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Archive for August, 2014

Weekly News Roundup (31 August 2014)

Sunday, August 31st, 2014

Hello! Hope everything’s been well for you this week? Me? I’ve been re-watching Joss Whedon’s Firefly on Netflix recently, and it’s such a shame that this show was cancelled only after 14 episodes. Yes, there was a movie, but you could just see the great chemistry the cast had, and the great potential in writing, for a show that should have lasted many seasons. Oh well.

As for this week’s WNR, there’s a bit of an Australian focus this week. Not surprising considering that’s where I live, but still a relative rare event.

Australia’s Internet filter will be only slightly less useless than the contraption shown in this picture

The Australian focus starts with the launch of a new ad campaign that mocks the government’s attempts to basically give rightsholders everything they want. The ad, which you can watch here, pokes fun at the useless anti-piracy solutions that the government/Hollywood has proposed, specifically website filtering. Consumer advocacy group Choice crowdfunded this ad campaign and wants to tell the government that there are better ways to stop piracy, including getting rid of the “Australia tax” (the price premium we pay here in Australia for pretty much everything, from iTunes purchase to Blu-rays to game consoles for no other reason than because we live in Australia), making services such as Netflix available locally (Choice recently urged all Australians to cancel their overpriced cable subscriptions and sign up to Netflix via a geo-unlocking service), and other market based solutions, other than relying on government intervention and protectionism.

This launch of this new ad campaign making fun of useless Internet filters coincides with the MPAA releasing new research that shows website blocking, in particularly the blocking of the Pirate Bay, has actually worked really well. The MPAA’s research shows that visits to infringing sites in the UK, after they were blocked, were down 90%, or 74.5% when proxies were taken into account. Of course with these kinds of research, it’s always what they don’t tell you that’s key. What the MPAA doesn’t say is how this has affected overall traffic for sites like The Pirate Bay (traffic to the world’s most famous piracy site has actually doubled since 2011, after many countries around the world started blocking the site), and whether people were simply switching from one blocked site to another smaller unblocked one. Or what about stats showing actual downloads have decreased, since one can get torrents from many places, and even straight within certain BitTorrent clients without the need to even visit a site like The Pirate Bay. Has the piracy rate dropped along with the visits to site like The Pirate Bay?

And most importantly, has revenue actually increased now that website blocking has proven to be “super effective” according to the MPAA? After all, that’s the whole point of fighting piracy, isn’t it?

One company that does seem to understand that sometimes fighting piracy is pointless is Netflix. It has been revealed this week that their original show ‘Orange is the new Black’ is the second most pirated show in the world, behind ‘Game of Thrones’. This may at first seem surprising considering how cheap Netflix is, but then when you take into account how countries Netflix isn’t available in, things start to make more sense. The linked to WashPo article above does a disservice to its readers though by first trying to suggest how this stat means that Netflix isn’t the solution to piracy that others (like myself) have claimed it to be, and to provide a quote later in the article from Netflix’s chief saying piracy is not “too bad in the US”, which then backs up the point that “thefts of Netflix’s titles are most rampant in Australia and other countries where Netflix isn’t available. Hastings has pointed to a decline in piracy in Canada since Netflix began offering its service four years ago.”

Kind of an important point to the whole news story to be putting “below the fold”, don’t you think?

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GOG hopes to start a new DRM-free revolution, for video downloads

Is GOG taking on Hollywood? Not really, but the DRM-free gaming company now offers gaming related DRM-free videos for their customers to purchase, which is a step in the right direction. Included are titles like ‘Once Upon Atari’ and ‘Indie Game: The Movie’, and they start at $5.99. But once you purchase the video, you’ll have it forever and won’t have your access permissions dictated by a DRM that may one day be retired. Plus, you can also copy, convert and basically do anything you want with it, the kind of ownership rights that you get with almost every other kind of non-digital purchase.

