The Inquisitr » piracy

About this movie piracy thing killing the industry…

Steven Hodson — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:54:37 +0000

Every time you turn around some movie exec or entertainment lobbyist is proclaiming how all the talk of free and evil people downloading illegal copies of movies is killing the movie business.

Yet it seems that just as quickly we hear stats after stats about how the current year has been one of the best. Blockbuster after blockbuster rolls through towns and cities making millions upon millions of dollars.

It turns out that 2009 is shaping up to be a year that will be breaking box office records that were set back in 2006. In a public relations release Sony Pictures announced that they have already passed the $1.634 billion mark.

The year has been driven by the success of a number of breakthrough hits in the international marketplace. The studio’s most recent blockbuster is 2012, from director Roland Emmerich, which opened this past weekend to more than $165 million internationally ($230.4 million worldwide) and has yet to open in such markets as Japan, where it is expected to perform solidly.

Also contributing to the overseas record is Columbia Pictures’ Angels & Demons, which opened in May and has taken in over $352 million in foreign markets. Sony Pictures Releasing International distributed Terminator Salvation in many overseas countries, taking in $220.6 million in SPRI’s territories. District 9 proved popular around the world, too, taking in $88 million overseas, including $67.7 million from SPRI territories. Columbia’s The Ugly Truth, a modestly budgeted comedy, took in more than $112 million from international audiences (and still going). Finally, Michael Jackson fans around the world have driven Michael Jackson’s THIS IS IT to $155.2 million internationally so far and more than $222 million worldwide.

Talk about talking out of both sides of your mouth. On one hand we have the business being destroyed by evil downloaders but on the other they are making more money than in the history of the business.

Microsoft could face legal action over mass Xbox 360 bannings

Chris Greenhough — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:55:22 +0000

Last week, Microsoft started rocking its banhammer in a big way, permanently banning 1 million Xbox Live users from the online gaming service for playing on a modded Xbox 360. But was Microsoft’s choice to ban 5% of the Xbox Live community a bit too conveniently timed?

Boutique law firm AbingtonIP thinks so, and argues that the timing of the bannings – which took place shortly before the launch of Modern Warfare 2 – was deliberate. By cutting users off just before the year’s biggest game arrived, AbingtonIP claims that Microsoft netted a ton of money from potential Xbox Live subscribers, before banning their modded consoles.

Of course, by the letter of the law, Microsoft would seem to be in the right – modding your console does violate the Xbox Live Terms of Service. Yet banning so many users when it did could land Microsoft in trouble for what Joystiq legal columnist Mark Methenitis calls a “deceptive business practice concern.”

AbingtonIP is currently investigating the case before it considers bringing a class action lawsuit to obtain a refund for the sums of money left on the banned Xbox Live subscriptions.

[Via Joystiq]

Microsoft unleashes banhammer on 1 million Xbox Live players

Kim LaCapria — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:29:37 +0000

Cries of frustration, anger and grief rose up from parents’ basements across the land as a million Xbox Live players found themselves cut off from the service in an anti-piracy blitz by Microsoft.

Microsoft describes the number of affected modded consoles as “small,” and commented on the move unapologetically:

“We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles have been modified to play pirated game discs,” Microsoft told GamesIndustry.biz today. “In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox Live community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox Live.”

While banninated users can’t participate in Xbox Live, affected consoles work offline, so the console isn’t totally bricked. That’s of little comfort to users who have fallen afoul of the ban, one of whom commented at length to the BBC:

I wasn’t expecting it. I was just like, ‘OK, what do I do now? Is this just a joke?’ So I thought, ‘Let me restart the Xbox’. I restarted, signed in again, same message. I did that three times, same message. I was pulling my hair out thinking, ‘No, why me?’

It’s like telling someone their dog’s just died. It was pretty much like that for me. I love it, I love playing Xbox live. I play with my mates all the time. It’s just a good laugh, we all sit there chatting, playing games. Now I don’t know what to do.

