HomeWeekly News Roundup (24 October 2010)
So I did manage to get that NPD analysis done, thanks to some timely data leaks. Looks like that will have to be the order of the day from now on, relying on leaks from the likes of Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo to trumpet their own “magnificent” sales, and from other analysts who have access to the full NPD data. As for the actual data, as expected, the Xbox 360 won the month again thanks largely to Halo Reach. The only real loser though is the Wii, and that’s becoming a disturbing trend for Nintendo lately. Otherwise, it was a relatively quiet week, so I think we can get through this WNR quite quickly, so I can go back to playing Starcraft 2, umm, I mean my other work.
Let’s start with the copyright news. Could the solution to the piracy problem be to make legal purchases cheaper?
Cheap non decision purchases, like apps, may means big money and reduced piracy
Regular readers will know this is a rhetorical question around here, since I have often expressed my view that cheaper purchases will mean people will buy more, while those that can only afford to pay a little can still pay, and not resort to piracy. It seems I’m not alone in thinking this, and this point of view has gotten support from an unexpected source, the former head of Warner Music, and one time President of the UK equivalent of the RIAA, Rob Dickins. Dickins believes by making music purchases a “non-decision” by making prices low, that people will buy more and that the piracy problem will be solved. There is some evidence to support this point of view though, because if you look at the smart-phone apps market, or ring-tones before, people are willing to pay, when these “micro-transactions” are small enough to make them not think about the buying decision, and they end up spending quite a lot of money when it’s all added up. And on Steam, when games go on sale, they are snapped up quickly, and I know this to be a fact because I’ve done that plenty of times recently, and also the fact that Steam now seems to hold sales every other day. By making prices low so that those that are resorting to piracy due to lack of funds can at least pay something for a legal purchase, then that’s something at least. And those that can afford to pay, will they pay less to get the same content as before, or will they get more content, now that prices are lower? It’s definitely something to think about, and critics shouldn’t dismiss this idea completely, to only look at the possible risks to short term gain.
Speaking of being short-sighted, it seems CBS and ABC have classified as Google’s attempted revolution in Television, Google TV, as more of a threat than an opportunity. Both networks have banned their content from being shown on Google TV, because they believe that Google TV can be potentially used to located pirated content, and they want no part of this. I’m not sure if they’ve realised that by taking legal content “off the air” from Google TV, that means the only ABC and CBS shows available on Google TV will be from illegal sources, and just how exactly does this help ABC and CBS? Shouldn’t they be out there trying to get a foothold in Google TV land, to fight off the threat of illegal sources by making the legal ones available, push out a few apps for the platform, and then perhaps make some deals with Google for ad revenue and the such. You know, gaining viewer loyalty, creating Internet hype, trying to expand the audience of your new shows, you know, the stuff they should be doing instead of a petty boycott of a new TV platform just because, despite Google’s best attempts to reduce pirated content, that some may get through. I mean, ABC and CBS already have YouTube channels, and YouTube is well known to occasionally host pirated content, so why aren’t they boycotting YouTube? The real issue may be that if people starting watching Google TV as a replacement for regularly TV (and you just know that this fits into the global domination plans of Google), then the traditional TV networks actually become content providers, while the only TV network is in fact, Google. Now that is a paradigm shift, and could be a threat to the traditional TV networks model, but it’s up to them to work it to their advantage, not to whine about it. And aren’t they only whining about it because they didn’t think of it first?
Anyway, as I posted about in my TV Networks for the 21st Century blog post, the traditional TV network model won’t survive for long, and things needs to change. People now want choice, want things on demand to fit their busier lifestyles, and traditional TV can no longer deliver this, not even with the help of TiVo. So it’s not a time to resist change, but to embrace it and see how you can benefit from it. At least the Internet freedom advocates are innovating, with the Pirate Parties International detailing a plan to launch a “pirate balloon”. I don’t know about this, I think it could backfire. Imagine a balloon entering US air space, and the US Air Force determine that it’s a threat to national security. BAM, the next thing you know, downloading pirated content is now a national security issue. I just hope they have enough room at Guantanamo for all the downloaders.
I think it's time to bring back this poster, because throwing communists off the Internet after three-strikes makes perfect sense
So the alternative to innovate is to litigate and legislate, and the MPAA has been busy on both fronts recently. This week, MPAA head Bob Pisano is in Japan promoting the merits of “Three-Strikes”, calling it “forward-thinking”, which makes sense coming from an organisation that has almost everything ass backwards these days. So the MPAA’s “forward-thinking” plan is to just ban everyone from the Internet and go back to the time when, you know, when the Internet didn’t exist? With these forward-thinkers in the likes of the MPAA, ABC and CBS, no wonder the piracy problem is as good as solved and piracy is in no way increasing in popularity or anything.
But the MPAA wasn’t alone in promoting Three-Strikes this week, with one of the biggest proponents of the system, French President Sarkozy, also trying to hijack a Internet freedom conference to promote the agenda. That’s right, hijacking a conference about freedom and speech and *against* Internet censorship by promoting his own Internet censorship plans. What’s going on here? Is Sarkozy too cheap to host his own conference, that he has to, dare I say it, “steal” someone else’s conference.
