PINAC : Business Stats

As part of an ongoing update, I am reprinting old pieces of mine here as well. This piece originally appeared here on www.piracyisnotacrime.com in Late 2004, and referenced the top of this no-longer published page on piracyisacrime.com

A Problem for Business

Every weekend, 7,000 open markets in the UK trade in pirate videos and DVDs.

Every weekend, eh. Exactly 7,000? Is that based on examination of every open market in the UK? More likely that's a figure extrapolated from a small sample area; or, in simple-speak, they scaled up a small area to the size of the UK and rounded. It’s a made up number. There isn't even an 'approximately' there.

Seizures of pirate DVDs increased by a massive 405% from 2002 to 2003 and the seizure level throughout this year is looking to be dramatically up on this figure. Actions against DVD piracy web sites for the first quarter in 2004 are already at a similar level to that for 2003.

If they made 10 seizures in 2002, and 40 in 2003, that's a 400% increase, so is 1 to 4. It says nothing about the level of seizures in 2003 or 2004 because it doesn't give a FIGURE, or HOW those figures are reached. Is it the number of seizures? The number of discs seized? The number of titles? Besides, since these seizures and actions are obviously 'A problem for business' (else why would it be here) then they need to be stopped.

The value of the black market in pirate DVDs in the UK is estimated at between £400 million and £500 million in 2003 and is expected to exceed £1 billion within three years.

Estimated by whom? On what basis? The MPAA estimates that its members lose approximately "$3 billion annually in potential worldwide revenue due to piracy". So, accordingly, nearly 1/3 of that is to counterfeit sales in the UK alone. When you add in the fact that the MPAA’s figure includes revenue lost to FREE downloads, then it’s pretty obvious that someone’s telling lies. It’s ridiculous to believe that the UK’s responsible for HALF of the MPAA’s WORLDWIDE losses. So, either the MPAA is understating their losses (extremely unlikely) or PIAC is overstating in an attempt to mislead. (source: http://mpaa.org/anti-piracy/index.htm, first paragraph)

Downloading of illegal film and television files has tripled in the last twelve months and over 1.6 million people are now estimated to be downloading illegal films and TV shows every week.

Again, it is hard to see what the point of this is. The majority of those downloading TV episodes are those unable to see them any other way. Ex-pats in the USA, for instance, have no other way to keep up with The Bill. It's not as if this was a potential ad-watching customer lost. Indeed, it's a potential ad-watching customer to be GAINED, as in general, people will request the show to be shown on their local stations. To also put in context, remember that, on the BBC and ITV, 1.6M viewers is average for most shows. How many times a week does Coronation Street or EastEnders pull 10x that many viewers?
That’s TV; as for movies the main problem is simple to understand – the cost. Downloading takes time, and blank media. A pirate copy is just cheaper. In neither case is the quality so good, so it MUST be something about the price, and maybe the distribution method.

Ben jones
 

Reading Comprehension is not Required for Microsoft

Sometimes, it's clear that people have difficulty reading, other times it's clear they have difficulty writing. A lot of the time, people who suffer in both these cases write on blogs, and call themselves some kind of expert. Of course, the very worst of these, are those that are computer programmers. Have you looked at programs these days? They're sometimes ten times the size equivalent programs were a decade ago, and run generally about the same speed as those equivalent programs did on the computers of the time, and they certainly don't do even four times as much as those programs of the Win98 era did. The only area which has kept up with the bloat, has been bugs (and the associated patches and fixes). Why I have brought this up, is due to a 'writer' called John Carroll, who 'blogs' for ZDnet.

In this article, he supposedly goes through the Pirate Party of the US website, and looks at their issues. It is here that he shows those very values of a writer I stated at the top.

The Pirate Party defines copyright as only being suitable to recoup costs. After that, companies and individuals should not be able to control the distribution of their intellectual work.

I looked at the issues page, and indeed the entirety of the website, and couldn't find any such definition. It would appear that his definition is based on the following statement (taken from the first paragraph of their copyright page).

As such, the Framers instituted copyrights for “limited times” only; once an opportunity to recoup costs had passed, open distribution could once again be in an open manner.

In short, Mr. Carroll sees "once an opportunity to recoup costs had passed" and reads "as soon as costs have been recouped". It is exactly that kind of poor linguistic comprehension that has put the US in the terrible state it's in. Furthermore, it's clear that only the littlest of effort was made in researching this, and even the multitude of other articles that have appeared in the past week about the Pirate Party were ignored. Had he read more than the first paragraph, he would have seen just how far his assumptions, and their resulting arguments, are from the mark. Let me refer to Variety, for instance, which is pretty much the news source for the entertainment industry. In their latest issue, they include an interview with a spokesman for the US Pirate Party. he says "But in an age of massive distribution, it should be easy to recoup investment and make money in 14 years."