The move comes just as the highly anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 hit shelves- a release that was reportedly widely pirated before it was available for purchase. Although many users have praised the ousting of the rule-circumventing Xbox owners, alienating 5% of the 20 million players on Xbox Live just seems counterintuitive. I also imagine that the users who would spend money to mod their consoles (the user quoted by the BBC spent £100 to do so) might also be the players who are dedicated enough to pour revenue into the company in other ways. Well- perhaps they were the customers who poured revenue into the company in other ways, but that’s not very likely now.

Anti-piracy group raises the surrender flag

Steven Hodson — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:00:04 +0000

While it may be a long time before we see this type of thing happen in the US and Canada the people of Denmark can look forward to one less anti-piracy agency trying to sue everyone in sight for downloading music from the internet – legal or otherwise.

It appears according to a report over at TorrentFreak that the Danish anti-piracy group Antipiratgruppen has given up on trying to get illegal downloaders convicted as well as announcing the group will no longer take people to court.

Part of the reasoning behind the decision is as the Antipiratgruppen lawyer, Mary Fredenslund, is that the evidence required has to be strong and concrete in order to have people convicted and the organization apparently couldn’t convince the courts the lift the burden of proof in cases like these.

Defense attorney Per Overbeck says that in addition to these outcomes, cases against two of his clients have been dropped in recent years. “Antipiratgruppen has acknowledged that they can not get people convicted without either catching them in the act or threatening them to confess,” Overbeck said. “In practice, this means that without a confession there is no case,” he added.

Per Overbeck and Antipiratgruppen’s assessment that recent High Court rulings make it virtually impossible to get individuals convicted for illegal file sharing are supported by a recent Government report from the Ministry of Culture.

According to the report, IP-addresses can only be used to identify the person paying for the Internet subscription, not the person who actually downloaded the files. The courts have ruled several times that in terms of evidence, an IP-address alone is insufficient to prove guilt.

Source: TorrentFreak

It’s too bad we couldn’t see the same common sense be applied here in North America but with so many politicians being supported by entertainment industry trade groups common sense seems to be in short supply. When it comes to the courts they can only really go by the guidance of the laws as they exist – laws crafted by lobbyists and condoned by politicians.

Tucker Max says it’s cool by him to pirate his movie

Steven Hodson — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:42:20 +0000

For those who might not know who Tucker Max is here’s a little background. Tucker is a 34 year old who has fame and fortune by recounting tales of his real-life drunken antics and sexual antics. Out of this he got a book deal in 2006 that saw I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell hit the NY Times Bestseller.

The popularity of the book then landed Tucker a movie deal based on the book that will be hitting theaters tomorrow in a “limited release” and it is the release schedule that has prompted Tucker to tell people living outside of the US and Canada that if they want to see the movie to go right ahead and pirate it.

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.

hat tip to Torrent Freaks

It’s okay for Lily Allen to pirate but anyone else is scum

Steven Hodson — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:52:27 +0000

There’s a number of great posts today about the whole music piracy nonsense. However none come close to show the hypocrisy of the music business’s so-called war against piracy than the whole Lily Allen crap-fest that has hit the blogosphere today.

It all centers around a post on Allen’s recently launched blog, It’s Not Alright, where she attempts to take rapper 50 Cent to task over his recent interview on CNBC where he suggested that piracy is really just part of the music business. I say attempts because her argument would actually mean something if she hadn’t stolen it – word for word – from a post by Michael Masnick of Techdirt.

Here is a graphic of the post courtesy of Sean P. Aune over at SiliconAngle where he draws a line between the original text written by Masnick (top) and Allen’s rambling nonsense below it.

Masnick responded to the whole thing with a post today and like him I am having a really hard time making any sense of her incoherent reasoning of who she seems to think is affected by piracy. In the paragraph she mentions recording studio people, website builders, designers and last but not least the kids who put up posters.

Excuse me?

