by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
I have to agree with the MPAA’s conclusion that the shutdown of Megaupload had huge (positive) repercussions for online piracy. This according to a September filing with the U.S. Trade Representative, written by the MPAA’s Michael O’Leary, excerpts of which were published on the TorrentFreak website:
“When these two websites were taken down, many linking websites, custom search engines, and custom streaming scripts that relied on the sites for content became inoperable. Some websites were abandoned by their operators, others lost traffic, while still others shifted their business model.”
Having spent many hours researching online piracy and cyberlockers during these past couple of years I must say that I concur. From what I’ve seen, although new cyberlockers pop up every day, none match the scale or reach of Megaupload. Some of the other major pirate cyberlockers like Fileserve and Filesonic went offline while others stopped offering affiliate awards or anonymous file sharing.
There’s been a domino effect. As cyberlocker cash rewards programs have dried up, so too has activity on various file-sharing forums where those (monetized) links were spread. I suppose one could compare it to a vaccine. The disease of piracy hasn’t been eliminated, but the number of vectors that nourish and spread it has been reduced. Nearly a year out, it seems clear, to me, that the fed’s take down of Megaupload was a major turning point in the battle against content theft online.
Read the full piece on TorrentFreak, here.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
A new study (abstract) published by researchers Munich School of Management and the Copenhagen Business School is being used by piracy apologists to bolster the tired meme that piracy is “good” for business. Titled “Piracy and Movie Revenues: Evidence from Megaupload” the summary claims that the shutdown of Megaupload actually hurt, rather than helped, those in the business of making movies:
Box office revenues of movies shown on the average number of screens and below were affected negatively, but the total effect is not statistically significant. For blockbusters (shown on more than 500 screens) the sign is positive (and significant, depending on the specification).
Reading the headlines that followed the study’s release it seems that most who reported on the story neglected to note the equivocation the authors used assessing the impact on revenues for more “average” movies characterizing the “total effect” as not “not statistically significant” yet for blockbusters, it was “significant.” In addition to this convoluted conclusion, upon reading the entire summary, there seem to be more questions than answers.
The MPAA, not surprisingly, posted a cogent critical response on its blog, questioning the abstract’s lack of specificity with regard to its statistical approach:
The reality is that it is impossible to evaluate the validity of the approach or the reliability of the conclusions based solely on the abstract, which does not fully present the methodology or results of the study. In fact, in its present form, this summary abstract raises more questions than it answers…
The post, by Julia Jenks, also raised specific questions about the researchers’ approach asking:
- Are the conclusions being presented and interpreted correctly?
- Which system was used for “matching” like movies?
- How does the research account for box office trends independent of the Megaupload shutdown?
All are good questions that have yet to be answered. In the meantime, I have some questions and criticisms of my own. Per usual, piracy apologists seem only to focus their debate on “big” Hollywood. Reaction to this study is no different. Researchers based their conclusions on (vague) data and box office revenue totals aggregated by Boxofficemojo.com. They noted:
Our counterintuitive finding may suggest support for the theoretical perspective of (social) network effects where file-sharing acts as a mechanism to spread information about a good from consumers with zero or low willingness to pay to users with high willingness to pay. The information-spreading effect of illegal downloads seems to be especially important for movies with smaller audiences.
Press reports and reactions interpreted this observation into splashy headlines like “Piracy Funds Movies” and “Piracy is Good for You!” A number of bloggers seemed eager to conclude that independent films (non-blockbuster types) benefited from Megaupload’s piracy and resultant buzz generated via social networks. It’s a claim that has little basis in fact. These claims also conveniently ignore the fact that box office returns are only a small piece of the story.
If we are going to be honest in our efforts to quantify the impact that movie piracy has on revenue, it’s imperative to look well beyond the box office figures. Today, revenues generated on the back-end via legit downloads, streaming, TV, DVD, etc. are integral to the financial success for any production.
Also, what about the thousands of independent films that don’t have theatrical releases and thus zero box office revenue? How can you make assumptions about piracy’s impact without factoring them into the analysis? These non-theatrical titles are entirely dependent on back-end revenue for revenue. When a site like Megaupload streamed those films for free online it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to comprehend the negative impact it had on legit sales. I’m sorry but how many people watched a film via Megaupload, then purchased it on iTunes or buy the DVD? I’d wager not many.
As for social networking, there’s no doubt that it’s integral to successfully promoting any film, indie or otherwise. However, aren’t such initiatives better left to a film’s own producers than to purveyors of pirated content? Having ventured to many online forums where download links are shared and promoted I don’t see much discussion about a film beyond questions asking “Where can I download it?” and “Why isn’t it the link working?”
The users who populate such sites are seeking free and easy access to films. Some are like hoarders, looking to acquire as many movies as possible to add to their no-cost collections, while others are there because they want to watch a particular film and, rather than pay for it, prefer to watch it for free. The operative word is “free.”
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
There was news this week that BitTorrent, the developer of software that allows large files to be quickly and easily shared via the internet, has plans to go “legit.” Up until now, despite earlier efforts to compete with iTunes, BitTorrent has been a popular technology among online pirates. Will this new plan change that?
