On the new french piracy law, Orwell, and fixing the movie, music and publishing industries

Posted by Fred Oliveira on January 2, 2010 | Comments (6)

Starting off a new year under the gloomy cloud of censorship and an all-seeing-eye is all but right, but it seems like it is exactly what France is going through under their new anti-piracy law. It is now well in effect, and one can only feel sad for the french and hopeful that other countries do not take France’s lead on issues such as these.

Sure, the law is about protecting the rights of the movie, music and publishing industries but while I definitely understand the concern some media companies – certainly unaware that there are other, better, content monetization strategies for the current times – have about protecting their bank accounts, the dark undertones of this story are problematic.

Think about what the french government will have to do in order to enforce this new law. How will they know what people are downloading? And given the obvious answer – that they’ll be monitoring each person’s traffic for “flagged content” -, how can the french live in such an orwellian scenario? I’m not sure their government enjoys being put in the same basket as the chinese (who keep blocking more content people can access in a clear violation of their people’s right to knowledge and information), but they’re definitely thinking along the same lines. It reminds me of the ending of an album by Boards of Canada, where you can hear:

Now that the show is over, and we have jointly exercised our constitutional rights, we would like to leave you with one very important thought: (…) It would be wise to remember that the same people who would stop you from listening to Boards of Canada may be back next year to complain about a book, or even a TV program. If you can be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you can be told what to say or think. Defend your constitutionally protected rights – no one else will do it for you. Thank you.

But I digress. Deep down this whole situation is motivated by the inability for old media to understand the consequences of free speech and the free flow of information throughout the internet. So how can the studios, record labels and publishing houses solve their problem?

Easy. Create better experiences.

I paid about 8eur to watch Avatar the other day. I could have downloaded it – everyone knows where to find movies these days -, but the cinema experience (particularly in the 3D version) was worth it. I wouldn’t be as inclined to spend the same amount of money for a poorer movie. If movie prices were set according to the movie’s rating on a site like IMDB, it’d be perfect. We’d pay big bucks for the big productions and the great movies, and smaller amounts for the filler romantic comedies. Here’s a few pricing examples: 8eur for Avatar, 5 for Where the Wild Things Are, 3 for Terminator IV and 0.2 for Airbud (because I can’t imagine paying over 20 cents for a movie of a dog that plays basketball – even though some might).

People pay huge bucks for the right music concert. The ways in which a live performance beats a recording are numerous, so how haven’t record labels realized that the money is (or can be) in other places than cds? There’s a ton of ways one can monetize music (Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has been writing and talking about this for a long time now – tip of the hat to you, sir), so why aren’t these people in the creative industries err… creative?

This is a tough subject one can ramble on for days on end. In the end, however, this all boils down to a need for these industries to redesign themselves according to the way people consume and access media today and not 40 years ago. It’s 2010. People will download content illegally. Think of better ways to monetize that content and you’ll be okay. Don’t, and you will probably keep complaining and coming up with ideas to piss people off – like messing with the french.

Comments on this post

“We’d pay big bucks for the big productions and the great movies, and smaller amounts for the filler romantic comedies.”

Essentially that’s pick your price. Anjuno.com is trying that, but not with movies yet.

It’s yet to be seen if artists will make as much (or more) pick your price, but it would solve the piracy problem.

@JWads: unfortunately, when people are given the choice in price, it’s a fantasy to expect them to pay what they deem a good price. Most of them will pay the minimum possible, just because they can.

As illustration, see this link: http://2dboy.com/2009/10/19/birthday-sale-results/ . It’s a summary from a one week sale of a great independent game, during which people could pay whatever price they wanted (original price being 20 dollars).

As shown, most people paid less than one dollar, they paid the minimum price, just because they could. Being confident in people to pay the “right price” is as much of a lost cause than expecting all of them to buy content they download, unfortunately.

That said, I’m french and am really ashamed of that law. This law was decided by governement, and studies realized by people linked to the multimedia market. In general, it was voted by people who don’t even understand internet. They have been told that people were stealing cultural content, and that it was the good thing to do to get rid of it…. Besides, nobody really “cared”, because only specialized medias reported about it. All other generic medias remained really quiet about this law, figure out why….

Even if any of the options regarded here don’t actually work, enforcing a law on a generalized habit will have damaging consequences. People already take illegal download for granted, and for them it’s not a crime… just ask around, every one has downloaded some illegal content – be it a tv show, a movie, music, etc.

I believe the answer can only indeed be in some creative means of funding and not by enforcing a “new” crime upon the general population.

I just hope Portugal does not follow the French example…

The thing is, the more stupid laws are made, the more stupid prices are set for crap media, the more I want to say “fck you!” and I download something off the internet.

This xmas I bought a CD with, what, 9 or 10 songs. I paid 19.9 fcking euros. 20 damn euros for a 1-hour CD. For less than that I bought a 5-DVD pack of high-quality BBC documentary series by David Attenborough.

What we need is to take the shareware model to music and films, so that we can pay “after” enjoying (or suffering) a film or a music album. When I do go to the cinema (mostly for going out with friends), I do expect the experience to be, at least, good. Often, the quality of the film is not great (with scratches, etc); once the lens of the projector wasn’t even properly set and the movie was blurry; complaining was useless. And then, the movie is just a piece of crap. The anger and frustration that I get after wasting my time & money like that, and knowing that on top of that the studios are complaining why I don’t go more often to spend my money on their crap, just makes me wanna burn down the cinema.

On the other side, I have enjoyed some very good movies and documentaries online, and I would really pay, after the fact, to those who made the work. I won’t however, go buy the DVD because I know that most of the money will get lost on the way and not go to those who actually made the real work.

Of course you will always find people who are not willing to pay for anything, but that’s a cultural problem (basic education) and needs to be tackled independently. But the solution is not to fill the world with DRM (which you only are aware of when you PAY and get disturbed by it), or to treat everybody as a criminal (you could get a higher penalty by downloading some music than by committing rape in some places, come on!) displaying a “criminal warning” on those DVDs and to those people who actually paid for it.

I stop it. It’s just outrageous.

How much of your 8eu went to the cost of maintaining the cinema? The cinema where I work has ten staff on duty to man the cinema screens when open, about 15 people who work in the offices / maintenance crew / cleaners. The building needs maintaining and heating. This is a fixed cost and not dependent on the number of attendees. The cost is amortized across the popular / not so popular films and subsidized by the bar sales (another 20 staff but that pays for itself). Guessing how many people will attend isn’t easy.

We have to programme the films far in advance of their release so the popularity of said films is also estimated from our curator’s experience. Good luck guessing how the new Nick Hornby will be received by audiences!

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