Exactly what do any of those people have to do with being affected by piracy. Every single example she uses are people who get paid for their service regardless of whether some musician’s music is pirated or not. Not one of them is paid using the recording companies highly questionable percentage basis as the musicians are. They get cash on the barrelhead – period.

So not only does Allen show that she has absolutely no couth when it comes to other people’s “copyrights” – I guess because it was a blogger they don’t count – but she shows that she doesn’t seem to understand some basic economics of paying for services rendered.

Do yourself a favor Lily Allen – shut up and leave the discussion about music and the bullshit around piracy to those who actually know what they are talking about, not what their manager or record company pumps up their ass.

Talk Like a Pirate Day 2009 gets its own World of Warcraft party

Chris Greenhough — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:17:25 +0000

Don’t think you’ll have to pull away from your monitor and Cheetos to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Blizzard has announced that World of Warcraft will have its very own celebration of the special day, which takes place tomorrow.

There will be numerous virtual activities taking place to celebrate the non-holiday, including:

* A large crowd of pirate revelers (”Dread Crew”) who dance, talk, eat, drink, laugh, and shoot fireworks. Ask Baron Revilgaz what he thinks of the visitors.
* The Tauren First Mate Hapana and his giant South Seas assault parrot, Nyuni.
* A trio of cannons and cannoneers who periodically fire out into the bay – at times, just barely missing the sails of the incoming transport. Those crazy corsairs.
* Cap’n Slappy and Ol’ Chumbucket, two curiously-named pirates.
* Lively pirate-themed music that plays upon the rooftop.

Very nice. All you have to do to get involved is chat to one of the pirate commoners who’ll be hanging round the bigger cities in Azeroth. They’ll loan you a pirate outfit, and then you can head to Stranglethorn to join in the frolicking and festivities. Once there, you can talk to Captain DeMeza to be transformed into a pirate of your race for the rest of the day.

“Yarr, it sure to be a fine time had by all!” (As I am contractually obliged to say).

[Via World of Warcraft]

Yarr! Celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day with free copy of Monkey Island

Chris Greenhough — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:26:37 +0000

Ahoy, me hearties, etc. In case you weren’t aware, September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Celebrated since 1995, I’ve already lived through enough ITLaPDs to find the whole affair rather tedious and memesy.

On the up side, companies occasionally use the date to give away free stuff, like LucasArts and Telltale Games are doing this year. This Saturday, you can acquire a copy of the first episode of Tales of Monkey Island for the low price of zero, simply by pillaging a code from the company’s website. Not only that, but the whole opening season of five episodes is available for five bucks less.

Easing you in with a free copy of the first chapter is a sneaky move by LucasArts and Telltale, because Tales of Monkey Island is awesome, and they know it. Try the opening episode, and I don’t think you’ll be able to resist buying the rest.

Also, from right this second and until September 21st, you can pick up Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition at Direct2Drive and Steam to $5, or the iPhone version for a reduced price of $4.

[Via 4cr]

Batman PC game features anti-piracy glitch

Chris Greenhough — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:01:00 +0000

Holy anti-piracy measures, Robin! Batman: Arkham Asylum is out on the PC later this month, and will include some interesting copy protection measures, if the experiences of an early pirate are anything to go by.

Eidos forum member Cheshirec_the_cat described a problem he had while playing the game, writing on Eidos’ own forums:

“I’ve got a problem when it’s time to use Batman’s glide in the game. When I hold “,” like it’s said to jump from one platform to another, Batman tries to open his wings again and again instead of gliding. So he fels [sic] down in a poisoning gas. If somebody could tel [sic] me, what should I do there.”

After being reminded that, hey, the game isn’t actually out ’til next Tuesday, forum administrator Keir stepped in to explain what was going on, producing a hell of a put-down in the last sentence:

“The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free. It’s not a bug in the game’s code, it’s a bug in your moral code.”

Buuuurn.

