Digitalwerks

Nonetheless, researchers continue to put forth new studies of the file-sharing phenomenon and its possible effects, at least in limited test cases. The latest study to emerge comes from Japan and looks at one particular niche, Japanese TV animation programs.  By examining how the uploading of the shows to YouTube and the popular Japanese sharing network Winny affected both sales and rentals, the researchers from The Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI) in Tokyo came to some tentative conclusions,

Estimated equations of 105 anime episodes show that (1) Youtube viewing does not negatively affect DVD rentals, and it appears to help raise DVD sales; and (2) although Winny file sharing negatively affects DVD rentals, it does not affect DVD sales. … YouTube can be interpreted as a promotion tool for DVD sales.

A clear statement in favor of broadening distribution channels and moving away from prosecuting file-sharers?  Maybe, but as with any study of piracy, the questions raised end up overwhelming any attempt at generalization.  Aside from the difficulty in linking statistical correlation with causation, we have no way of knowing how specific the dynamic the researchers see in this instance can be observed elsewhere.  Do anime fans act differently than general TV or movie fans?  Do Japanese fans act the same way as American or European fans?  Are only specific kinds of anime or could it be applied to animation in general?  And more broadly speaking, how does this kind of unauthorized distribution affect other forms of media, from music to movies to comic books?

Ultimately, it seems to me, that no matter how rigorous and scientific any individual study about piracy may be, there will always exist far more questions and caveats than conclusions reached.  Because so much is not, and cannot, be known about what might have happened had there not been any infringement, making generalizations both for or against piracy are more faith-based than anything else.  The morality and ethics of file-sharing will continue to spark intense debates, but claims about its concrete indisputable effects should probably be taken with a rather large grain of salt.

A provocative headline can generate a lot of readers and a lively debate, but it can also do a poor job of indicating what an article is actually about. A recent example is Paul Boutin’s quite inflammatory article in the December edition of Wired, now available online, entitled rather ambitiously, “The Age of Music Piracy Is Officially Over.” Based on the headline alone, a reader could assume that Boutin was making an interesting but factually incorrect observation about the state of file-trading online today. A quick glance at the comment section on the Wired site would indicate many people took exactly that viewpoint to blast Boutin.

However, that is not at all what the article actually argues. According to Boutin, we all need to “Mark down the date: The age of stealing music via the Internet is officially over. It’s time for everybody to go legit. The reason: We won.” In other words, Boutin contends that if one looks back at what music file-sharers have said publicly to justify their actions, going all the way back to the Napster days of 1999/2000, such as high prices, DRM, poor audio quality, record label exploitation, lack of deep catalogues, etc., that those rationales no longer exist. iTunes and Amazon sell high-bitrate DRM-free tracks at relatively low cost, have massive catalogues, and even allow more of the purchase price to go to the artists themselves. Ultimately, Boutin wants file-sharers to just admit that they have gotten everything they claimed to have wanted, and that the only reason left for pirating music is an indefensible one, that “You’re cheap.”

While the article did generate a lot of angry comments and some more thoughtful responses, I think both Boutin and his vocal readers have missed some larger issues that go much deeper into the on-going dynamic of online music sharing, and explain why any declarations of its eminent demise are wishful thinking at best.

To start, I don’t think anyone should pay attention to what was said by Napster users, or by file-sharers in general about why they download music. Tens (maybe hundreds) of millions of people have downloaded an .mp3 at some point over the last decade, from every country on Earth with a connection to the internet. Why do they do it?  Ultimately, unless one insists on seeing the phenomenon in purely moral terms, I don’t think it really matters what people say publicly about why they refuse to purchase digital music. The fact is, millions of music fans choose to use Bittorrent, digital lockers, Usenet, etc. to get their music. And by their actions, they have created an economic dynamic that is much more important, and has far more long term implications, than endless debates about 128 kbps .mp3’s versus FLAC’s or how exploitative the recording industry is.

In the course of the post-Napster decade, we have come to recognize the profound economic implications of digital media interacting with the internet, and not just in simple notions of “digitial distribution” or the “long tail.” Instead, we now understand that because every single DRM scheme is inherently doomed to failure, and that the marginal cost of copying a digital media file is and will always be essentially zero, then we can only speak of digital media in a context of infinite supply.  I am not a trained economist, but it is patently clear that an infinite good, available to anybody with a modem, will trend very quickly to a price of zero, no matter what the proponents of strict intellectual property regimes would prefer. While there is clearly a large number of people that purchase .mp3’s (or AAC’s) from iTunes and Amazon, they remain a distinct minority in a global online world that simply does not accept the notion of exchanging money for digital music.  I would even say that iTunes customers most likely value the convenience and technical simplicity the shopping experience provided by Apple far more than any true sense of the specific “value” of the files they purchase.