Officials at BitTorrent seem to think so. Matt Mason, the executive director of marketing told the New York Times, “We’re trying to groom the entertainment industry to think about BitTorrent as a partner.” He went on to say:
“The way to solve the content delivery problem is to get out of the way of the content. No one wants to just be the pipes,” he said. “We’re already the pipes and we’re good at it, so it’s a huge opportunity for us to make this transition work.”
Legit online streaming and delivery via services like Netflix and Hulu has become big business. As others have noted, those who consume pirated content are often motivated by convenience and desire. Content distributors have finally caught up, and can often match, or beat, pirate competitors when it comes to easily finding and viewing most popular content. Thus it would seem only natural that a technology such as BitTorrent could be utilized to expand and enhance consumers’ access to legal offerings. The question remains as to whether distributors will choose to partner with BitTorrent and, if so, how exactly will they leverage the technology to enhance their delivery systems and integrate it into current business models?
In addition, if BitTorrent is going to be used to drive legitimate consumption, there’s still the issue of demand. Until content creators and distributors can offer simultaneous, worldwide release of their content, the threat remains that pirated copies will trump the market for legitimate sales.
One has to ask, if a technology like BitTorrent can be utilized in a positive, legitimate and lucrative way, what about piracy’s other big delivery system, cyberlockers? Before the big-daddy Megaupload was shutdown by U.S. authorities, there were rumblings that the site was planning to launch a music site called Megabox that would supposedly enable artists to sell (and earn income) via direct sales/downloads to consumers. Supposedly musicians would earn money even for “free” downloads of their music. Of course the details of how exactly this would be accomplished were vague and the site never got off the ground. Megaupload’s founder Kim Dotcom is supposedly prepared to re-launch a reincarnated Megaupload as Mega in January but there has been no mention of monetization options for artists, only assurances that the new site would not be subject to takedown by U.S. authorities and files would protected by sophisticated, user-control, encryption.
The overall cyberlocker landscape has undergone some major changes in the wake of Megaupload’s demise. Fearful of suffering a similar fate, a number of other major operators like Filesonic, Fileserve, and Wupload, known primarily as pirate havens, shut down. Into this vacuum have come a number of new sites. Though smaller in scale, none seem to have developed anything resembling a legitimate business model, and instead rely on the tried and true, insidious, pyramid-style business model, to acquire (mostly illegal) content and attract downloads (and profits). Most operate outside the reach of U.S. and European authorities and all seem to be hanging on to a business model that, while potentially lucrative, seems headed for a gradual demise in the face of better competition.
Have we reached a tipping point where legitimate models can overtake illicit ones? Not quite, but it appears that the trend is moving gradually in the right direction. As I’ve said before, this evolution will be enhanced through a coalescence of legal efforts (i.e. the Megaupload takedown) and new distribution models and delivery systems that, for the world’s consumers, are both easy and affordable.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Film, Google, Piracy, Tech
It’s been a few months since Google announced a new initiative designed to lower search results for web-sites reported for piracy. According to Google, legitimate sites would move up and pirate sites would move down:
We aim to provide a great experience for our users and have developed over 200 signals to ensure our search algorithms deliver the best possible results. Starting next week, we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results. This ranking change should help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily—whether it’s a song previewed on NPR’s music website, a TV show on Hulu or new music streamed from Spotify.
Since we re-booted our copyright removals over two years ago, we’ve been given much more data by copyright owners about infringing content online. In fact, we’re now receiving and processing more copyright removal notices every day than we did in all of 2009—more than 4.3 million URLs in the last 30 days alone. We will now be using this data as a signal in our search rankings.
At the time, Google’s announcement seemed encouraging, despite their careful use of the more flexible phrase “may appear lower” as opposed to “will appear lower.” Now that some time has passed, I thought I’d do a random search to see how well Google’s new algorithm is working to thwart piracy. I decided to do a fairly generic search using the terms “watch free movies online.” I did not specify a time frame or put the search terms in quotes. This was the result.
Result for search “watch free movies online”
The first two results were “sponsored results” (shaded in pink) which direct users to legitimate sites Yideo and Netflix. However, the top two non-sponsored sites are sites offering pirate links. I clicked “LetMeWatchThis” the second non-sponsored result. That took me to this landing page which entices users with an array of movie poster thumbnails from current releases (many haven’t even been released on DVD). I chose to click on a thumbnail for film that is scheduled to be released next week on December 4th, 2012–The Odd Life of Timothy Green.
Below a short summary of the film, there’s a list of 30 links to watch/download it. I did not examine each and every link, but aside from several “sponsored” links, most point to sites known to host pirated films.
Ignoring the first one (it’s a sponsored link that leads to an illegal pay-to-watch site) I clicked on the link to “Sockshare” a popular cyber-locker site (one of many to flourish in the vacuum left by Megaupload’s shutdown). After clicking the link, and navigating past an ad (remember these pirate sites are in the business of making money off stolen content) I arrived at an embedded, full stream of the film.
