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Jeff Howe has a fascinating article in Wired magazine, “The Shadow Internet.” File piracy doesn’t start with casual consumers:
In reality, the number of files on the Net ripped from store-bought CDs, DVDs, and videogames is statistically negligible.
It doesn’t start with the peer-to-peer networks like Kazaa at all. They’re too slow:
...Even first-run movies get ripped. “Remember what happened to The Hulk?” he asks. On June 6, two weeks before its official release, a near-final version of The Hulk showed up online. To hear studio executives tell it, the bootleg went straight to the P2P networks and spread like a contagion.
“########,” says Forest. “Trying to distribute The Hulk through the P2Ps would take months, not hours.” That’s because files on the public file-sharing networks, where no single node is much more powerful than the next, spread at a glacial pace. Furthermore, when users connect to a P2P network – FastTrack, for example – they connect only to a small proportion of the number of other users connected at the same time.
Instead, it’s run by a hard-core subculture of people that are driven to obtain status as the best, fastest pirates, and to get credits that enable them to receive goods others have pirated. They put the files up on “topsites” where pirates with secret access codes grab them:
It’s all a big game and, to hear Frank and others talk about “the scene,” fantastic fun. Whoever transfers the most files to the most sites in the least amount of time wins. There are elaborate rules, with prizes in the offing and reputations at stake. Topsites like Anathema are at the apex. Once a file is posted to a topsite, it starts a rapid descent through wider and wider levels of an invisible network, multiplying exponentially along the way. At each step, more and more pirates pitch in to keep the avalanche tumbling downward. Finally, thousands, perhaps millions, of copies – all the progeny of that original file – spill into the public peer-to-peer networks: Kazaa, LimeWire, Morpheus. Without this duplication and distribution structure providing content, the P2P networks would run dry.
This may suggest a way to shut down file piracy:
This should be good news for law enforcement. Lop off the head (the topsites), and the body (the worldwide trade in unlicensed media) falls lifeless to the ground. Sounds easy, but what if you can’t find the head? As in any criminal conspiracy, it takes years of undercover work to get inside.
Copyright must be protected. It appears to me that eventually the government will probably track down and bust these topsites.
The same technology may eventually be used for legal purposes:
Forest believes the scene will eventually go legit, and he’s even started a company, called Jun Group, that uses the topsites to promote movies, musicians, and TV shows. “The topsites don’t care where their files come from, as long as no one else has them,” he says. Last summer Jun Group dropped a collection of live videos and MP3s from Steve Winwood on the topsites. “We got 2.9 million downloads,” says Forest, “and album sales took off.”
Read the whole thing.
This courageous and moving post is from the Iraqi blog, Iraq the Model:
Yes, we still celebrate the arrival of a new year
And we still exchange hugs and wishes
And we still dream of a better new year
Sorry, pessimists, we didn’t lose hope in Iraq yet
And we didn’t decide to surrender
The churches still ring their bells and the car bombs couldn’t stop my people from going there and hold their prayers
We just placed a block on the street
To stop the terrorists, not the visitors
A lady from New York asked me.
Do kids go to school in Iraq?
Yes ma’am; millions of them and every day
We still read and learn and we still hunger for knowledge
...We’ve placed signs of challenge in the streets instead of the New Year’s decorations;
“DON’T WORRY ABOUT IRAQ… WE ARE THE SONS OF IRAQ AND WE WILL PROTECT IT”
“I WILL VOTE FOR A BETTER TOMORROW FOR MY CHILDREN”
Read the whole thing.
From the December 30, 2004 issue of Rolling Stone, page 40 (no link):
With Ashlee Simpson offering the latest proof that reality TV can lift singers from nowhere to Number One, Missy Elliott, Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and the surviving members of INXS are among a growing group of artists kicking off new series in 2005.
The reality gold rush marks a fundamental shift in labels’ promotion tactics, according to universal Music Group senior VP of marketing Kim Garner. “The [sales] driver before was the song, but now the driver is the personality, the celebrity,” says Garner, who’s attempting to break the U.K. pop-punk boy band Busted in the U.S. with an MTV2 series. “you feel invested in them,” adds MTV exec and Ashlee Simpson Show producer Lois Curren. “When your [TV] friend releases an album, you’re going to go get it.”
Got that? People used to buy CD’s for the songs, but the music business has decided that’s not what people are doing any more. Which is correct, of course, since with few exceptions (Missy Elliott, Eminem, etc.) most of the stuff released by the major labels doesn’t have the benefit of actually being fun to listen to. The industry would like to dispense with the annoying difficulty of having to produce a product that is actually good, since (like most businesses) that’s the hardest part of what they do. It would be so much easier if they could just find likable, charismatic people who look good on TV and wear clothes well, and get them to sing whatever tracks they happen to have around, and just sell that. It would take almost all the hard work out of it.
The only difficulty of course, is that this approach is killing the entire music industry. Yes, it’s hard work and takes tremendous talent to write and produce a good song. But without that, the music business is just selling the sizzle without the steak.
