed up for a Facebook page – about 2005, I did not quite “Grok” Facebook.

Why would a user want to say what they were eating for breakfast? Better yet, who the hell would be interested?

 

I didn’t understand the sheep meme. Look at me – I can do this, you can too.

 

Which of course is the secret of the success of the various applications.

We published the top 60 applications the other day. (But don't bother taking any notes - Facebook moves at a quantum as yet unrealised by normal media analysts. It doesnt move in years, months, weeks or days. It moves in minutes, seconds and occassionally it might take a whole hour......).

Notwithstanding it's speed, there is more movement in the Facebook top 1500 applications than in the Music industries top 40.

And certainly more movement than the Mojo’s Movie Blockbuster results.

 

Here’s Box office Mojo’s estimates of opening weekend last week.

 

Rank	Title	Avg. Pred. $Millions
1	Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs	$27.60
2	The Informant!	$14.40
3	Jennifer's Body	$14.10
4	I Can Do Bad All By Myself	$10.40
5	Love Happens	$8.50
6	9	$6.20
7	Inglourious Basterds	$4.10
8	All About Steve	$3.20
9	The Final Destination	$2.60
10	Sorority Row	$2.10

 

 

So that equals nine point two million cinema goers.

Let’s compare that to that to the top ten Facebook applications……

 

Name	DAU
FarmVille	16,596,298
Facebook for iPhone	6,510,365
Mafia Wars	6,096,171
Farm Town	5,247,717
Facebook® for BlackBerry® smartphones	5,080,946
Restaurant City	4,365,948
Pet Society	4,305,343
Texas HoldEm Poker	3,841,599
YoVille	3,216,405
MindJolt Games	2,087,168
	57,347,960

 

Or five times more attention than the movies. In fact just the BlackBerry and iPhone Facebook users exceed the Hollywood movie attendance numbers.

In America, a recording artist is required to sell 500,000 albums or copies of a track for that music track or album to go “gold”. A million for platinum.

 On Facebook, an application needs to have an audience of 15,000,000 BEFORE it gets into the top ten; nine million for the top 20 and 6 million for the top thirty.

 In fact, if one only had 500,000 eyes on Facebook – you wouldn’t be number one on the charts….. you would be number 220.

Position	Name	DAU	MAU	Daily Growth
220	Gift Creator	23,428	508,544	1.76

We have blogged about this phenomenon before.

The people – that’s “the consumer” can make or break something on the internet quicker than big industry, or political parties, or media publishers.

 

And it has very little with commercial chest thumping (e.g.: “I’m a big Telco – How good am I?”)

Internet users have shown that films that Hollywood ignore, are in fact (or become) quite valuable assets – when placed on the P2P Networks.

 

From our article entitled, The Plus Side of File Sharing

AND what’s most impressive is our ranking on IMDb went from being the 11,235th most popular movie, to the 5th most popular movie in 2 weeks (we are also the #1 independent film on IMDb & the #1 science fiction film on IMDb). How did this all happen? Two words: Torrent / File Sharing sites

 

So the billion dollar question that should be on everyone’s lips is – but isn’t…..

 

“Koltai – What can we do to jump back onto the gravy train of attention?”

 

When companies finally realise that P2P in all it’s forms, Torrent, Emule, Facebook is the future, then they might start altering their value propositions and benefiting from “what is” and not what “We bloody well think it should be this – because we say so.”

 

Those that keep saying: “If only”:

If only - We had shutdown that horrible Internet before it started.

If only - The Geeks would show us how to filter everything…..

If only - We had bought all the ISP’s before they got too big.

If only - We could could convince all the TRIPS signatories that ACTA is a good thing.

If only - Everyone in the world sent 25% of every dollar they earned to the USA.

 

Will wind up as useless as a meaningless turd in the desert of “what could have been, if only:”

 

The Desert (old media) where even the dung beetles have moved on to greener more lucrative pastures.

Which by the way – are all on the Internet.

Rupert, here’s a freebie – Cause it’s Monday. Buy Channel Seven.

Kerry, Don’t buy Foxtel. TiVo is not a cure all for what ails that lumbering coffin looking for a burial plot. 

Thanks, Chris, for the introduction!

As reader well know, there's a lot of noise in the P2P scene at present, especially following the recent Pirate Bay case in Sweden.

http://www.p2pnet.net/story/20434
http://google.com/trends?q=pirate+bay
http://thepiratebay.org/blog.php

The legal muscle is coming from the US, which is the largest producer of media content in the world. So how does this sector compare with other US export sectors?