[Afterdawn, via MaxConsole]

Ubisoft delays … pretty much every Ubisoft game we wanted

Chris Greenhough — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:08:42 +0000

Mega-publisher Ubisoft has delivered its latest sales report for the fiscal first quarter of 2009-10 (that’s April through June), revealing a hefty loss: they’re down by slightly over 50% on the same period a year ago, to be precise. Apparently, an increase in Nintendo DS piracy was to blame.

That’s the boring financial bit done with, so here’s the bit we actually care about: Ubi has shoved a bunch of our most anticipated titles into 2010.

That means we’ll now be waiting until March 2010 (at the latest, we’re promised) for Splinter Cell: Conviction (Xbox 360, and already delayed from 2007) and Red Steel 2 (Wii). Furthermore, we’re to expect potentially fascinating action/survival title I Am Alive (PS3, Xbox 360, PC) and Ghost Recon 4 (formats as-yet-unannounced) between April 2010 and March 2011. March 2011 is, like, centuries away.

So this pretty much sucks, but hey, surely there’s a silver lining buried in the company’s press release, eh?

The second quarter of fiscal 2009-10 will see only a few game releases, including:

− Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox360, PLAYSTATION 3, PSP and PC.
− Academy of Champions, which will be released for Wii in the UK, the Nordic countries and Australia.
− New casual titles for Nintendo DS and Wii.

Oh.

[Ubisoft, via Joystiq]

Yet another band says thank you for pirating our song

Steven Hodson — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 22:39:30 +0000

Just last week I posted about the second largest aquarium in the world and how cool it was. Well it turns out that the song by Barcelona used in the video had been pirated. Now in this day and age of YouTube takedowns at the slightest finger wagging by record companies the guys in Barcelona are saying a great big thank you to the person who made the video. The band claims that the video has actually boosted their album sales and concert ticket sales.

So bucking the takedown trend the guys in the band posted a video response to the "Kuroshio Sea" video in which they thanked the uploader of the video and all their new-found friends that came as a result of the posting.

Now that’s the way to handle the times when a fan creates something really cool and actually adds value to your music. Good on ya Barcelona!

Is there finally light at the end of the dark music industry tunnel?

Steven Hodson — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 19:47:21 +0000

The music industry in general likes to paint all young music listeners as nothing more than downloading pirates out to destroy the music business as we know it. They have been labeled as the killers of the album (CD) format instead being more inclined to cherry pick their favorite songs to download. This opinion though could actually be far from the truth if there is any truth in some research conducted by The Leading Question, a media agency, and Music Ally, a digital music consultancy.

The research is the results of questioning 2,000 music fans about their listening and buying habits. Interestingly enough it found that among teenagers – 66% – there is a stronger preference for downloading CDs rather than just singles. Most striking though was the finding that the percentage of people getting their music via file-sharing – aka piracy – has fallen from 22% to 17%. Even more astonishing according to the research is that among the 14 – 18 year old demographic the fall has been even greater decline going from 42% to just 26%.

The conclusion drawn by the researchers is that habits amongst those digitally aware consumers who don’t buy CDs are changing – they’re moving from downloading illegally to streaming legally.

They’re still not paying for online music then, but at least they’re using legitimate services. And here in the UK, it’s one business, Spotify, which is getting a lot of the credit for that change.

Source: BBC News – Green shoots in the music industry?

As the post pointed out – the industry bosses think they’ve finally started coming up with services that just might convert pirates into legal consumers – the problem is finding ways to pay for those new ways and services.

Piracy down, streaming up in the UK

Kim LaCapria — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:23:34 +0000

Where are your lawsuits now, music industry?

Piracy was down by roughly a third in the UK in 2008, but streaming was way up in the same period. Savvy UK teenagers are using sites like Pandora, YouTube, Grooveshark and Spotify to stream content and music to their computers in lieu of filesharing. One former pirate and current streamer told the Guardian:

“I didn’t even realise it was illegal for a long time, until I heard that the government were trying to stop it. That did put me off, but one of the big reasons I stopped doing it was because I would get viruses, more pop ups on my computer. While I was at uni I started listening to streamed music using MySpace. Bands would be friends with other bands and it was a great way of discovering new music. I don’t really feel the need to own all that music, I know it’s always there.”

