hack the media

[DjDamyard]

Re: hack the media

The artists do get paid, even when things are "pirated" or stolen. With the exception of artists who produce one off pieces like paintings, artists are paid in the inital phase of creating content (generally speaking). Authors are an exception because they get paid a percentage of what they sell. I'll stick with Music and Movies because it is what I know best.

A writer is paid for his script (artist paid) and an actor is paid based on contract rates prior to the movies release (in some cases they get paid after the release but its a set ammount), Directors are paid prior to movie release so is the rest of the cast and crew. The studios generally recroup their money in the theater showing. By the time the movie gets to DVD it has already had its rights sold to premium movie channels (generally at inflated dollar amounts) and then finally it comes to personal consumption licences.

You raise a good point here, actually. In the non-commercial dance music scene, this is not the case, unfortunately. "Major" labels in the scene don't have enough money to sign artists on their labels to keep them there for good, so all money made in the industry is from royalties and live performances.

However, it is no secret that royalties accounts for a minute percentage of the income of well-acclaimed artists, like Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and whatever other shit is on rotation on the most overrated radio station you can listen to in your car. For them, it's that massive contract they receive from major record labels, live performances (and I guess film deals, performance deals, etc.) that bring them money.



Let's take a look at new artists in the music scene and let's see how badly off they are since everyone goes out and illegally downloads their music:
Tim Bergling, better known as Avicii, had one of the biggest hits of 2011, "Levels", which I'm sure was probably one of the most downloaded tracks of the year, too. This young man came from nowhere, after he won a remixing competition and then got lucky enough to work with some of the biggest names in the scene. Over the last two years, the 21 year old has made enough money to have the chance to donate one million dollars to charity, which he is doing.
Sonny Moore, better known as Skrillex, is probably the biggest name in dance music right now. A year and a half ago he was an emo kid trying to make it in the Electro scene. I, myself, have illegally downloaded some of his work, and I'm not ashamed to say so. However, don't feel bad for him because he lost out on my money, no, as he is probably sitting in an airplane as I type en route to his next major gig which has been sold out in some absolutely lovely city, which I'm sure will make him more money in that night alone, than my parents make in a month.

I think it's safe to say that even though music piracy/the "illegal" uploading of copyrighted music is a growing problem on the internet, it's a portal to success for some artists who are desperate for their music to be heard by anyone and everyone so they can be the next Skrillex or Avicii. Furthermore, if someone were to go and purchase one of my copyrighted tracks and upload it to YouTube with a free download link and it got 200 views & 50 downloads, I'd thank that user for 200 more people knowing of my existence and thanking him for potentially 50 new fans who may check out more of my music and might even come to my shows live.

[renderman]

Re: hack the media

I've often wondered what would happen if studios realized that if you had a good enough memory, you could replay the movie in your head. Would they send you a bill?

As Hexjunkie pointed out and Thorn affirmed, DRM is more of a pain that it's worth. It prevent legitimate customers from using something they bought. I am reminded of this image: http://harmadiwibowo.files.wordpress...3/image001.jpg

I am also reminded of Lewis C.K. who put a special out online, DRM free and asked for $5 and the Internet bought en masse, netting him a Million dollars in sales in 12 days. A good product with a reasonable price and reasonable usage allowance and people will buy it since it's easier than piracy. https://buy.louisck.net/news

It's amazing how we will agonize over a $0.99 song purchase on iTunes. Imagine how much more you would buy if songs were a nickle. Suddenly you'd be spending more which is the goal is'nt it?

[Thorn]

Re: hack the media

It would be great if the license could be sold for the work, rather than by the media. I'm old enough that I've bought a lot of the same works in different formats over the years. In some cases it's been three or four different media formats as the technology has changed. (Vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD for music; Beta, VHS, DVD for movies. I've refused to buy BlueRay so far, and I'm dreading that change.) The bottom line is that I just want to license the digital content, and be able to play it on whatever device I happen to be using at the moment. I don't mind paying for the license, but so far, DRM sucks like Lewinsky. My experience is that generally DRM doesn't recognize different player software or devices, and fails much more often than it works right.

[hexjunkie]

Re: hack the media

The artists do get paid, even when things are "pirated" or stolen. With the exception of artists who produce one off pieces like paintings, artists are paid in the inital phase of creating content (generally speaking). Authors are an exception because they get paid a percentage of what they sell. I'll stick with Music and Movies because it is what I know best.

A writer is paid for his script (artist paid) and an actor is paid based on contract rates prior to the movies release (in some cases they get paid after the release but its a set ammount), Directors are paid prior to movie release so is the rest of the cast and crew. The studios generally recroup their money in the theater showing. By the time the movie gets to DVD it has already had its rights sold to premium movie channels (generally at inflated dollar amounts) and then finally it comes to personal consumption licences.

I think you will find that people do not mind paying a fair price for a good or service. Paying $20 for a DVD is a fair prices (some argue that but ok). $20 to see a movie in a theater once.. not a fair price. $12 per month for a streaming licence is a fair price and people pay it. Books, $15.00 for a hardback or paperback book is a fair price. $14.99 for an e-book is not a fair price. The problem doesn't rest with the "pirates" the problem rests with people trying to make money off the same thing over and over again.