Remember, according to Google’s explanation of its new policy, “we will begin taking into account a new signal in our rankings: the number of valid copyright removal notices we receive for any given site. Sites with high numbers of removal notices may appear lower in our results.” With this in mind, I decided to check Google’s “transparency report” to see how often this particular domain had been reported for copyright violations. According to these results, there had been more than 10,000 requests for the URL to be removed.
I also checked the value of this website using and found this:
If these Alexa statistics are accurate, it’s safe to say that operating this particular pirate site is a lucrative endeavor indeed. It’s long been notorious for its illegal links. The fact this site comes up second in a Google search for to “watch free movies online” is certainly a factor in their robust income. Despite Google’s pledge to begin “using this (copyright infringement reporting) data as a signal” to adjust search rankings, their new algorithms don’t seem to be penalizing this site in the least. To the contrary, it seems this site is being rewarded with a plum ranking resulting in plump profits.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that, despite lip-service to the contrary, not much has changed when it comes to Google aiding and abetting websites that profit from piracy.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright
A blog post by Frederic Filloux at the Guardian.uk.co laments the fact that staggered release windows force “honest viewers” into piracy, particularly when it comes to television:
As for the TV shows such as Homeland and others hits, there is not justification whatsoever to preserve this calendar archaism.They should be made universally available from the day when they are aired on TV, period. Or customers will vote with their mouse anyway and find the right file-sharing sites.
Though I think he’s absolutely correct in his analysis, I believe we are seeing an evolution as to how release dates are managed. The notion of “territories” is quickly becoming obsolete–audiences are no longer regional, but global.
Were we releasing our film today, non-theatrically, I’d push for a worldwide, immediate release, if possible. While it would make good business sense, logistically it might be more difficult in that various platforms (ie iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, etc.) often have their own timetables. Larger companies have the power to mandate release schedules, but for independent producers, it’s not so simple.
Indie filmmakers are stuck between a rock and hard place. In order reach as wide an audience as possible filmmakers are often beholden to distributors that offer ready access to popular online platforms but unfortunately, most of those same distributors only operate in limited countries/territories. Ultimately a film’s distribution patterns can resemble a patchwork quilt of availability across the globe.
I expect this to change over time. To mitigate the the impact (and attraction) of illegal downloads, content should be released globally (with subtitles in major languages) to worldwide audiences simulatenously on as many platforms as possible.
by Ellen Seidler | Copyright, Social Media
If you’re an indie musician, filmmaker, artist etc. it’s likely that you have a Facebook Page to promote your work or business. Over time, through hard work and conscientious social media marketing, you’ve built up quite a following. When you post updates to your page you expect that fans will see them right? Well, think again. Thanks to a change in their algorithm (and need to bolster revenues) Facebook has quietly altered the way their fan pages work. If you want all your fans (not just 20%) to see a post in their news feed, you’ll have to pay the privilege. A recent story in the New York Observer explains this new reality.
It’s no conspiracy. Facebook acknowledged it as recently as last week: messages now reach, on average, just 15 percent of an account’s fans. In a wonderful coincidence,Facebook has rolled out a solution for this problem: Pay them for better access.
Usenet, a website that offers (paid) subscribers access to a variety of “news groups” has long seemed immune from DMCA takedown notices. Could that be changing?
Content creators and ISPs (internet service providers) have come to agreement on a voluntary “Copyright Alert System” to begin at month’s end.
The progressive series of alerts is designed to make consumers aware of activity that has occurred using their Internet accounts, educate them on how they can prevent such activity from happening again (for example, by securing home wireless networks or removing peer-to-peer software), and provide information about the growing number of ways to access digital content legally.
“Six Strikes” aside, the ISPs involved have made it clear that no user accounts will be terminated. Let’s hope the goal of educating the public and reducing piracy is met. More information on the new alert system can be found here.
A new kindle book by author Morris Rosenthal provides a how-to for those who find their work uploaded (illegally) online. The book “An Author’s Guide to Fighting Internet Copyright Infringements” He explains his motivation in writing the book on Amazon.com:
I’ve probably spent more time fighting copyright infringements than writing books over the last six years. In one case, I went as far as a two and a half year fight in Federal court. But the bulk of my time has been wasted sending DMCA notices to sites that take down one infringement only to put up another.
After years of frustration I had given up even trying, but when copyright infringements began appearing above my own pages in Google search following their 2011 Panda update, fighting infringements took on a new urgency.
I took a “look inside” and from what I read, it looks promising as a guide to navigating Google’s DMCA process and the web at large. You can purchase the book for a mere 99 cents on Amazon here.
Alan D. Mutter looks at the decline in newspaper ad revenues on his blog Reflections of a Newsosaur:
With the objective evidence suggesting that the newspaper business is living on borrowed time, publishers should be using their residual economic power, brand power and marketing power to develop new digital products to protect and sustain their valuable franchises. Or else.
I have to agree with the MPAA’s conclusion that the shutdown of Megaupload had huge (positive) repercussions for online piracy. This according to a September filing with the U.S. Trade Representative, written by the MPAA’s Michael O’Leary, excerpts of which were published on the TorrentFreak website:
