DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Welcome back. In this edition of the WNR, we talk about everything from Ellen, to the Dreamcast, and THE VERY FATE OF THE WEB ITSELF. Hope this issue is as interesting to read for you as it was to write for me.

Starting in 3, 2, 1 …

Screencap of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, with “Ellen DeGeneres” watermark

A screener copy of the Ben Stiller movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty that has been leaked onto file sharing network apparently carries a watermark that identifies the original owner as talk show host Ellen DeGeneres. The show’s producers have vowed to track down whomever is responsible, possibly a staffer, intern or even a janitor who is also a BitTorrent fanatic. They also maintain they may not be the source of the leak, which seems unlikely based on the evidence so far.

It’s not surprising that screeners get leaked. In fact, it’s more surprising when screeners don’t end up on file sharing networks. It is a bit rare for the owner of the screener to be identified as a celebrity though.

So does this point to the secret life of Ellen DeGeneres as a notorious BitTorrent pirate? Probably not. Or if she is, then she’s not a very good at covering her tracks!

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MPAA joins W3C. Hollyweb, here we come!

It’s not quite letting the fox guard the hen house, but it isn’t that much better either. The MPAA, Hollywood’s lobby group, is now a member of the W3C, the organisation responsible for setting web standards. This comes after the W3C approved steps to add DRM to the HTML5 standards, a move that keeps the web relevant in the age of video streaming, but at the expense of open source goodness and interoperability.

The members that make up the MPAA have not hidden their slight disdain towards the openness of the web, and they would love it if it was locked down, closed down and made all proprietary, so that things like piracy can be better controlled. The W3C’s poor decision last year on EMEs already means that Hollywood can slap DRM into every HTML5 web video they can get their hands on, and do it in a proprietary way that means these videos may simply not work in open source browsers like Firefox. The fracturing of the web as we know it may be a possible consequence, but will Hollywood really cares if the web breaks down? They’ll probably be too busy celebrating.

Just how much influence the MPAA will have within the W3C is debatable, so while it’s not quite letting the fox guard the hen house, it’s still kind of like letting the fox’s lobby group having a say in how the hen house is constructed and protected. Which doesn’t sound like the best idea ever.

It’s not been the best week ever for the Internet as a whole, and arguably the biggest blow of the week came when The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia effectively killed off Net Neutrality by siding with Verizon and gutting the FCC’s attempt to regulate for an open Internet.

Short gist of it is that ISPs can now force companies like Netflix and YouTube to pay them in order to ensure the smooth delivery of traffic to end users, due to the heavy load these sites place on their network. If they refuse to pay, ISPs can now degrade connection speeds to these services, possibly to the point of making these services unusable. And if said ISPs have their own competing video streaming offerings, then that may just lend them an extra reason to be extra harsh on the likes of Netflix and Amazon.

The court’s argument is that market forces would prevent ISPs from shooting themselves in the foot like this, not when consumers can go and find another ISP that hasn’t throttled Netflix/YouTube services. Of course, this depends on users actually having a choice in the first place, many do not, and for these choices to actually differ in their self-foot-shooting policies (I mean it’s not likely that big businesses with a common interest would collude or anything like that, right?).

Are the major ISPs short-sighted enough to actually engage in this kind of anti-competitive behavior, even if they now seem to have the power and permission to do so? I almost kind of wish they would in a “go ahead, make my day” kind of way, and force Google to expand their Google Fiber rollout and become a truly nationwide ISP. Netflix too. Let’s see how Verizon will like that.

When developers talk about next-gen gaming these days, it’s all about the Xbox One and PS4. The Wii U is not so much forgotten, as it is ignored. And a developer who helped to make one of the earliest third-party Wii U games explains why third-party developers are abandoning the Wii U, and it’s not just because of its low sales numbers.

The poor sales figures means people are comparing the Wii U to the Sega Dreamcast

I’ll leave you to read my summary of the problems with developing for the Wii U in this article, and if you have time, you should also read the full article here. Suffice to say, Nintendo went out to design a console that was small, quiet and not power hungry, and unfortunately, they succeeded. I say unfortunately because these weren’t the things gamers were looking for, and the market segment that Nintendo wanted to sell to, moms who “wouldn’t mind having it in the living room”, seems to be a very limited segment. And that’s before the difficulty developers found with developing for the Wii U, and the difficulty Nintendo found moving from a SD to HD gaming environment, and also in developing their own Live/PSN alternative.