The shift seems largely inspired not by some moral obligation to maintain music industry profits, but rather, sheer convenience. As has been shouted at the music industry time and again, the business models that will flourish alongside technology are those that offer convenience and aren’t ripping consumers off left, right and center.

It seems that the music industry can accept that the entire revenue generating model has changed and change with it, using tangible merchandise like tour tickets, memorabilia and the like to boost profits alongside ad-supported streaming. Or they can continue to behave like litigious buggy-whip factories and keep trying to circumvent technologies that bring fans to music most efficiently. Which do you think it will be?

German court hits Rapidshare with $34m fine

Kim LaCapria — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:28:34 +0000

Rapidshare has been fined $34m and ordered by a German court to proactively seek out copyright infringement on its servers.

German royalty collectors GEMA filed suit againist Rapidshare requesting that 5,000 tracks managed by GEMA be removed from Rapidshare servers and not be uploaded again. In April, Ars Technica reported that Rapidshare had begun handing over data on file sharers to record labels. And while Rapidshare removes copyrighted content immediately following a takedown notice, GEMA still wasn’t satisfied. In a statement, GEMA said:

“The judgment states that the hosting service itself is now responsible for making sure that none of the music tracks concerned are distributed via its platform in the future. This means that the copyright holder is no longer required to perform the ongoing and complex checks.”

As Mashable points out, this is a decision frought with fail from start to finish. Let’s just forget that it’s absolutely impossible to police gazillions of users who upload zipped, password protected files to Rapidshare worldwide on a daily basis. If you look at the recent case of Jammie Thomas-Rassert, who was ordered to pay nearly $2m for 24 songs, shouldn’t this fine be in the billions or trillions?

Rapidshare COO Bobby Chang appeared unruffled by the ruling when he commented on it, and pointed out what record labels have been trying to ignore since the RIAA sued its first pre-teen.

“We do not consider the court’s decision to be a breakthrough. As other proceedings in similar disputes with GEMA have shown, there is considerable disparity amongst the individual courts in some cases. Our experience is that the courts of appeal tend to restrict the scope of the decisions made by the lower courts. For this reason, we think that it would make more sense to work together to provide music fans with the right services at the right price and to open up a new source of income for music-markets on the Internet.”

Lily Allen claims music pirates killing new talent

Duncan Riley — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 01:03:04 +0000

Lily Allen, not exactly well known for her mental capacity, has attacked fans that spend millions of seeing her perform live, but don’t pay for her music online.

According to Allen, internet piracy is depriving the music industry of new talent.

“If what the consumer wants is good music, then they are going to have to start paying for it.” says Allen. “The music industry is run by a bunch of fucking idiots and if you’re giving those people less money they are going to invest in bands that aren’t very good. The more money there is in the industry, the more they are going to have to invest in quality bands.”

That makes pure sense: music labels who make bad decisions make better decisions with more money, despite them already rolling in billions. Got that

“There are people really struggling to make their way, they’re getting dropped much quicker, not being given the opportunity to make second albums” Allen continued with her mental capacity at full strength. “The only people responsible are those who are downloading music illegally, because there is no money going towards the bands anymore.”

For our next item, Allen will blame space aliens for the state of the British economy.

French three strikes law struck down

Duncan Riley — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:02:54 +0000

France’s highest constitutional authority has struck down legislation that would have seen internet users banned from the internet if caught pirating content.

The French “Hadopi legislation” passed in May with the support of the music industry. The legislation, like similar laws proposed in other countries, introduced a three strikes and you’re out rule for internet users who download pirated content. The law meant French users would receive a warning letter for a first offense, a temporary suspension of internet access for a second offense, and then a ban on the third offense.

According to Torrent Freak, the Constitutional Council deemed the provision banning users was unconstitutional on the basis that internet access is a fundamental human right, the same position held by the European Union. The Council found that the role of the High Authority (Hadopi) is to warn the downloader that he has been spotted, but not to punish him.