With DRM practically non existent for music (and the sky clearly hasn’t collapsed), it’s now only gaming and movies that that still cling on to this outdated concept. Yet, if you think about it, the only difference between DRM for music and for these other types of content is … well, not much. In fact, the only thing I can think of is the file size and value (if you don’t count the constant stream of discounted games on Steam, or the ever declining price of movies on Blu-ray and DVD), but surely with music being smaller in size and taking less time to consume, it is an even bigger target for piracy compared GB movies and games.

It was also interesting to hear GOG reveal that most studio officials they talked to knew that DRM was pointless, but it’s more the legal departments that are closing the door on DRM-free stuff. The same officials also said they are willing to follow other’s leads, but none wanted to be the first to embrace DRM. This is why GOG’s attempt is admirable, even at this early stage with the minuscule library of available video titles. It could very well be the first step towards something that consumers have wanted for a long time.

Back to Australia again, but not too far away from the world of GOG and digital distribution. Other than DRM, the big problem with digital distribution at the moment is resale and refund (these big three problems is what got Microsoft into trouble with its original Xbox One vision, let’s not forget). Even for a platform as enlightened as GOG, resale and trading is still a big no no, and the DRM-free nature of the games on there makes it even harder to allow for a trading/refund system (which will require some for of digital rights management, if the seller has to lose his/her right to the game after a sale/trade). While some genius somewhere comes up with a way to do this without DRM, the issue of refunds does still differentiate a service like GOG and Steam.

Steam – people paying for games they don’t want to play, and can’t get refunds to games they want to play but can’t

GOG’s refund policy, which you can read here, is pretty straight forward – a 30 days money back guarantee if there’s a problem with the game. Steam’s policy, unfortunately, is also very straight forward – no refunds whatsoever! And it’s this policy that has gotten the popular and generally well liked company in trouble with Australia’s official consumer watchdog, the ACCC, which has sued Steam’s owners Valve for breaking Australia’s consumer laws in regards to refunds.

Under Australian consumer law, retailers must provide refunds for goods not fit for service, and this is on top of any manufacturer/retailer warranties for the product. Any retailer that tries to deny Australian consumers these core rights can get into trouble, and that’s what the ACCC claims Valve has done with hits strict no-refunds policy for Steam games.

Valve has vowed to cooperate fully with the ACCC, and so I suspect one of the geniuses that work for them might finally come up with a system for refunds (which, unfortunately, may only be applicable in Australia). To be fair, it’s not all Valve’s fault – much of the fault lies with paranoid game publishers afraid gamers will take advantage of such a system (or simply don’t want to have to start worrying about people actually wanting their money back for crappy products). Hopefully, the ACCC will force Valve to produce a favorable solution to the problem.

While refunds are a big issue on Steam, the other big issue is almost at the other end of the spectrum – people buying games and then never playing them! Ars Technica’s Steam Gauge tool crawled through public Steam user profiles and found that 37% of games have never even been loaded, let alone played. Anyone who has participated in a Steam sale and got caught up in the impulse buying madness will not be surprised at this figure (or may be surprised that it isn’t higher!). Doing a quick count of my own Steam library, I found (not including multiple copies/bundles/non standalone titles) 146 games, of which 69 had been loaded and played at least once (and many only for a few minutes). This means 77 games that I’ve purchased (or gotten for free, to be fair) that I’ve never loaded and played, or 52%. Ouch!

Maybe I should ask Steam for a refund on these!

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That’s it for this week. Hope you’ve enjoyed this issue, see you next week.

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, News Roundup | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (31 August 2014)

Weekly News Roundup (24 August 2014)

Sunday, August 24th, 2014

Welcome to another edition of the WNR. We have some good stuff in here, including a look at why movies flop, how to prevent piracy from happening, all the video game stuff from NPD to more Wii U misery, and my favourite, a look at if the original un-altered non-special edition original Star Wars trilogy films might be heading to Blu-ray soon.

Let’s get started!

The Expendables 3 does badly at the box office. One ‘Expendables’ movie too many, too much competition due to other blockbusters, or pre-release piracy to blame?

What makes a movie flop? More specifically, what made ‘The Expendables 3’ a box office turd (relatively speaking)? According to the distributors of the film, Lionsgate, it was the pre-release piracy of the film that was ultimately responsible, and they’re even suing 10 individuals accused of downloading and sharing the movie. But maybe there are more tangible and more traditional reasons why movies like ‘The Expendables 3’ flops.