Nintendo just didn’t have the experience to do it right the first time, but even if they did get it right, it was still just playing catch-up. Maybe the Wii U will give Nintendo the experience, to allow them to make the mistakes they have to make, to allow them to do it right for their next console. It’s a difficult learning curve for Nintendo, but an unavoidable one. Whether they can afford to have a relative “failure” like the Wii U, remains to be seen.

Note that I wrote most of this stuff about the Wii U before the December NPD results were released. The Xbox One outsold the PS4 in December, in the US at least, although we already know that worldwide the PS4 is ahead. Supply constraints were an issue, particularly for the PS4, so take these numbers with a grain of salt. The Xbox One was the best selling non-portable console for the month.

From what little information Nintendo released about the Wii U, we know that December was the Wii U’s best month, thanks largely to the new Mario game. Leaked numbers put the Wii U sales figure at 481,000, which sounds reasonable (considering the Xbox 360 only managed 643,000 and the PS3 only 299,000). However, the Xbox One sold 908,000, so comparing next-gen to next-gen, the Wii U is still far far behind.

Plus, looking at historical trends, the Wii U is actually doing less well at this stage of its life cycle than the GameCube. In fact, it’s trending fairly similarly to the ill-fated Sega Dreamcast (although the DC’s demise had to do with other factors, not just poor sales, so no need to panic … yet).

I’m still waiting on a few other figures to trickle in before discussion the Wii U’s fate, plus the PS4/XB1 comparison, in more detail in the next WNR.

So until then, I bid adieu. Have a great week and see you again in seven days.

It’s been a bad week for YouTube, copyright wise. Which makes it a good week for me, since I have something to write about. We also have the first round of the expectantly bitter PS4 vs Xbox One console wars (with the Wii U on the sidelines, waving arms furiously trying to get someone’s, anyone’s, attention).

Let’s go!

So another YouTube parody video has been taken down, another one that falls well within YouTube’s own guidelines and the law’s fair use exclusions. This kind of thing has happened so many times, and continues to happen, that it’s probably not even worth writing up as a news item. And at the time of writing, the affected video has been reinstated, so it’s even more of a non-news. But I haven’t talked about this in a while, and this is actually one of two YouTube copyright stories this week, so this provides a nice platform of a bit of ranting. Which, after all, is what the WNR is all about anyway.

So fair use for parody – what does it mean? It means that in the US (and not all countries have a fair use clause), and because the country has freedom of speech laws (again, not all countries, even democratic ones, have freedom of speech laws), parody is protected under fair use exclusions for copyright law. Parody is defined as more than just taking someone else’s work and making it funny (or funnier) though – it is only protected if the parody serves as a platform for criticism of the original material. So taking Lorde’s Royals video and simply replacing the people in it with Prince William and Kate Middleton (royals, geddit?) without commenting on the original video is not parody, at least not the protected kind. Making a parody pointing out the potentially racist undertones of the original and the blandness of the video, which was the case this time, is the very definition of fair use parody.

ContentID in the news a lot this week, as it wreaks havoc against parody and gaming videos

So why did it happen? YouTube’s ContentID, the automated system used to detect potential copyright abuse, is notoriously bad when it comes to false positives. Rights holders (or at least their licensing management firms) are supposed to go through potentially infringing videos and weed out the false positives. And even after all that, the uploader can appeal the ban, which will hopefully mean a pair of human eyes will finally get to judge the video in question. Unfortunately, there are probably too many flagged videos to go through, and many short-cuts are taken in the process, leading to many cases where clearly non infringing videos stay removed even after appeals (for this particular video, the appeal process appears to have worked as intended).

Parodies weren’t the only kind videos in YouTube’s copyright line of fire this week, with Let’s Play video game videos once again targeted in one of the biggest sweeps so far. Affiliate of MCNs like Machinima were the target this week, as thousands of Let’s Play videos were flagged and removed by YouTube.

It got so bad that game publishers, the people what YouTube’s copyright detection system was supposed to be helping, had to intervene on behalf of YouTubers and had to painstakingly reinstate videos manually. Publishers have long realised that Let’s Play videos are an essential part of the promotional machine, and having Let’s Play creators on your side is a necessary thing these days. So YouTube’s over sensitivity this week has annoyed both sides of the copyright divide.

And this is where harsh copyright control can be dangerous. This week’s events have caused a chilling effect among the Let’s Play community, with many less keen to dedicate their free time to create videos and channels which could so easily be banned. On the positive side, it has also alerted game publisher to the danger of YouTube’s ContentID system, and many have clarified their stance on fan videos as a result.