I whacked together this graph, based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis:



That's a lot of money leaving the US every year. I couldn't easily find a break down of this data into various sectors, but I did find this quote by Sheldon Pressor, Senior Vice President of Warner Brothers:


You would expect him to be in the know, and presenting accurate figures to Congress regarding recommendations for a Free Trade Agreement.

So it is quite clear that the entertainment industry, and probably the content industry in more broad terms (including news, and media in general), is of great interest and importance to the US economy.

There's also quite a bit of noise in Australia at present regarding the government's plans to censor the internet. Could these all be related?

Here's another interesting quote, from Elizabeth Frazee, Entertainment Industry Coallition (EIC).


So will it be that if the ISPs of Australia don't stand up and play-ball with the EIC, then the Australian government will be forced to legislate the EIC's desires because of the Free Trade Agreement that is in place?

And who is the EIC, by the way? The usual suspects:


I'm not sure that I agree in losing civil liberties for the sake of these content producing companies’ failure to provide a business model that delivers via the Internet.

In the beginning were the shorts, black and white flickering images that were initially shown as part of vaudeville shows, fairgrounds or carnivals. Audiences soon needed larger theaters to watch screens with projected images from Vitascopes after the turn of the century, using opera houses, music halls and converted churches that showed silent one-reeler's  (a 10-12 minute reel - projector's capacity at the time).

Most of the early one reelers were comedy oriented. That is until 1906, when an Australian, Charles Tait made a full movie length consisting of five reels entitled the Story of the Kelly Gang.

In 1907, it became the first movie ever made to earn "international box office" when it was displayed in England.

 

And of course – as with all new technology, the Government had to get involved in the new medium because of the films plot that depicted the Kelly’s as heroes and the police as the enemy.

(Not much change over the course of a hundred years or so….J)

So of course, this led to the movie being the first officially censored film in Australia when the Victorian Chief Secretary banned it from screening in the Kelly’s hometown area of Glenrowan, Benalla and Wangaratta. Later, in 1912 the Victorian Government banned the screening of a revised version of the film throughout the state.

 

Today, unfortunately only 19 minutes of the original 70 minutes survives in the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. (An extra segment was recently found in the UK).

 

Production costs of the banned movie were a princely $1000 pounds and total International Gross was $25,000 pounds, setting a high bar as the baseline. (Even though - please note - the movie had been banned in its state of origin).

 

The big content companies tell us (and anyone that will stand still for more than thirty seconds) that file sharers are destroying their business.

 

Big Film studios have Big Budgets, with big payrolls and expensive overheads and dont don’t “Grok” the smaller budget success stories like the Mad Max road Warrior.

 

The Mad Max success story – as told by Tom O’Regan in “The enchantment with the cinema” (reference below).

 

Mad Max & The Generic

Curiously, the Australian film which more than any other marked the beginning of the new tendency in 1980s cinema was the first Mad Max (1979). It was produced before the tax incentives, before talk of film as "industry", before meeting the audience, before working within Hollywood and international norms of what constituted cinema had come in. When Mad Max was produced the industry was caught in the straight jacket of two models of filmmaking which both seemed to be having trouble at the box office: that of the disreputable ocker film and the quality film. Other kinds of films were made in the 1970s, but somehow the critical agenda held those two in place.

Mad Max rudely shook up these priorities. To these two it added a third: the exploitation genre film. Mad Max was at odds with these prevailing industry norms at a number of levels. Firstly it was a generically based film. Secondly it was made entirely out of private funds in a context where the industry norm was up to 50% government involvement. Thirdly it achieved phenomenal international success in key film markets and it did so without the Cannes seal of approval. Quickly the film achieved cult status giving it a disreputable popularity. Fourthly it proposed a different route for Australianness to take. Australianness could be found - if at all - not so much on the literal but on the symbolic register. This was not a realism of a quotidian Australian but a hyperrealised Australia: a cinematised Australia.

In the context of a healthy film production milieu the film might not have attracted so much notice. But in the context of dwindling production, poor box office returns, and dissent over the direction film policy should take in the late 1970s it had to matter. The fact that it was made without government funding, that it worked within a genre of filmmaking which had been explicitly marked off as a no go area, and was so successful all seemed too significant for industry lobbyists and policy makers to ignore. Consequently it provided an important reference point for the major revision of government film policy (the Peat Marwick & Mitchell Report) which provided the industry blueprint for the 1980s. This report argued for film industry values. It urged an export orientation which it thought would see Australian film producers as major suppliers in "global software" markets. Using Mad Max as a guide the report saw unlimited potential if the industry and its films were geared internationally and firmly endorsed entertainment rather than cultural values. In this way the film became an emblem of the disturbance of priorites, taken for granted norms that were a feature of the 1980s.