As one executive pointed out when asked about ‘The Expendables 3’ failure, if pre-release piracy does have an effect on box office results, it’s less likely to do with the actual download (or the number of people who downloaded it, and however many out of these people that will then not pay for a movie ticket), and more to do with the word-of-mouth effect.

Imagine, if someone downloaded a crappy pre-release version of a very cinematic movie like Gravity, really liked it and told their friends. Most of them will most likely go and pay to see the movie at the cinema rather than download the same crappy copy themselves. Even the original downloader, if he/she really liked the film, might pay to see it on the big screen properly. In this case, pre-release piracy probably doesn’t hurt the movie as much (but probably doesn’t help as much either, since positive word of mouth would have happened regardless of whether people downloaded it or watched it in the cinema and then told their friends about it).

But if the movie was crap, like say, oh I don’t know, the third movie released in four years, in a series that’s beginning to lose its novelty value, then perhaps word of mouth will only discourage others to pay for the movie, and instead, to download a pirated copy to sate their curiosity. In this case, the box office revenue would be negatively affected. But isn’t more the case of recycled movie ideas and badly made movies not getting the punishment at the box office that they deserved, because people were not more adequately informed of the movie’s said poor quality in the first place? If piracy does have this kind of effect, isn’t this a good thing for the industry, and for moviegoers, to force studios to be more competitive and to be more creative in coming up with the kind of movies that we, their customers, actually want? Hmm …

This is why financial losses due to pre-release piracy is hard to calculate. There are just too many reasons why a movie might flop, like competition (“Guardians of the Galaxy” and “The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”, for example), the aforementioned franchise-fatigue, bad reviews, poor marketing, or even a misleading trailer, might all be reasons for the flop. Blaming piracy is easy though. Too easy!

One show that won’t be blaming piracy, mainly because almost no one is pirating it, is John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight news satire show. And there’s a very good reason why people don’t pirate it – it’s available on YouTube, even here in Australia, for free! Australia’s Gizmodo says, and I fully agree, that because of this, the show and its distributors, HBO, should be applauded for making content so easy to access, and the growing popularity of the show means HBO won’t be losing much in the process anyway.

Will we ever see the original unmodified Star Wars trilogy on Blu-ray?

Speaking of HBO, the premium cable channel may soon look towards Netflix for inspiration, as its HBO Go app may soon add other network’s shows to its original programming (kind of what Netflix has done, but in reverse). Unfortunately with HBO Go still tethered to a traditional HBO cable package, any real talk of being in competition with Netflix is still far too premature.

Possibly the most exciting news for me this week is that the original cuts of Star Wars may be heading to Blu-ray! Den of Geek looks at the evidence and tries to see if the rumours may have something to them. It’s a fairly long read, but with George Lucas having sold Lucasfilm to Disney, with the new Star Wars movie going for the look of the original trilogy rather than the CGI based prequels (thank goodness), and of course the clamour for a new 4K version of the film, there might be just enough there to suggest the original trilogy might just make its Blu-ray debut sooner rather than later. Fingers crossed!

The July NPD results showed that the PS4 was yet again the top selling console in the key U.S. market, for the seventh straight month. Despite the Xbox One price drop and the continued strength of Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U, the PS4 accounted for more than half of all hardware and game sales for next-gen consoles. The margin between PlayStation and Xbox appears to be growing bigger as well, with the PS4 and PS3 combined beating the Xbox One and Xbox 360 combined for the second straight month. Even Sony is finding it hard to figure out why so many people are buying the PS4, to the point where it has them worried.

Sony “worried” about the success of the PS4, and where future sales will come from

Not knowing why your console is a success can be just as “terrifying”, according to Sony, as not knowing why it is a failure (yeah, but tell that to Nintendo!). It makes planning for the future much harder, they say, and Sony are worried about exhausting all the sales derived from “core gamers” and don’t know where future sales might possibly come from.