Although the decision applies only to France, the support of the European Union’s position could help derail attempts to implement three strikes laws in other European countries.

P2P filesharing seen as “fair use”

Steven Hodson — Wed, 20 May 2009 00:45:04 +0000

There are a lot of different arguments used by people brought to court by the RIAA and other entertainment trade groups in order to come out victorious. In the majority of cases they lose and the RIAA get’s to brag a little longer about how they are out their protecting the rights of musicians.

I’ll wait until you pick yourself up from the floor after the laughing fit that statement prompted.

All better know? good because there is a very interesting defense being put forward in the case of accused file-swapper Joel Tenenbaum. It would seen that well respected Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson will argue that what Tenenbaum did falls squarely within “fair use” and therefore he isn’t liable for any purported damages. Nesson claims that downloading of copyrighted works nor no other purpose than personal enjoyment satisfies the famous “four factor test” for fair use claims.

Those four factors according to Stanford University Library are

the purpose and character of your use

the nature of the copyrighted work

the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and

the effect of the use upon the potential market.

While some of Nesson’s equals consider this stretching the fair use clause a bit too far he believes he can convince a jury otherwise

"Defendant Tenenbaum expects and plans to offer the jury evidence relating to each one of these four factors," Nesson wrote in his court filing, "just as they are articulated in the statute, with the jury to decide their meaning as they apply to the facts of his particular case."

Source: Ars Technica

We’ll have to wait until this summer sometime for the case to start in a Massachusetts federal court to see if this rather unique defense will survive.

Is Hulu behind the big piracy drop in the United States?

Duncan Riley — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:36:04 +0000

New figures released from anti-piracy group BayTSP show that the United States dropped from 1st to 4th place in 2008 in their annual list of copyright infringements by country.

The figures offered by BayTSP though don’t calculate actual piracy penetration, at least in those published at TorrentFreak (the report isn’t available on BayTSP’s site.) In the chart above, there were 8.116 million recorded infringements in the United States, but the notable thing about the list is that every other country on it has significantly smaller populations. For example, if the rate of piracy in the United States per head of population was applied to the population of Spain, the number of infringements (based as a percentage of population) would be 1.08 million vs Spain’s 24.75m. That is to say that piracy in Spain is roughly 24x more common than piracy in the United States. Per head of population, the United States wouldn’t make the top 10.

There are some problems though with the stats: we simply don’t know how these raw figures came about, so there may be a distortion in reporting, that is that piracy in Spain could be better tracked and counted vs the United States. Second: I find it difficult to believe the United States figure: was there really only 8 million downloads from a population of over 300 million?

We can though take it that the 2007 and 2008 stats were recorded the same way, so counting aside what we do know is that piracy is rapidly heading downwards in the United States. The big question is why? Why is piracy heading down at a time that the act of piracy has never been easier and more accessible?

Could it be that the 42 million videos served by Hulu in March, a number that has for the most part continued to grow over the last 12 months on a month to month basis, has a direct correlation with the decline in piracy rates in the United States?

We know it’s not the RIAA/ MPAA anti-piracy measures, with even the RIAA (mostly) giving up on taking downloaders to court. Even they could see that the strategy doesn’t work.

Instead, we have a response from big media that created supply where there was demand, supply that in part negated the need to download pirated content.

Although we’d need more quantitative data to prove a direct correlation decisively, I’m going to say Yes: Hulu is the main driver of the drop in piracy in the United States. Notably it’s not the only driver, but likewise it has driven legal content provision from the likes of CBS and other content providers as well on other sites.

That conclusion has big implications for the media industry world wide. There is now a proven way to combat piracy, but it’s one that involves the free supply of content, a model that for the most part has yet to be seriously embraced outside of the United States (there are some part exemptions, UK and Australia have some options.) Piracy is now proven in part to be driven by demand not met by legal supply, so will more companies world wide embrace the workable solution?

