PirateBay On Facebook Forces the Issue

Like so many other sites have done, The Pirate Bay is no providing on-click links that allow its users to post directly to their Facebook streams.

As Mashable puts it:

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 150 to 200 million people signed up already. It’s one of the best ways to share links, blog posts, and content. Many websites, including our own, have links for easily sharing content to Facebook. So it makes sense as to why The Pirate Bay would want to encourage people to share torrent links on Facebook. But because many of these files are illegal to download, it also makes sense that copyright infringement organizations are not very happy.

Since Facebook is likely to want to avoid major legal action by the friends folks at the RIAA and MPAA it seems almost definite that Facebook will move to block this feature.

The question is, do they have any real legal reason to do this and are they really helping anyone by blocking their users from posting the links?  For one thing, The Pirate Bay does not actual store or transmit any copyrighted content, they simply provide links to other places that do.  This is, in effect, no different than what Google does, just that The Pirate Bay (and hundreds of other torrent-tracker sites out there) specializes in searching only for torrent links.

While the MPAA et. al. might not like that links to freely available copies of their copyrighted content are being made all-the-more public on Facebook via The Pirate Bay feature, neither of these parties are the reason that piracy exists or that it flourishes in the face of broken business models that treat fans as criminals.

We’ll have to see if Facebook does, in fact, act against The Pirate Bay but you can be certain they’re being asked to do it.

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UK’s Social Media Masters Degree Not So Silly

The UK’s Birmingham University is offering a one-year masters program in “social media” and many short-sighted individuals seem to think it is a silly waste of time and money:

Offering courses on how to use social media for business and marketing is one thing. But an entire degree on it? As Politico columnist Ari Melber posits on Twitter, It’s about as brilliant as a degree in email would have been ten years ago. (via)

Here is how the program is described in the GuardianUK:

Students on the £4,000 one-year Social Media degree, offered by Birmingham City University, will explore how we communicate on the websites and how they can be used for marketing.

Other modules on the course will teach students how to start a blog and podcasting techniques. The course is being advertised through a video on the university’s website.

It seems to me, especially in this challenging economic climate, that spending a year mastering the tools of communication online is a far more valuable investment than, say, a two-year masters in English Literature or many other areas of study we’ve all come to accept as “valuable.”

Sure, the basics of social media are not all that complex, but those who are able to master and manipulate those networks stand to end up far ahead of the pack.

If I had the money in hand, I would probably go take the program myself.

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The Harper’s Island Experiment

There’s no question that the internet, VOD, TiVo and their brethren are changing how we consume our “TV” entertainment.  While some in the industry struggle vainly to bolster the existing ways of doing business, there are some signs of experimentation.

One such example of minor experimenting is ABC’s upcoming show “Harper’s Island.”  In addition to being made in conjunction with Eqal, the team behind LonelyGirl15, meaning significant additional online content, there is another twist ABC hopes will draw in viewers.

Here’s how TVSquad puts it:

I’ve been a little antsy about getting involved in yet another continuing drama (and one that could be canceled at anytime), but this was filmed and is being marketed as a limited-run series. Somewhere between a mini-series and a regular season, and that makes me feel a little better about taking the time to watch it.

The old business model for TV said that real money doesn’t arrive until you complete 100+ episodes and can go into syndication.  While this might still be true for the moment, I think that model is being significantly disrupted.  It seems that fewer and fewer series have the legs or the faith of an audience to last those four seasons and unless the episodes can stand alone (CSI, et. al.) then syndication can prove difficult.

By making a one-season-and-done series there is not only more possibility of an audience sticking around until the definitive end (assuming the show is any good) but there are lots of ways to gain new viewers online over time.

I’ll certainly be watching the numbers on “Harper’s Ferry” but I’m still not sure I can commit to watching the actual show…

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Time Warner Cable’s Last Hope (oh, and Comcast et. al.)

There is no denying that cable companies are facing some big challenges to their business model.  Until very recently, the only reliable way to view the vast majority of programming made for TV was to pay a hefty monthly fee to a cable company for the privilege.

Over-the-air, while free, limits selection to the few networks that still offer signals and cable “black boxes” are relatively rare.

Then along came that evil internet to muck it all up for the cable companies. Since the only tangible service provided by the cable company is access, the internet is one big wrench in the works.  See, the internet provides access, too.  Until now, nearly all of that access, whether legal or pirated, was  free.  Suddenly, some people began to wonder just what they were paying all that money to the cable company for.