But it’s still a nice problem to have, at least compared to Nintendo’s. Nintendo’s hopes of turning the Wii U into a more “hardcore gaming” friendly console does not seem to have worked, with Ubisoft this week announcing that they will stop releasing “mature’ games on the Wii U. So games from the ‘Assassin’s Creed’, ‘Far Cry’ and ‘Ghost Recon’ series will no longer feature on the Wii U, despite being available on the PS4 and Xbox One. Ubisoft says that there just aren’t enough sales of these types of games on the Wii U to justify making more of them, and the company will concentrate on family games like ‘Just Dance’.

In a similar announcement, Capcom says the Wii U will not be getting a new Street Fighter game that the other next-gen consoles will be getting. It’s kind of sad really. My first home console version of Street Fighter was on the SNES, which at that time, was every hardcore gamer’s preferred console. But Nintendo’s policy of having “no blood” in their games was already a sign of things to come, with Sega, and then Sony (and eventually Microsoft), having no qualms about violence in video games. It’s ironic that Nintendo is now trying to entice publishers to make these kind of games, and finding it quite difficult indeed.

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And with those last few words, we reach the 1,000 words count, which feels like a good time to stop. See you next week!

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), News Roundup, Nintendo Wii, Wii U, Switch, NPD Analysis, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (24 August 2014)

Weekly News Roundup (17 August 2014)

Sunday, August 17th, 2014

It’s rather short WNR this week, where we have a couple of interesting news stories, but ones that don’t really need a lot of words to be written about. With Gamescom happening, there is definitely a slant towards gaming, which is also probably why news on other topics were a bit light.

Let’s get started!

What piracy problem? U.S. households are spending up to $1,000 each year, every year, on video entertainment products such as cable TV, Netflix and Blu-rays. This means that the video entertainment industry could be worth $123 billion by 2015, and this is despite piracy having “nearly” brought the industry down to its knees or something hyperbolic like that. Futuresource Consulting’s report on the industry reads nothing like one for an industry on its last breathes, and actually sounds like one that is doing extremely well, and thanks largely to the Internet, not despite of it. Digital spending is growing so fast that it will exceed packaged media spending in 2015, for example.

Dropping disc sales have very little to do with piracy, and more to do with market saturation and the transition to digital

As part of my “job”, I read a lot of reports of this kind, and most of them almost never mention piracy. Sure, packaged media sales are on the slide, but this and other reports clearly state that it’s most likely due to “market saturation, declining retail space and the growth in video consumption on subscription VOD services”. On the other hand, if you listen to the studios, then any decline is almost always down to piracy.

The fact of the matter is that consumer tastes have changed rapidly due to the Internet, and the industry was too slow to adapt, hence the surge in piracy and a (what looks like temporary) decline in revenue. The same thing happened/is happening with the music industry, possibly even more dramatically, as the transition from physical media to digital continues apace (and with the industry, not grasping the opportunity earlier enough, allowing the likes of Apple and Spotify to be the winners). Piracy is a side effect, a symptom of the problem, but perhaps not the real problem itself.

Gamescom this week, and so we have the expected slew of gaming news. Sony got off to a good start by announcing that PS4 sales has topped 10 million worldwide. Microsoft, for understandable reasons, did not provide a comparable figure but was at 5 million as of April. With the PS4 beating the Xbox One for every month of this year in the key U.S. market that was once dominated by the Xbox 360, the gap between the two consoles appear to be growing. Here in Australia, the PS4 is outselling the Xbox One by a 2-to-1 margin!

Xbox One about to become one of the best media players, thanks to September update

But the announcement of Gamescom so far, at least in terms of stuff that I cover in the WNR, would be Microsoft’s announcement of a full capable media player for the Xbox One, coming in September. The media player will support almost every format, including the ever more popular (but the rarely supported, at least on game consoles) MKV format (the format of choice for HD downloads), and also the reintroduction of DLNA streaming support.

With Sony yet to announce when they’ll bring back DLNA support, and to add to the PS4’s media support, it seems the Xbox One is now the console of choice when it comes to media playback. But given the intense competition between the two big consoles that has so far characterized this generation’s console wars, I wouldn’t be surprised if Sony make their move in this area soon.