But Mad Max did not wholly support this "industry" argument as it was made on such a meagre budget ($380,000). In this it could be, and was, cited to support arguments for a "poor" cinema capable of making its money back on the local market; a cinema whose integrity would be protected by it not having to be sold, in pre-production, overseas to make a profit.

 

Mad Max is still the highest profit percentage independently produced movie…..

See Table and Graph.- The Graph stops at 2003 because Hollywood altered the way they listed their production costings - choosing to include marketing and distribution costs as part of the production value. This means we are unable to accurately estimate figures past their change of fiiscal reporting policy. 

 

Table - Production Cost Returns to Investors.

Release Year	Title	Return on Investment
2003	Return of the King	144.82
2002	Spider-Man	15.57
2001	Harry Potter / Sorcerer's Stone	176.36
2000	The Grinch	13.98
1999	The Phantom Menace	14.46
1998	Saving Private Ryan	13.19
1997	Titanic	119.21
1996	Independence Day	148.53
1995	Toy Story	150.92
1994	Forrest Gump	157.32
1993	Jurassic Park	172.38
1992	Aladdin	16.85
1991	Terminator 2	184.03
1990	Home Alone	187.38
1989	Batman	214.19
1988	Rain Man	246.32
1987	Three Men and a Baby	211.59
1986	Top Gun	21.59
1985	Back to the Future	223.17
1984	Beverly Hills Cop	27.99
1983	Return of the Jedi	31.65
1982	E.T.	29.26
1981	Raiders / Lost Ark	26.25
1980	The Empire Strikes Back	29.24
1979	Mad Max	308.00
1906	The Kelly Gang	25.00

 

 

 

BTW – the graph goes backwards – 1906 is at the extreme right.

 

N.B. the exponential growth line (green) has contracted only slightly since 1906; in 1994, approximately at the same time as the Internet was commercialised.

The Industry can claim whatever it likes. We all know that Napster started just before 2000 and that movies didnt appear on Napster until late in 2001. So where did all those other dips come from.

In the next article - I shall reveal some of the problems that Hollywood have conveniently forgotten about when making their claims against File Sharers utilising predominantly P2P Networks..

 

In other words, if it wasnt for the excellent showing by Mad Max - the chart above would show  that the hollywood formula between 1980 and 2003 was almost dead flat. Almost no vertical movement at all.

 

So obviously, there is a serious place for independent film makers globally, especially ones that return profits like Mad Max.

 

We’ve been hearing from Hollywood for quite some time – lets hear what the independents think about all this Pirate Bay stuff.

A recent Poll was taken at the Independent filmmakers website  http://shootingpeople.org/poll (you need to be a member to login) and produced results that one wouldn’t expect from Film makers.

 

 

 

 

 

That was interesting wasn’t it?

 

Adding insult to injury, Hollywood discovered it had a new competitor that could make thousands of hours of content available for free.

We can’t have free user generated content….. who would have time to go to the movies if everyone can watch YouTube for free?

And then tried to undermine Youtube at every opportunity.

 

But that’s a story for another day…..

 

References:

The enchantment with the cinema:

Australian film in the 1980s - Tom O'Regan

First appeared in Australian Screen (with Albert Moran), Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books, 1989. pp.118-145.

http://wwwmcc.murdoch.edu.au/ReadingRoom/film/1980s.html

Film History Before 1920 - Tim Dirks - AMC

http://www.filmsite.org/pre20sintro2.html

Box Office Results

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/

http://www.imdb.com/

 

Poll Results – Anonymous Benefactor.

Last Friday in a Swedish Court, the four pirates were awarded four years of jail time and financial damages against them (for running a Google search engine) of over three million dollars.

 

In February three Thai CD Pirates were handed out jail sentences under a year each and fined $14,200 each for pressing 306 CD-Roms per minute of pirated content for the last three years and selling them into the black-markets as originals . (See references below)

 

In other words for distributing over thirty million pirated CD’s these Thailand based pirates got a sentence that looks like a joke when compared to the Pirate Bay lads - who essentially, let me repeat myself - ran a SEARCH engine.

 

Of course this inequality in sentencing is essentially the PR machine at work to justify the passing of legislation designed to curtail human basic rights. (ACTA)

 

IPFI, MIPI, AFACTS, RIAA, MPAA all take delight in reporting the damages awards handed by the courts in various file sharing cases.