Wolverine, Star Trek and how piracy destroyed them both

Steven Hodson — Wed, 13 May 2009 00:09:25 +0000

Almost a month before Wolverine hit the movie theaters a workprint copy of the movie was “leaked” onto the Web. It was a copy that was half finished as far as the special effects were concerned with green screens and wire framed character models visible for all the world to see. The great fight scene at the top of the nuclear reactor was more stickman like drawing that anything to do with the actors. In the end it was an incomplete movie that really only left the majority of those that watched it wanting to see the real thing.

In contrast Star Trek made it to the theater without a hitch and not a single “leak” to be found on the web. There were no FBI agents busting down doors and seizing servers or freelance reviewers losing their jobs because they reviewed something that they shouldn’t have. Everything was above board and unlike Wolverine the Star Trek movie became the darling of the weekend critics; which will last until the next great movie hits.

On one hand you have a great action movie without any pretentions of greatness getting panned and making movie executives fall all over themselves crying about how piracy was going to ruin the movie. On the other side of the coin you have a movie that made it to the theater with movie executives pleased as punch that they had kept those nasty criminal pirates from ruining yet another movie.

As we make our way through the weeks following the big weekend releases of both movies we have some serious dollar figures that obviously will show that those terrible pirate must have ruin the success of Wolverine while letting Star Trek surge ahead. There is only one problem with that assumption – it’s full of crap.

On opening weekend box office dollar figures we have the following:

Wolverine earned more than $85 million
Star Trek netted $75 million

So there you have it folks. The movie that caused the most uproar over piracy in recent time actually earned more money than the other hot movie that garnered critic praise and not a peep about piracy. In the process an ISP data host lost millions of dollars and had their reputation severely impacted. As well a long time FOX freelance movie reviewer has lost his livelihood. All because of the pirating of an incomplete film that ended up earning more money on opening weekend box office that the golden boy movie.

Someone care to tell me exactly how piracy is hurting the movie industry?

Mininova goes legit and piracy as a loss leader

Steven Hodson — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:53:20 +0000

At the end of March of this year I wrote a post about Mininova’s interesting attempt at providing musicians with a storefront on the site for their music. This was a part of their move to try and legitimize torrents as a way to download legal music files. Now it would seem that they are going even further down that road by instituting a content recognition filter system for all torrent file uploads in order to reduce the number of torrents pointing to illegal media files.

One of the interesting things about this is that system being used isn’t one that the team behind Mininova selected themselves. Instead it was one selected by the media companies that currently have a lawsuit pending against the torrent search site. Up until this point Mininova has always been trying to use the “we’re just a search engine” defense and are protected by the DMCA Safe Harbor exemption. As Ernesto at TorrentFreaks points out this has obviously changed.

Additionally Ernesto reports on the negative reaction from the users of the torrent site

The response from Mininova’s users is mostly negative, with one commenter saying “Shame to see such a nice site decide to go hang itself,” and another adding “Wow, guess you guys are caving under the pressure. Too bad its all over now.”

This raises a rather interesting thought. Piracy is going nowhere, no matter how hard the entertainment industry tries, and for sites like Mininova; as well as other popular torrent sites, these ‘illegal’ torrents are what bring people in. Take away those files and you are endanger of losing the biggest reason for people to use your search engine over some other one. They are in fact what is called in the real world of marketing – loss leaders.

So rather than doing everything they can to remove those files and lose users in the process why not use them to your advantage. The idea here being that you clearly label them as pirated files but at the same time provide links to legal versions that are of better quality and faster download. Pull the users in with the lure of easy to find pirate torrents and then convert them into legal owners of those self-same files. It’s not that hard to do and the benefits far outweigh treating everyone as a criminal before giving them an options to be customers.

Where on one hand Mininova look so much like a forward thinking web business it now looks like nothing more than a lackey for the very people that the majority of their users hate. I wouldn’t be at all surprise to see Mininova pay dearly for this move as users begin looking elsewhere. It is another case where everyone loses.