In fact, it is precisely this dynamic of infinite versus scarce goods that points to the future of digital media online. As Mike Masnick of Techdirt has so powerfully demonstrated, once content creators understand the problematics of trying to charge for infinite goods, they can truly embrace the countless possibilities of creating tangible goods, that cannot be copied and can be sold for real money. It is almost a cliche now to speak of how musicians can rely on live performances to substitute for sales of recordings, but that is merely the tip of the iceberg of what content creators can do, by creating non-replicable experiences that allow their fans to connect with the art and artists in ways that are truly worth treasuring.

Streaming services like Spotify also indicate how music can remain a revenue generator in a world of infinite goods, by providing a service and convenience that is of true value even to customers not used to paying for the music they download. Just as Netflix does not have a single film or TV show that is not available online for download for free, but can still build a massive customer base by recommending and presenting video content in a manner that their users love and happily pay for.

So, music pirates are in fact “cheap” according to Boutin’s perspective, which judges music downloading as immoral because it ignores the desires of content creators to charge for digital copies of their work. But outside of this moral framework, examined from a purely economic viewpoint, music file sharers are rational actors that pay for the things they consider of tangible value (iPods, laptops, Internet access, concert tickets, band t-shirts, streaming subscriptions, etc., etc.) and do not pay for the infinitely copyable. And unless the content industries and their government representatives somehow do the impossible, and turn the Internet into something it currently is not, then the future will continue overwhelmingly in that direction.

So much of recent discussion about the tumult in the publishing world has focused on the challenge for publishers to find new business models in the face of rapidly changing technology and customer habits.  Quite a bit less attention has been devoted, however, to the effects of those trends on authors themselves, without whom the publishers would have no content to actually print.  As the industry continues to thrash around, grasping for quick solutions while also cutting costs frantically, authors less popular than Rowling or Franzen can find themselves essentially abandoned by their supposed advocates in large publishing houses.

Noted technology writer Douglas Rushkoff shares his recent experiences with publishers and how those disappointments drove him to make the radical step of leaving his publisher and embracing an entirely new model of 21st century authorship.  What could have inspired such a move?  Shouldn’t authors desperately grab for the security of a big publisher, especially in uncertain times like now?  Won’t the sheer size and expertise of the big companies provide an essential lifesaver in the rather choppy waters of the book marketplace currently?

Well, actually no, at least according to Rushkoff.  In his view, “Authors and readers no longer need Big Publishing to find and engage one another. The sooner we all realize this, the better off we’ll all be.”  Based on his experience, publishers now utterly fail at the two roles authors have traditionally relied upon them for, editing and marketing.  As just about any author can tell you, having an intelligent and engaged reader critique your work is incredibly helpful.  But editors can no longer play that role anymore, as they must now focus entirely on new content acquisition.  Even worse in Rushkoff’s view, publishers no longer provide either necessary resources or expertise in marketing.  If anything, they tend to get in the way of the authors’ own attempts to publicize their work.  The writers, after all, usually know far more about their subject matter and the likely audience for their own books, and what the best methods of outreach might be.

Absent their ability to edit and market, Rushkoff just does not see a valuable role for publishers any more, and has decided to eliminate these middlemen (and their not insubstantial costs) for his latest book.  It is a new very journey, without the usual signposts, but 21st century authorship does open up vast new potential audiences and opportunities to engage with ones readers.  As Rushkoff says, the new methods he now embraces are daunting, but writers today really have no other choice, “The good news and bad news here is that we must create new ways of doing things that meet our real needs.”

BackMyBook is excited to help authors of all kinds discover their own paths to success, that meet their own particular needs.  They won’t be the same as Douglas Rushkoff’s, nor Stephen King’s, but they will be what works for you.