The majority of these claims are based on the premise that the downloader/uploader made “n” pieces of content available on the internet for free that would have sold for “o” dollars retail or “p” dollars wholesale and therefore depriving the content creators of {N x O} or {N x P}, “whatever your Honour thinks is fair.”.

 

Unfortunately, that is not quite how this works. In real life, it works something like this…..

 

A movie on the big cinema screen is a different experience to watching the same on a laptop or mobile phone screen.

The special Dolby surround sound effects can not be “felt” when you are peering intently at a 7” or 2” screen listening hard to the 8 ohm quasi stereo “speakers”.

There are no fresh popcorn smells – nor are there any Jaffas to roll down the stalls – and of course there is no way two people could watch such a small screen together so the “arm-over” maneuver doesn’t work outside the cinema.

All of these elements combine together to create a unique "experience value" that economists like to call the Hedonic value.

The basics of Hedonic value are in the measurement of consumer self justification value for the  payment of an item of perceived need. (Usually driven by advertising, marketing and lately more by social networks and peer to peer interaction.)

The hedonic value of watching a presentation on a big screen at the movie theatre is vastly superior to reviewing the same movie on a micro computing device. Especially if there is a couple involved. It’s a bit like the difference between a Starbucks Coffee or, a home made powdered, instant coffee.

 

I’m a coffee addict. I drink between thirty and forty cups of coffee per day.

 

At select establishments around the world, an Americano (long black) coffee costs $3.75 for the small cup.

If I were to use the content industries argument, my addiction is equal to a $150.00 per day habit.

 

I do quite often go out and have a long black coffee when chatting with friends or holding a business meeting, however that would not be more than three or four times a week and my total tab for that would not exceed $20-$30 all up.

The rest of the time, I drink instant coffee. The Germans have a good word for instant coffee, “ersatz  kave”, which means “pretend coffee” or fake coffee.

 

I use Nescafe Expresso coffee which sells retail for a 350 gm jar for $9.00 (sometimes $7.00 on sale). I buy a 2 kg bag of sugar for $1.65. The coffee and the sugar last me for approximately ten days,

I drink 245 cups of pretend coffee a week interspersed with about five – seven real coffees. My total coffee budget is therefore approximately $31.00 per week; not the $1050.00 that the content industry think I should pay them.

 

What is different, is the price I am prepared to pay for each alternative product. The instant cup of coffee 2 minutes after I wake up in the morning is worth far more than the Starbucks Americana that I have to cross the road for in a driving hail storm to get – but its hedonic value is enhanced by the fact that I can have that ersatz coffee without shaving, dressing or going out into the weather.

 

That first cup of coffee doesn’t in any way replace the desire or need to have the real thing later in the day, surrounded by my peers or colleagues in nice surroundings.

 

The two are separate, disparate and totally unrelated experiences and worth two totally different values.

It can be argued by coffee afficianados that ersatz coffee is a temporary fix only – a prelude to the real thing, a stop-gap, an emergency standby, the free taste. It can equally be argued that the world would not function as well without the ersatz coffees, which in reality actually make the real coffee taste so much better by comparison.

 

The same can be argued successfully for movies shared on the Internet. The “free taste” actually enhances the hedonic value of the movie experience and leads to more movie admissions at higher prices.

 

Cinema attendance figures for the last two years indicate that more people are going to the cinema than at any time in the last sixty years.  Yep –  records are being broken, daily.

 

According to a recent report by Price Waterhouse, the Ancillary markets and new technologies have revolutionized profit potential. Over the last decade, ancillary markets have grown by over 30%. The home video market alone has grown over 200%. The combined worldwide filmed entertainment market will achieve sales of $118.9 billion in 2009, a 7.1% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Source: Price Waterhouse Cooper.

 

There are very few industries that can claim a 7.1% compound annual growth. (Then again, there are very few industries that have millions of PR people working for them for free, doanloading files like mad for the ersatz taste.)

The hedonic value for consumers of attending a cinema screening is being proven daily at the Box office in leading file sharing countries like :

 

Headline: Slovakia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Russia were the top performing European countries for cinema attendance growth in 2008.

 

Russia saw the largest amount of increased ticket sales, 124 million, up 16% from 107 million in 2008. Turkey, however posted a jump of almost 27%, with 38.5 million admissions.

Across Central Europe, Slovakia stood out with an 18.2% gain, to 3.3 million admissions, but still down compared to a strong 2006, with 3.4 million admissions. 