I'll give an example. The 'IT' movie is being released in theaters. I really want to watch this. I go to the movies and pay $40 for me and a girl to see film. I wait a couple of months and my premium movie channel picks is up(I'm paying $15 a month for this channel). I wait a few more months and it was a good movie so I pay another $20 to pick it up on DVD (we will say this dvd comes with a digital copy). I download the digital copy for "free" but I can only have it on devices that use iTunes. I decide that I want to put the movie in .avi format to save space and I want to put it on my Android phone.. boom I'm a pirate.

I propose an alternative. Make the movie theater ticket cost $30 per ticket and that gives me a lifetime licence to watch the film. (If I don't go to the theater, I can buy the licence for $20 later) With that licence, I have the ability to view it in what ever format I want so long as I pay for the format. DVD-$1, Digital-$hard drive space, movie theater - $10 for a seat.. so on and so forth.

I have issues in the content theft argument. I don't feel bad if a film grosses $10 million instead of $11 million because I know that the real artists have been paid for their work. I don't feel bad because if a studio catches a "pirate" they charge them outrageous amounts of money per film and then using a mafia tactic they offer then a "deal" of a few thousand dollars to make the law suit go away.

I will pay for content when content becomes affordable again. As it is right now, I can spend over $50 on just two tickets to see a movie when just 10 years ago I could have gotten the same 2 tickets for $14. You can't tell me "pirates" are responsible for all of that.

Stop controlling content formats, sell licences for a "reasonable" price and stop trying to rape as much money out of a consumer/customer as you can. Stop trying to destroy netflix by offering them insane price increases, and stop trying to charge me 3-4 times for the same movie. I don't think all content should be "free" but it also shouldn't be so expensive that I feel it is justified to steal it.

[DjDamyard]

Re: hack the media

I wish there was a way to educate the masses not to steal. If they weren't thieves and had respect of other peoples' works, there wouldn't be a need for such acts.

I'm not thrilled with some of the provisions of the various acts, but as an author, I see a real need to protect my intellectual property. It would be nice not to have it ripped off by every moron who thinks "information should be free", but never had to work to produce it.

I completely agree. It is theft, but at the same time, those acts were not only going to stop people from illegally downloading media, but were also going to make it illegal for sites to stream music they did not have the rights to stream. One of the websites I run, well more a music blog, streams music with the permission from the artist. However, this is unfortunately not enough. I could still face up to 5 years in prison as I need written evidence of permission from the record label which owns the piece of music. I just feel that as much of a positive impact it theoretically should have, the promotion side of music would take a huge hit.

I think that if all of the [developed] countries in the world were to sign up to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), it would be more beneficial to musicians and those against piracy, than just a bill to pass in the states. I also think that if there was a general world-wide agreement on piracy laws, more people would conform and there would be less ways to circumvent.

[Thorn]

Re: hack the media

I wish there was a way to educate the masses of how this will effect their lives.

I wish there was a way to educate the masses not to steal. If they weren't thieves and had respect of other peoples' works, there wouldn't be a need for such acts.

I'm not thrilled with some of the provisions of the various acts, but as an author, I see a real need to protect my intellectual property. It would be nice not to have it ripped off by every moron who thinks "information should be free", but never had to work to produce it.

[DjDamyard]

Re: hack the media

I've been busy the last few months and am disappointed I didn't see this earlier...

I really couldn't agree more. Many of my FaceBook friends are only *NOW* (in the last 3 days) "hating" SOPA because Wikipedia is going to be blacked out for a day...

I don't think they understand the severity of and how dangerous SOPA, PIPA, NDAA, etc. to the internet. I wish there was a way to educate the masses of how this will effect their lives. It's great that sites like Google and Wikipedia are taking action, but what about FaceBook? Why is FaceBook not trying to bring this to our attention?

On a more personal note, as a(n unrenowned) musician I am surprised that some artists have supported or are in favour of this act. If it wasn't for pirated music or music illegally uploaded to YouTube, ZippyShare, Mediafire, Hulkshare, etc. many of the big name artists wouldn't have have the support they do, and some wouldn't be big-name at all. I find that the sites which let users download free material from are a platform to stardom for any music artist with talent as everyone would much prefer to download free music than pay for music. You may ask, "What about making a profit? What about royalties?"... In the non-commercial dance music industry, it's live shows that bring in money, and judging from ticket prices of some high acclaimed commercial artists, live shows make them very rich too.

[bjaming]

I had a thought, since mainstream media is completely ignoring SOPA, PIPA, NDAA (etc) maybe we can make it very uncomfortable for them to continue to do so. I thought, what if people, a lot of people started posting on the facebook pages of media outlets (local, national, comedy relief -- like the daily show, colbert report, etc) messages asking "why aren't you covering these stories" maybe they would get the hint that the public at large cares about these issues and they should be talked about.

We could force the media essentially to "awaken" the general public about these very important issues by hacking them.

Social media can be a very powerful tool to effect change, a very effective tool to hack the mainstream media.