What can we do about it? Nothing, really. As long as copyright laws favor the money makers over freedom of expression, criticism and true creativity, YouTube will remain under enormous pressure to “shoot before asking questions”. If your video gets falsely taken down, don’t be afraid to use the appeals system, and if that doesn’t work, speak out and hope that someone will hear you.

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Spotify Mobile now available for free Spotify accounts … with limitations

Since I’ve mentioned Spotify regularly in the copyright section of the WNR, it seems appropriate to mention the latest bit of Spotify news here, although it doesn’t really have anything to do with copyright or piracy. At least not directly. Spotify Mobile is now free for all. This means you can stream your Spotify playlists on your Android or iOS smartphone without having to pay a cent, which is really awesome.

Free means limitations, and with the free version of Spotify Mobile it means that playlists can only be played in shuffle mode (fine by me, since this is how I listen, am listening to, Spotify). You can only skip tracks 6 times in an hour, which is a limitation put in there to specifically disallow users from pick and choose to play any one specific track, a feature that’s only available to subscribers of the Premium account. And there will be ads for cheapskates like me. No offline playback and high quality audio either. Still, for most people this will be enough and there is now one less reason why people would want to down the piracy route.

We now know who won the console war. Well, in South Park, Colorado anyway. But out here in the real world, or at least in the US for the small part of November for which both the PS4 and Xbox One were available, it was the PS4 that ended up winning the console game of thrones. Not so fast, I hear the Xbox fans say. The PS4 was released a week earlier (and for $100 less to boot), and so it’s only natural that the PS4 would sell more.

PS4 wins the first next-gen NPD showdown

Which is totally true, of course, although most of the nearly a million Xbox Ones sold in November (in the US) would have been in the first few days of sale. And Microsoft took full advantage of this statistical reality by claiming they won the “fastest selling” console crown for November, which might not have been the case had they had the same number of days of sale as the PS4.

For me, it’s far too early to say whether the PS4 or the Xbox One will come out on top. What is interesting though is that nobody is predicting any sort of success for the Wii U. The fact that the recent South Park trilogy completely ignored the Wii U, especially given they’ve done a trilogy on the Wii before, is telling I think. Only 220,000 Wii U consoles were sold in the whole of November, nearly 3 times less than the Xbox 360. To further compare, the Sega Dreamcast was doing better at this stage of its sales life-cycle. Ouch.

Speaking of ouch, I’m gonna go a play some games on my much neglected Kinect. Holidays equals overeating, and so I better burn a few more calories now in preparation. See you next week.

I spent most of the week alternating between viewing Ken Burns’s The War, Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers and The Pacific. It all started with The War, and escalated very quickly from there. Some of my dreams this week were in black and white.

On to the news!

isoHunt to close within 7 days, as settlement deal means the torrent search engine will have to pay the MPAA $110m in damages

isoHunt is no more. The site, and its beleaguered owner finally threw in the towel this week and agreed to a $110m settlement deal with the MPAA, which will see the 10 year old site shut down within the next 7 days.

The big settlement figure will bankrupt both isoHunt and Fung, and so it’s unlikely the MPAA will receive much of the $110m, if any at all. But the MPAA is not here to make money – the big number is simply there to scare others into submission, although I don’t think the likes of TPB or KAT will be quaking in their boots at the result.

All it will do is drive site operators underground, and push sites to relocate to countries where the MPAA won’t have an easy time filing and winning lawsuits. You can’t sue anyone if you can’t find them, or even know who they are!

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A sign that distributors are finally getting the message. 20th Fox, the international distributors of the hit zombie TV series The Walking Dead, this week announced a plan to reduce the international airing delay for the new season 4 episodes of the show to a single day or less, in a bid to reduce piracy. The commendable plan, however, has not been the shot in the head needed to kill the piracy problem, as the new season of The Walking Dead broke new piracy records for the show on torrent networks.

Killing piracy is much harder than killing zombies on TWD

Most interestingly, the premier episode of season 4 had been made available for free streaming for US viewers, legally, on AMC’s website. Despite this, 15.5% of downloaders came from the US, the most popular country for downloaders. This in itself is not unusual. When the new season of Arrested Development was aired exclusively on Netflix earlier in the year, many paying subscribers also chose torrent download as their viewing options of choice. And it was revealed recently that in Australia, pay TV subscribers that had paid access to new episodes of Game of Thrones still went out of their way to download the pirated version, all in an effort to bypass the 2 hour airing delay. Less Australians chose to download The Walking Dead in Australia, as a percentage of total downloaders, compared to Game of Thrones – new TWD episodes air 90 minutes after the US broadcast in Australia.