As I was writing this, the NPD stuff for July has just been released. I think I’ll cover it next week instead of right now, but spoiler alert: PS4 wins again.

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And so ends this rather short WNR. See you next week!

Posted in Copyright, DVD, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), Movies, PS3, PS4, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (17 August 2014)

Weekly News Roundup (10 August 2014)

Sunday, August 10th, 2014

Last week’s scheduled post seemed to have work, and I shall have to employ this feature again for this week. It’s nice to be able to finish work on Saturday and get the Sunday off (even better if I didn’t have to work on Saturday!).

Let’s get started …

Phone unlocking becomes legal again. as common sense prevails

A victory for consumers this week, even if it may be a temporary one – phone unlocking is now legal again. Previously an exemption from current copyright laws, phone unlocking became illegal when the US Copyright Office allowed the exemption to expire in early 2013 due to industry pressure. This week, a new bill was signed into law by President Obama which adds back the exemption, and calls on the US Copyright Office to examine expanding the same exemption to other devices, such as tablets. The new law will make phone unlocking via third parties legal again, at least until when the Copyright Office re-examines the issue in early 2015.

The new law is a blow to wireless operators, who had put pressure on the Copyright Office to allow this exemption to expire. Instead, operators preferred an unlocking processes designed and operated by themselves, which often involved a slow and arduous process designed to make it more difficult for subscribers to change providers. The new changes will benefit consumers by providing them with more choices, and making the wireless marketplace more competitive in the process.

Now all we need is a new bill that makes DVD and Blu-ray ripping legal for personal use, and then we’re all set. Don’t hold your breath though.

Speaking of unwanted DRM, here’s another example of the problem with DRM, not just for consumers but for publishers that choose to implement them. Because Scholastic wants to switch to a different pricing model for its Storia range, those that had previously purchased the DRM’d Storia books will now lose access to their books. Users can extend access to their “purchases” by opening the eBook before October 15, otherwise they will have to contact Scholastic to obtain a refund. It’s nice and all for Scholastic to offer a full refund, and it’s definitely the right thing to do in this situation, but it’s by no means an obligation for them, in the legal sense. They could have simply gave an advanced notice of the end of access and washed their hands of it, and the user agreement consumers entered into probably would have allowed Scholastic to do exactly this without any ramifications. This is why DRM is dangerous and why it’s anti-consumer, even if Scholastic has done the absolute right thing this time around.

Amazon seems to be acting quite the d**khead these days (in my humble opinion … please don’t sue me). They’re so big and powerful these days, and have such a large say in sales of books (and DVDs and Blu-rays), so even if they have some valid points to make on the whole dispute with book publishers Hachette (here’s a rundown, if you’re not quite sure what’s going on), it’s hard to see it as not being a case of the big boys bullying the (relatively) smaller guys (the smaller guy in this case being Hachette, the corporation with “only” 7,000 employees).

Disney discs removed from pre-order as Amazon tries to force a favorable outcome (for themselves)

You can’t really call Disney one of the smaller guys (nor Warner Bros.), but it seems Amazon isn’t afraid to pick on them either, not when they know that Disney needs Amazon more than Amazon needs Disney. So a dispute over a distribution deal means that almost all Disney DVDs and Blu-rays have been removed from pre-order, including ‘Muppets Most Wanted’, which actually comes out next week. They did the same with Warner Bros. back in June before, I assume, Warner relented and gave in to their demands. Disney will have to make similar compromises soon, I suspect.

Obviously Amazon has a right to determine what is and isn’t for sale, but it’s hard to not see this as case of a company abusing its market position to get what it wants.

Amazon has such a large presence that even a relatively limited blockade such as this one, or the one against Warner Bros., could have an effect on disc sales. Whether that’s reflected in the latest home entertainment sales report, it’s hard to say, but the report itself paints a rather familiar pictures. Blu-ray is up, DVD is down to bring total disc revenue down as well, but digital continues to grow (and oh, brick-and-mortar rental sales continues to plummet).