Of course, he then makes the classic argument, that copyright infringement is theft. There are many varied definitions of theft, but the general theme is that it is the taking of property from one person, by another without permission, depriving the original owner of the property. Copyright infringement however, can best be described as the reproduction of a piece of copyrighted work without the permission of the rights owner. The main difference is that the original owner still has their item, and is not deprived of it. I'm not even going to go into the whole shoplifting is the same as downloading analogy (I will just say that the movie studios still get paid for shoplifted DVDs, its just the retail stores that lose out). He is reinforced in this by the CEO of a pre-press company, who says “How many members of this new Pirate's Party do you think make their living as artists, musicians, writers, programmers, designers, or journalists. I think I already know this answer.” I know there is at least two, but then I actually bother to look up facts. A little research gave me the answer that the spokesman quoted before, is writing a book (and has a patent, as well as worked on TV shows, including one for ZDTV/ZDnet, back when John Carroll was still just an angry forum user) whilst the 'interim administrator' in Utah is a journalist. Want more? Rick Falkvinge, the head of the Swedish Piratpartiet, used to work at Microsoft (as a project leader, no less) and a smaller software company. It might seem that the CEO would be better off playing golf, that trying to play at political pundit.

Of course, dealing with people who have their own agenda, and Carroll's may be for his job. With the success of Joost (created by the same people that brought you kazaa), and other IPTV projects, perhaps he fears that he'll be left to misread websites, and spout poorly-reasoned (and worse researched) drivel.

3rd Annual Fair Use Day Arrives

The 3rd annual Fair Use Day Is about to start, July 11 to be exact. A day to celebrate and learn about things is not new. There are similar days and even months for everything from “black history” to trees and even talking like a pirate, but it is not common for something that governments are attempting to legislate out of existence.

“I’m just an average guy with a common interest in the rights we are all losing.” said Fair Use day’s founder, Eric Clifford, speaking exclusively to TorrentFreak. “The ability to access and interact with our culture is being stripped away and it’s will only get worse if the public doesn’t do something about it soon.”

Eric says his idea for a day to celebrate and raise awareness of fair use came about from a Linux support group IRC chat. “[It was] the usual problems with copy protection and DVD’s. A group of us were ticked off about the lack of fair use and the “day” thing just popped into my head.” Whilst it had a fairly impressive start (they were ‘boingboinged‘ the first year) he says it’s been difficult to get any sort of attention brought to it.

That does appear to be changing, however, as this year, the Pirate Party of the US has issued a press release in support of the day. “It is important the people are aware of what they can legally do with regards to copyrighted material.” said a spokesman for the party.

Fair use is in dire straights in the US right now, at least according to GNU founder and copyright critic Richard Stallman: “With laws laws like the DMCA in the US, and the DADVSI in France, corporations have bought our governments and turned fair use into a sham. Nominally, you still have the right of fair use, but any tools that would let you use it are forbidden. Government of the people, by the people, for the people - it isn’t.”

However, things are not all bad. Virginia Congressman Rich Boucher has proposed a bill, dubbed ‘The Fair Use Act’ which may go some way to restoring fair use rights restricted by the DMCA. The EFF has a page detailing it, including a form letter to send to your representatives here.

US Pirate Party Press Release

Originally posted on TorrentFreak

Lessig moves on from Copyright fight

Lawrence Lessig, author of “Free Culture”, and CEO of Creative Commons, has announced his plans to scale back his work in Intellectual Property (IP) fields, including lectures and talks, to work on a new project – the 'corruption' of the political process.

Ten years ago, Lawrence Lessig started in the fight for fairer and more culturally sound IP laws. He gained great prominence for his work in Eldred v. Ashcroft, and is viewed by many as a true cornerstone on the fight to opposed the absurd copyright laws being implemented and enhanced worldwide.

His statement today (itself a clarification of what he had earlier announced at iCommons) about his stepping down and the redirection of his aims might come as a surprise to many. He claims it was brought about from a combination of Barack Obama's decision to run for the US Senate (described as “up or out”) and what Al Gore calls the corruption of the political system.

He'll continue to be CEO of the Creative Commons, and on the board of iCommons, but he'll be withdrawing from other similar groups in the near future. Lets hope he has as much success at his new area of conquest, as he has in highlighting the current problems in the area of “intellectual property”