About file sharing.
Something to worry about and to think about: Big brother to watch illegal file sharers.
No, this is not a good news, it's an awareness request. Big editors and media companies have not yet opened their eyes to the business possibilities provided with file sharing over the internet.
In fact they have been always very slow and conservative regarding their business. They crudely defend their profit margins with lame arguments as "copyright infringement" and "author rights", when in fact they are only fighting for their own money.
WAKE UP PEOPLE, the business world will change, whether you want it or not! Music and movie sharing will happen and they best you could do is pop that niche and use it! Consider something like an on-line video sharing store. turn your brains on!...
I'll give you two things to think about:
The mp3 algorithm was turned public in July 7, 1994 by the Fraunhofer Society and Thomson. In September 9, 1995 the first real time player was made available, the Winplay3. Ever since that day mp3s have flooded the internet, users were able to listen to music with good audio quality and low disc space requirements. Media file sharing became increasingly common.
To help this file-sharing Napster was lunched in 1999. Created by Shawn Fanning, a student at Northeastern University in Boston. Nothing complicated hummm???
Of course record companies came along and started screaming: "They are stealing our business...." and eventually Napster was shut down.
Did they noticed the market's desire for this technology??? No.... they just saw something "evil" in it.
Portable mp3 players came to the market, and there was still no wide spread use of file sharing technology and peer-to-peer to tack this niche.
Amazon.com, eMusic and Rhapsody where ther first to open their eyes to the possibility that users wanted mp3 files, regardless of CD's or not. Itunes came later around 2005 and still not every music file was available!!!!
And they say it's evil and criminal.... they are just dont' want to change the way business is done.
Second:
Movies! While the mp3 have somehow survived and are now more or less easy to "legally" acquire. Movies and Videos files are not. They are highly illegal to share!.... Again it's the same bloody thing. There is a market there. Poeple want to download the movie and not buy the DVD if they don't want to! They are willing to pay a reasonable amount of money to be able to do that without being harrased!
Structures for it? They are there... We all use them. But they are viewed as illegal.
The media strategy? Make pressure on the public, make them feel criminal for downloading a movie. Harass and prosecute users who just want to evaluate if the movie is good or not before buying it... but basically, it's the editors who are blind to see the potential business here.
A good example of everyone's frustation on this can be seen by Producer Eric Wilkinson, who thanks pirates for "stealing" his film. The producer of the independent film “The Man from Earth”, wrote an email to RLSlog in which he thanks them for the free promotion they gave him. “In the future, I will not complain about file sharing” he wrote, “when I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!”. This example once again illustrates what a powerful promotion tool filesharing networks are, especially for independent productions with a small budget.
And they call them criminals....
We are all criminals because the law is wrong, it does not serve the people or the greater good of the community. Simply a group of Media companies with the look on their profit margins.
I would like to start a debate on this and promote a change in the system. Care to comment?
No, this is not a good news, it's an awareness request. Big editors and media companies have not yet opened their eyes to the business possibilities provided with file sharing over the internet.
In fact they have been always very slow and conservative regarding their business. They crudely defend their profit margins with lame arguments as "copyright infringement" and "author rights", when in fact they are only fighting for their own money.
WAKE UP PEOPLE, the business world will change, whether you want it or not! Music and movie sharing will happen and they best you could do is pop that niche and use it! Consider something like an on-line video sharing store. turn your brains on!...
I'll give you two things to think about:
The mp3 algorithm was turned public in July 7, 1994 by the Fraunhofer Society and Thomson. In September 9, 1995 the first real time player was made available, the Winplay3. Ever since that day mp3s have flooded the internet, users were able to listen to music with good audio quality and low disc space requirements. Media file sharing became increasingly common.
To help this file-sharing Napster was lunched in 1999. Created by Shawn Fanning, a student at Northeastern University in Boston. Nothing complicated hummm???
Of course record companies came along and started screaming: "They are stealing our business...." and eventually Napster was shut down.
Did they noticed the market's desire for this technology??? No.... they just saw something "evil" in it.
Portable mp3 players came to the market, and there was still no wide spread use of file sharing technology and peer-to-peer to tack this niche.
Amazon.com, eMusic and Rhapsody where ther first to open their eyes to the possibility that users wanted mp3 files, regardless of CD's or not. Itunes came later around 2005 and still not every music file was available!!!!
And they say it's evil and criminal.... they are just dont' want to change the way business is done.