The latest figures from DEG shows that while Blu-ray is up 10% in the second quarter of 2014, combined disc sales (including both DVD and Blu-ray) was down 8.2% in the first half of 2014 compared to the same half in 2013. This is all while electronic sellthroughs (eg. iTunes) and SVOD (eg. Netflix) grew 37% and 26% respectively.

Overall, for the first half of 2014, disc sales revenue fell to $3.26 billion, while digital sales (including electronic sellthroughs, SVOD and a la carte VOD) grew to $3.6 billion. This may or may not be the first time that digital revenue exceeded that for discs, and things may turn around during the second half of the year (when disc sales traditionally do better than the first half), but the trend is clear to see.

On a related note, Netflix this week announced that they have just surpassed HBO’s subscriber revenue. Competition between Netflix and HBO has been growing, particularly with the former now in Emmy contention season after season. But as Netflix’s CEO points out, “They (HBO) still kick our ass in profits and Emmy’s, but we are making progress.”

Is the Xbox One about to get another $50 price cut? Earlier in the week, the Spanish version of the Xbox.com seems to have indicated that the Xbox One would now be priced at €349.99, another discount of €50 on top of the recent price cut. A “#xboxgamescom” hashtag was present, indicating that Microsoft might have a surprise price cut announcement at Gamescom, happening next week. Hopes were soon dashed though, as Microsoft later confirmed that the listing was made “in error”. It’s a good thing that I was too lazy to post the original news story, and that by the time I finally got around to it, the “correction” had already been made. Hooray for laziness!

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And on that note (laziness), we come to the end of this WNR. Hope you’ve enjoyed this one, see you next time.

Posted in DVD, Electronics, Gaming, High Definition (Blu-ray/HD DVD/4K), Movies, News Roundup, Video Technology, Xbox 360, Xbox One | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (10 August 2014)

Weekly News Roundup (3 August 2014)

Sunday, August 3rd, 2014

Hello everyone. Due to personal commitments, I’m writing this WNR on Saturday and schedule-posting this at the right time on Sunday. So if you’re reading this, it means the scheduler has done its work. If it didn’t work, then you’re not reading this, and so never mind, carry on.

Let’s get started.

I don’t like to get into politics, but I think it’s now a fairly mainstream opinion that the current government here in Australia is one of the worst ever. And for Net-active individuals such as myself, our opinions of this government might still get even lower, if that’s even possible.

Hollywood still bitter over court defeat to Aussie ISP iiNet, and now wants the government to step in and help them out

The reason is simple. It’s this government’s fairly transparent plan to basically toe the Hollywood line and let the likes of Sony and Warner Bros. write our new copyright laws. Laws, that if becomes reality, would be one of the harshest in the world. Everything is on the table, from domain blocking, to censorship, to three-strikes, to making ISPs liable for user downloads … basically “a wish list from Hollywood” as one academic puts it. This is despite a 2012 High Court ruling that specifically said that ISPs aren’t liable for user actions, a defeat that still haunts Hollywood and their lackeys here in Australia to this day.

They lost that day, and since then, they’ve tried playing a different game. A game of politics that may start to pay off thanks to the election of a new big business friendly government.

Despite all the evidence pointing to the piracy problem here in Australia as one of access and availability, the government seems very keen to divert blame away from big business (not unusual for this government), and instead lay blame on those that don’t have the political clout or the lobbying power to have a real voice (again, not unusual for this government).

For me, it’s clear where the problem is. It could have been many things, and it was always inevitable, but in the end, it was the Internet (and perhaps not even piracy specifically) that finally exposed in the entertainment industry’s flawed and outdated business model. No other industry gets away with investing so much money in producing such awful products, time and time again. Hollywood gets away with it because, for years, they’ve not had any real competition. Sure, there is competition between studios, but if you wanted to watch a summer blockbuster, do you really have any choice other than a Hollywood movie (and often a crappy one)?