So what does this all mean? For one, it shows users are pretty specific about their viewing habits, and many simple prefer the convenience of piracy (the platform agnostic nature of it), even when a less convenient, but free and legal option is available. And while it’s commendable that airing delays are being seen as a cause to piracy, any delay, even a 2 hour one, may still be pushing viewers towards piracy. And of course pricing is an issue, as many people simply cannot afford the $45 needed here in Australia per month to subscribe to our sole cable provider, Foxtel, and access new episodes of The Walking Dead. Nor do they want to get tied up to cable or satellite subscription, which isn’t even available in all areas of the country. Even Foxtel’s recently launched Internet streaming plan (Foxtel Play) is limited in that, while it gives you access to the channel that airs The Walking Dead, the Foxtel Play app only works on the Xbox 360, PCs and Samsung Smart TVs (effectively ruling out the most popular entertainment devices here in Australia, the PS3 and iPad).

No airing delays, maximum platform compatibility, and more reasonable pricing. That’s what’s needed to beat TV piracy. It won’t kill piracy, it will always exist, but it can be made irrelevant, a manageable threat like the zombies on The Walking Dead (may no longer be true for season 4).

To beat film piracy requires largely the same approach. The issue of platform compatibility, of allowing the film to be rented or bought on the platform of choice for consumers, is as important as making sure the price is reasonable. And despite the film industry blaming pretty much everyone else for the piracy problem, the industry itself is not without blame. That’s what a new website, piracydata.org, plans to highlight.

piracydata.org takes the most pirated films data from TorrentFreak and then does an online search to find legal alternatives for these films, and unsurprisingly found that very few of them are available digitally. Most are available to buy legally from places like iTunes, but try to rent it digitally or stream it on Netflix, and you’ll be out of luck.

There is an issue with the methodology used by piracydata.org though, in that the most pirated films are almost always new releases, and it is unrealistic to expect these films to be available on legal streaming options like Netflix. But I was surprised at how few films were available for digital rental, and how many are still unavailable to buy outright. So much for the MPAA blaming Google for displaying piracy results for film searches – what exactly is Google supposed to do when there are no legal options available?

For the films that are available to buy digitally, their pricing makes them entirely unattractive. For example, the most pirated film currently is Pacific Rim. The Blu-ray combo edition, which includes an UltraViolet digital copy of the film, plus the Blu-ray and DVD versions, is only $3 more than the iTunes version at current prices. This either makes the Blu-ray combo edition extremely good value (not really, considering Blu-rays have always been around this price), or the digital edition a total rip-off. And they wonder why people download torrents!

Sony has done it! After 32 month of Xbox 360 domination, the PS3 finally became last month’s best selling home based console. The September NPD data, which looks at video game hardware and game sales in the US, might as well have been renamed the September GTA. GTA V represented 50% of all dollars being spent on gaming for the entire month, and it was the catalyst behind the PS3 win. The PS3’s win comes largely off the back of the PS3 GTA V bundle – an equivalent bundle was not available for Microsoft’s console.

The 500GB PS3 GTA V Bundle helped the PS3 become September’s best selling console

The Xbox 360’s loss is possibly just a one-off, with normal service likely resuming once GTA V sales dies down (when they run out of people who don’t have the game to sell the game to). 1.6 million Xbox 360s have been sold so far this year, with the holiday period yet to come. But if early pre-order reports are to be believed, the PS4 will win the first few month of the next-gen console wars at the very least, thanks to its $100 lower price tag.

There was also good news for Nintendo, with Wii U sales jumping by 200% (or 3 times as many) compared to August thanks to a price cut and a limited edition The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD bundle. Three times as many console sales probably still saw the Wii U selling fewer units than the Xbox 360.

I haven’t played GTA V all last week. Just haven’t found the time to do it, and was dispirited after trying GTA Online, only to be killed and have money stolen because I could not move my character for some reason. My character is one of the thousands of characters in the game based on Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad (well, a really ugly version of him anyway), so (slight BB spoiler ahead) a depression induced catatonic state and being liberal with your hard-earned money is probably not that unrealistic for a Pinkman based character.

That reminds me, I have to make a Walter White character, which, given the right clothing and facial hair choices, should be easier to create.

See you next week.