Second:
Movies! While the mp3 have somehow survived and are now more or less easy to "legally" acquire. Movies and Videos files are not. They are highly illegal to share!.... Again it's the same bloody thing. There is a market there. Poeple want to download the movie and not buy the DVD if they don't want to! They are willing to pay a reasonable amount of money to be able to do that without being harrased!
Structures for it? They are there... We all use them. But they are viewed as illegal.
The media strategy? Make pressure on the public, make them feel criminal for downloading a movie. Harass and prosecute users who just want to evaluate if the movie is good or not before buying it... but basically, it's the editors who are blind to see the potential business here.
A good example of everyone's frustation on this can be seen by Producer Eric Wilkinson, who thanks pirates for "stealing" his film. The producer of the independent film “The Man from Earth”, wrote an email to RLSlog in which he thanks them for the free promotion they gave him. “In the future, I will not complain about file sharing” he wrote, “when I make my next picture, I just may upload the movie on the net myself!”. This example once again illustrates what a powerful promotion tool filesharing networks are, especially for independent productions with a small budget.
And they call them criminals....
We are all criminals because the law is wrong, it does not serve the people or the greater good of the community. Simply a group of Media companies with the look on their profit margins.
I would like to start a debate on this and promote a change in the system. Care to comment?
Labels: Society
posted by Vitor Vieira at
11:42 AM
2 Comments:
Vitor,
I don't disagree with you, however, Since the 9/12 months since I sent that message to rlslog.net, I am sad to say that despite the generosity of everyone who supported our film through donations at www.manfromearth.com, it added up to a mere fraction of the number of people who downloaded our film through P2P sites (and didn't "donate"). Despite the slight lift in DVD sales we temporarlily saw as a result of my sending that email AND the donations we are still far from breaking even.
So the question that remains is, "How do we make P2P a viable business model so that the people who spend their time and money making the music or movies actually see a return on their investment?"
If every person (I do mean everyone) who actually saw my film throuh P2P donated the cost of DVD rental, we would have actually broken even.
Thanks for the mention. Please buy "The Man From Earth" on DVD from www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk
Eric D. Wilkinson
Producer
Jerome Bixby's The Man From Earth
By
Eric D. Wilkinson, at 10:10 PM
Well... My first reaction was that the comment was fake, and in fact it not Mr. Wilkinson, producer of the movie "The man from Earth" who really wrote the text.
But I will leave these doubts behind and assume that the real Eric Wilkinson did stood up. :)
It is indeed a very valid comment, even if it would be a case of fake identity.
Indeed, how can you brake even the movie production costs with the new "criminality" / "reality"?
I am not an economist, business manager or anything like that... I'm an engineer by profession, and a researcher by choice. But as well I am not the sort of people who complain and complain without a thought or a solution / suggestion:
This is "my" idea, and I share it cost free... The technology is there. Servers and peer to peer networks are working wonderfully for file sharing.
I'll take the technological example of the Torrents.
Set up an on-line video store that sends the selected movie by sharing it with several users. The more popular the movie is, the faster the download.
The movie could be selected with different qualities, from HD to DVD to small Divx files highly compressed. (everyone hates the bloody legal warnings in the beginning, stop that!)
Audio tracks and subtitles included.
The movie could be shared in different languages quite easily, for those lasy ones who like dubbed movies.
To obtain the torrent file and the list of servers/users sharing the movie, one must register and login at the server/store.
This already exists, it's no science fiction.
The costs of the registration would be X, plus a monthly or yearly rate of Y. For each movie you download the user would have to pay, a simbolic amount not higher than 2€ otherwise people will download less and the money would be lost again. this money will then go for the movie production costs, authors and other stuff...
Of course values for this X, Y and single file would have to be studied and evaluated by people who know what they are doing, and by not me.
And in a simple, effective way... you turn the file sharing community from criminals to be hunted down with futuristic laser guns, to profitable clients and happy costumers.
One can argue that why would I pay if I can get it for free in another server?... Simply because the costs of doing the right thing are better.... you get a higher quality file, you get a higher transfer rate, you get a whole long list of movies you wanted and never had the courage to rent it in the video store or download. Turn those marketing people from making cool looking posters and annoying promotion stunts to promote this solution.
Please, do not corrupt this concept with ideas of how to brake it... if its cheap enough, people will not be tempted to try to brake it.
OHhh by the way, I did bought the DVD ;) Because I do believe it was worth it.
take care
By
Vitor Vieira, at 3:07 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home