The Internet has brought us many things. It has brought us competing forms of entertainment that is cheaper and better, as well as new delivery technologies that are better for the consumer than the ones that Hollywood wants to force us to use. So the business model of making million dollar garbage after garbage and then cramming it down our throats in a process that Hollywood wants 100% control over, that business model, is no longer relevant today. They’ve bought themselves some time thanks to the 3D hype, and the fact that people still like going to the movies, but their reluctance to embrace change has seen companies like Apple and Netflix, and even ISPs, all establishing themselves as important cogs in the process that H0llywood once had total control over. The political lobbying, their only remaining and potent weapon, is now be deployed in the last throes of a futile attempt to hold on to the past.

And piracy is the convenient excuse that gives Hollywood’s political lobbying a purpose, a visible boogeyman for politicians to justify their thoughtless decisions. I’m not saying that piracy is harmless, but in my mind, Hollywood’s problems are much bigger than penniless teenagers and college students downloading movies.

It’s not that much different for the music industry, who’s territory is being encroached by the likes of Spotify, Pandora, and yes, Apple as well. Techdirt has an article this week that looks at the trouble legal streaming services like Spotify and Pandora has with revenue, troubles that are primarily caused by rights holder royalty demands. Spotify, for examples, spends 75% of their total revenue on royalty payments. Despite this, rights holders are demanding even more in royalty payments.

Techdirt’s Mike Masnick argues that this demand could be the undoing of services like Spotify and Pandora. Perhaps not these precise services, but certainly smaller players that would otherwise have offered more choice and competition in the same market space. Masnick argues that the music industry’s short term-ism could endanger the great potential of these services, and in doing so, endanger the industry’s own futures.

Again, I think this goes back to the point I was trying to make earlier, that the music industry, like the movie industry, has found itself on the outside of the Internet revolution and has allowed others (mostly tech companies) to come in and take a piece of the pie. But instead of accepting that they were too slow to embrace the Internet, they still want to operate, and to earn, in the same way they have before, when they controlled 100% of the production and distribution process. Or as Masnick notes, the industry seems to think all the value is in the content, their content, and there’s no or little value in the service. Consumers, on the other hand, may disagree. Especially those that are choosing to pay for Spotify over getting the same content for free via piracy.

Finger amputations to end piracy scourge once and for all?

For those that still choose piracy, there’s one proposed punishment for pirates that could end the piracy problem overnight: finger amputations. Nigerian singer Stella Monye says that “drastic measures” need to be taken to stop pirates, and cutting off their fingers might just do the trick. This “ten-strikes” regime would see pirates lose a finger for every song they download, and Monye says that it will only take two finger amputations before pirates start wising up.

The thing is, I’m still not quite sure if Monye was being serious, or whether this was a brilliant attempt at satirizing how rights holders perceive pirates. Or it could be that the original source of this news story is actually The Onion. I just don’t know. But you have to say, this is probably the most effective solution proposed so far!

And it’s also probably cheaper than the “six-strikes” regime that the U.S. currently enjoys. The organisation in charge of running the program has reported that it costs $3 million a year on its end to send the 1.3 million notices so far. This is just the cost of sending the warning notices, as costs for ISPs to implement the monitoring and the “punishments” is not included.

Kind of expensive for no real effect. Knives are much cheaper, you have to say, although the disposal of severed fingers may have additional costs, I’m not sure.

The success of the PS4 hasn’t just been a moral victory for Sony, after the dismal relative failure of the PS3, but it’s also helped the company become profitable this past quarter. Sales in the gaming division rose 96%, with an operating profit for 4.3bn yen, up from a loss of 16.4bn yen from the same quarter a year ago. Sony still expects a loss for the financial year, but with the PS4 looking stronger each month, things are looking up for Sony.

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That’s it for the week. See you in 8 days (well, 7 from when you read this, but 8 from when I wrote this).

Posted in Copyright, Gaming, News Roundup, PS3, PS4 | Comments Off on Weekly News Roundup (3 August 2014)

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Archive for August, 2014

Weekly News Roundup (31 August 2014)

Weekly News Roundup (24 August 2014)

Weekly News Roundup (17 August 2014)

Weekly News Roundup (10 August 2014)

Weekly News Roundup (3 August 2014)

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