Bulgarians were back up to 2.8 million admissions, a 12.1% increase, but below a five year high of 3.1 million admissions in 2004.

Poland's 3.4% rise brought a five-year high of  almost 34 million admissions

 

And:

 

Headline: Box office goes boom

According to Box Office Mojo, an online site that crunches movie revenue data, February admissions were up more than 10 per cent over last year, and that came on the heels of the first-ever billion-dollar January. Compared to previous annual revenues, 2009 is tracking as Hollywood's most lucrative year ever, with the current year-to-date box-office standing at about $1.8 billion US -- as much as a 20-per-cent increase over same-period totals from the past three years.

 

In summary, the Content Industries claims that file sharing carried out on P2P technologies and networks is damaging their bottom line is sheer and utter  (warning – expletive forthcoming) bullshit.

 

It is akin to claiming that file sharing is stopping young couples from going to the cinema and the lack of “over the shoulder arm maneuvers” is leading to negative population growth.

 

In closing – if the industry’s claims that file sharing is hurting their bottom line is based on fact, rather than self creative litigation justification, then why during a depression are more people going to the movies than file sharing for free ?

 

My answer is that consumers are a lot more discerning than Hollywood and can actually taste the difference between instant coffee and real coffee.

The attention that Goverments and the Courts should give the content industry about these claims is the same attantion that Starbucks gives to Coles when the price of Nescafe in Coles drops down to $7.00 during sales. Nothing.

 

 

References

Three CD pirates jailed in Thailand

http://www.ifpi.com/content/section_news/20090225.html

 

Passion Helps Record Year At Global Box-office

http://www.zeeks.com/wirestory/?story=0fc3m7kv

 

Box office, admissions rise in 2006

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117960597.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

 

Box office goes boom

http://www.vancouversun.com/Cars/office+goes+boom/1364236/story.html

 

European cinema bounces back in 2006

http://www.obs.coe.int/about/oea/pr/mif2007.html

 

Weekend box office figures

http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/weekendboxoffice

My first “R” rated movie was “Little Big Man” which my dad let me see when I was only 12 years old. His exact words to me were – “You’re old enough now son.”

 

It was great movie – it covered a number of human themes: the arrogance and bluster of Custer, the religious values of life and of course the downtrodden and sorely under-estimated Indians;

 

“They’re only Indians”.

 

Had Custer elected to negotiate a truce at Little Big Horn history today would not be marred with two hundred years of persecution against the American indigenous Indian and today’s Americans would not be paying the bill for those former actions.

 

In 2007, Paul Reskinoff, from Digital Music News in conjunction with Big Champagne, started collecting statistics about file sharing clients installed on individual computers. Over a period of a year, they extracted data from 1,661,688 Internet users – the results are amazing….

 

P2P Client	Sep-06	Jan-07	May-07	Sep-07	Network
Limewire	0.341	0.368	0.355	0.364	Gnutella
uTorrent	0.03	0.046	0.073	0.113	BitTorrent
BitTorrent	0.052	0.053	0.049	0.046	BitTorrent
Ares	0.035	0.038	0.043	0.046	Ares
Azureus	0.06	0.063	0.059	0.043	BitTorrent
eMule	0.038	0.038	0.043	0.04	eDonkey
BitComet	0.049	0.044	0.043	0.039	BiTorrent
BearShare	0.034	0.034	0.032	0.029	Gnutella
BitLord	0.024	0.027	0.028	0.026	BitTorrent
KaZaa	0.045	0.031	0.021	0.015	FastTrack
BitTormado	0.021	0.018	0.016	0.015	BitTorrent
Frostwire	0	0.004	0.01	0.012	Gnutella
Pando	0	0	0.008	0.009	Pando
Total %	73%	76%	78%	80%

  Source: http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/report/desktopq407

Over 79% of people have some file sharing software included on their computer.

 

We extrapolated those figures and discovered that the world will reach P2P ubiquitous file sharing installation by the end of 2011.

With the obvious exception of file sharing programs installed on the PC’s of executives working in the content industry…

 

One wonders if the content industry have more brains than Custer. I hope so.

Last night I saw the movie, "Atonement".

Another brilliant movie... but I urge anyone reading this who is in the audio business to go and see this at the movies. The sound design of this movie, the integration of sound effects, featured music and background score - absolutely phenomenal.

I have often wondered why one movie is deserving of an Oscar for sound design over another. In this case, it should be a lay down misere. Just wonderful!

This is a great movie! Great script; great acting; really worthwhile viewing.