The fight for dominance in the living room continues apace, with a large number of contenders and no clear cut leader at the moment.  Everybody wants their device to be the central hub for delivering content, both local and Internet-based to the masses on their couches.  The major players remain:

• Cable Set-Top-Boxes
• Gaming systems (PS3, Xbox 360)
• Stand alone devices (Roku, Tivo, AppleTV, etc.)
• Digital Media Adaptors (Popcorn Hour, DLNA devices, etc.)
• Networked HDTV’s (DLNA, widgets, etc.)
• Blu-Ray devices with extended functionality
• Home theater PC’s (Windows Media Center, Mac Mini w/ Boxee, etc.)

All of the above have both positive and negative aspects, and none of them have really taken off enough to be considered a mainstream success, at least in the context of advanced content delivery. Cost and complexity are probably the biggest hurdles to wide acceptance for all of them, but we are seeing some interesting moves to increase attractiveness to consumers.  

On Saturday, Richard Lawler on EngadgetHD reported that the first JVC Blu-Ray player to hit the US will be the first such device to support the playback of Matroska (.mkv) files.  The move to support codecs and file formats beyond those required for the official player specifications developed on standard definition DVD players in 2003 and then really took off with the growth of DivX certification thereafter.  The move by JVC is interesting for a few reasons.  First, the Matroska format is not officially backed by any legitimate content creators, it is wholly used for the distribution of Blu-Ray rips among file-sharing communities.  Generally speaking Hollywood Blu-Ray rips at 1920x1080p are encoded in h.264 or VC-1 using the .mts transport stream format, with sizes ranging from 20GB to 50GB’s.  After being cracked, these discs get re-compressed using the open source x264 implementation of h.264 to either 9GB at 1920×1080 or 4.5GB for 1280×720.  The 5.1 DTS or AC3 soundtrack along with subtitles are included as well depending on the particular film.  Without knowing the specifics of the JVC player’s capabilities it’s impossible to say for sure that it could play back these files, but from a horsepower perspective it should not be difficult, though, for the bitrates of the rips is significantly lower than those of the original discs.  It would be good to know as well if the JVC player can play back .mkv’s from burned Blu-Ray discs, from DVD-R’s, from USB devices or from networked sources.  I would suspect yes to all, but until some one gives it a thorough review of the player it’s impossible to know.

Clearly JVC is trying to differentiate themselves from their Blu-Ray player competitors by appealing to a subset of consumers that are downloading Blu-Ray rips but would like to watch them on devices other than their PC’s.  Also interesting is that JVC is not working with DivX to do this, in fact they explicitly say “DivX files” are incompatible.  I wonder if they mean .avi files encoded in DivX or the specific .divx file format?  In any case, this is certainly not a good sign for the success of the DivX Plus/7 hardware certification program, as it was explicitly designed to support playback of .mkv’s on Blu-Ray devices.

From my perspective, I am not sure how successful this particular JVC device will be, or the attempt to increase the functionality of Blu-Ray devices in general (adding Netflix, YouTube, etc.).  Despite the much lauded AACS DRM scheme, Blu-ray rips have been available almost from the first release of Blu-Ray discs, so anybody interested in watching these kinds of files has probably been doing it for quite some time by now, and has their own method of doing so.  Likely that method is watching from an HTPC of some kind.  Once someone connects a PC to their main viewing device, and accepts the cost, complexity and noise issues, going back to a CE device seems like a significant step backwards, in my opinion.  No matter how well JVC (or more likely whomever their ODM is in) implement .mkv playback, or YouTube integration, it is not likely to match the user experience of an HTPC.  That is not to say HTPC’s are generally user friendly, for in fact putting one together is currently far beyond the capabilities of the mainstream, but I suspect things are likely to change in the near future.  Services like Boxee, hardware like the Atom platform from Intel, or the Ion from AMD, the hoped-for improvements from Windows 7 point towards a real opportunity for HTPCs to become far more accepted in mainstream living rooms.  As someone who has used an HTPC for many years, and is currently putting together a second one for the bedroom, I certainly know the difficulties of the process, but that said, I have absolutely no interest in switching to a Blu-Ray player, even with expanded capabilities.  There is no way that a CE device could possibly cover all the things I want to do, all the content I want to watch, all the services I would like to try, at least in comparison to a general purpose PC with a high speed Internet connection.  Maybe if the prices got really, really low ($99 or less) but certainly not at the reported MSRP of $299 for the JVC player.

The first step is to download and install the required software.  This first version of this guide is PC only, but again, it would not take too much effort to replicate the steps shown here on a Mac of Linux computer.  If anybody has specific questions about those alternatives, please just drop me a line.   Read more…