Scaring people way from piracy isn’t going to work unless you can guarantee that you are capable of scare them, and that they’re not going to move to a download service that is nice and encrypted and/or prevent Big Brother from finding out just exactly what was downloaded. And when (not if) that happens, what will the MPAA and Sarkozy suggest we do then?
One solution that has been used so far is some kind of piracy tax, where people are taxed for blank media purchased, on the assumption that they’re using the blank media for piracy. It’s not really fair on those that don’t piracy, and I think it sends the wrong message, that since you’ve already “paid” for pirated goods, then go ahead, download as much as you can so you can fill up the DVD/Blu-ray with as much stuff as possible. For for businesses and non profits, this tax is insulting in more than one sense of the word, and it seems it’s illegal too, at least according to the EU Court of Justice. The court has ruled that anyone other than private individuals should not be levied with the tax, since it’s not fair to assume that these businesses and charities are all engaging in piracy. But is it really fair to label private individuals all by the same brush? Just because the problem is too complicated, in that it’s impossible to determine who is pirating and who isn’t, shouldn’t give governments and courts justification in simplifying the problem by making *everyone* guilty. How would drivers reacts if they were hit with yearly mandatory fines, because you know, statistically, most will have broken some kind of road rules during the year? It should be the same with downloads.
There’s bad news for copyright trolls everywhere, as newspaper copyright law firm Righthaven has lost a case, one of the thousands they filed. The judge ruled that Las Vegas realtor Michael Nelson’s posting of 8 sentences of a 30 sentence newspaper article is considered fair use, especially when he also linked to the original article. But there’s some confusion as to what has really happened, as it appears Nelson had settled the case with Righthaven. Did he settle too soon (and if he did settle, then why did the matter go to trial), or was this all part of the settlement deal? Who knows. But just because your industry is dying, it doesn’t give you the right, nor will it help you, to pursue people who were enthusiastic enough to like your articles and link to them. Now, if they were just content scrapers, then okay, sue all you want, but at least allow them to post a sentence or two, perhaps even helping them out by providing the linking code with the snippet that you want others to use. I can talk all day about why the newspaper business if failing, but I think news in general is failing because there is now a lack of trust in the coverage being provided. The bias ridden, badly researched, deliberately misleading, simplified to the point of being totally pointless stories that we call news these days is very much responsible for the apathy people feel these days. When everything is a “gate”, can something like the Watergate stories break again? I just don’t think so. And yes, I’ve been watching season 5 of The Wire recently, how could you tell? Yeah, but let’s just sue those that actually like our articles enough to link to them, that will work!
Jammie Thomas-Rasset is going back to court for the third time, this time to decide just how much in damages she should pay. The original controversial amount was $1.92 million, reduced to $54,000, and now the RIAA will try to increase this again to something “more reasonable”, so they can use Thomas as an example to scare others into hiding their downloads a bit better or something.
In high definition news, the week ending 10th October was Blu-ray’s second best week on record.
It was largely down to Iron Man 2, released the previous week, and Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, with 20.58% of the market belonging to Blu-ray, just below the record set by the week Avatar was released.
Blu-ray combos are helping to boost Blu-ray sales figures
However, and as I’ve noted in the analysis, and the subsequent posts, the numbers are slightly misleading, because you cannot say that 20.58% of all sales were for Blu-ray. This is because the numbers include all combos sold, and in Disney’s case, they only release combos for the first month, so anyone wanting the DVD edition must buy the combo during these first few weeks. In fact, all combos are counted as Blu-ray sales only, even though they all include the DVD edition. And with studios pricing combos at only a few dollars more than the deluxe DVD edition (assuming one is even available), they’re obviously subsidizing the combo version at the expense of DVD only versions. The fair solution would be to count combos separately, and this would also give us stat freaks another set of numbers to analyze to death (or at the very least tell us if consumers like combos or not).
But this isn’t to say that Blu-ray hasn’t been selling well, it has. A lot of titles are now dominated by the Blu-ray version, despite cheaper DVD versions being available (for example, Avatar on Blu-ray’s has seldom had a market share less than 40%, despite actual Blu-ray penetration being at a much lower percentage). With Toy Story 3 and Inception coming in November and December respectively, the next couple of months should be huge for Blu-ray, even without combo related number cooking.
Not much happening in gaming except the NPD stuff. And the latest news is that Sony’s PlayStation Move has “moved” over a million units, which isn’t bad at all. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn with Kinect, and all signs point to it being a even bigger success (stories of the motion gaming device being sold out, and the Oprah endorsement can’t have hurt when trying to penetrate the casual gaming market, just in time for Christmas too).
Anyway, that’s the week that was. More next week, as we follow the adventures of Nicolas “Sarky” Sarkozy, and the crazy gang over at the MPAA, as they fight for what’s good, and right in this messed up world of ours: the ability to kick people you don’t like off the Internet. Until then, have a good one.