Well, the cable companies are wondering the same thing.  Instead of looking for a way to offer even more to their customers for a lower price, or some other direct response to the online proliferation of TV on the web, they’ve decided to do what they do best: throw up walls.

Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable operator in the country, is working with customers here to test a subscriber model for online TV viewing. Residents who pay for HBO can watch “Big Love,” “Entourage” and other programs on their computers, using special software and a personal log-in. People who are not HBO subscribers are barred from the service.

Anyone else see the problem with these approach?

For starters, Time Warner isn’t actually offering anything that great to its paying subscribers since there are plenty of ways to view the same content online for free.  The more paywalls they erect, the more likely it is for piracy to expand in response.

The same would be true if only cable subscribers could access, say, Hulu or TV.com.  While there might be some logic in this approach with a pay-cable network like HBO the argument collapses when applied to network TV shows that are chock full of branded content and ads.

It may well be true that the evolution of technology makes things like cable companies obsolete but that doesn’t mean we should support these kinds of schemes to save them.  If there is no economic reason for cable companies to exist they should cease to exist.

(link)

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Dating a Porn Star – Short and Sweet

The fun part of having your own blog is that you can promote your own work and that’s exactly what I am doing now.  Below is an episode of my latest foray into independent web series production.

The concept with DATING A PORN STAR is simple and, hopefully, there are enough jokes to keep it kicking for a bit.  Hope you enjoy:

Everyone Loses in NFL / DirectTV Deal

The NFL and DirectTV announced that they have signed a deal that will give DirectTV subscribers access to NFL games online.

This raises a few issues:

1) If this is an exclusive deal, that would mean that the only way NFL fans could ‘legally’ watch NFL games online is by subscribing to DirectTV, a service that doesn’t seem to work when it is raining.

2) This will only encourage the spread of illegal streams online – something already prevelant but not widespread.

3) If the NFL decides to provide legal streams online in a way that doesn’t require one to sign up for DirectTV, nobody will bother with DirectTV.

I remain baffled as to why CBS’s success with March Madness on Demand cannot be easily replicated by all the major sporting leagues.  More eyeballs means more ad dollars or am I missing something?

More on the deal here.

Warner Bros. Misses the Point of Movies-on-Demand

Considering the rapid growth of streaming movies on demand, the following “service” from Warner Bros. leaves me scratching my head:

Upon the selection and purchase of a title — at $19.95 per disc — Warners will burn, package and ship the DVD to customers for receipt within an estimated five days. The studio plans to increase initial inventory in its virtual vault by 20 titles per month and make more than 300 film and TV titles available online by year’s end.

Ok, so these are movies that are not currently available for purchase on DVD any other way but why would Warner waste time and energy on a dying technology when they could offer the exact same service with a next-to-zero waiting time by making this catalogue available for on-demand streaming?  Not sure they could charge $20 a movie but they also wouldn’t have to be in the DVD delivery business.

I guess having this service available for the technological stragglers is all well and good but it is disheartening that there is no mention of a complimentary streaming service.  Without that option, it means that these movies will quickly end up on the torrent tracker sites where those not willing the wait five days for the movie will happily download it for free.

Another missed opportunity that will be blamed on pirates instead of on the head-in-the-sand mentality of the studios.

You Mean People Used to BUY Music?!

I am pretty sure that’s what my kids will ask me one day as we sit around the 3D replicator waiting for it to spit out little Jamison’s first Zero-G Scooter.

Via the good folks at PSFK, I was reading that not only have traditional music sales been dropping faster than the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but P2P file-sharing of music is also falling at a similar rate.  For all their blustering and suing, it turns out the music pirates don’t have much to do with the drop in music sales.

Instead, it looks like it is the growing popularity of streaming on-demand music from sites like Pandora and Slacker and Last.fm – something not all that different, really, from traditional radio.  The thinking goes, why should I buy all this music when I can have access to an unlimited selection of tunes.  While there are some limits placed on how much you can control the song selection and short ads are a part of the mix the cost is zero.  Hard to make a better argument in this economy than “hey, get your free music right here, right now.”

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RIAA’s Battle Against Pirates HURTS Music Sales

It seems that a day doesn’t go by that more evidence emerges that RIAA’s battle against music piracy is both ineffective and ill-advised.

Today’s bit of news is the sort of data that just leaves me scratching my head.  According to a new study conducted by Angus Reid Strategies on Canadian music habits:

While the survey found that downloading still exceeds paid downloads, those downloading were also more likely to buy a CD (41 percent to 34 percent for non-downloaders) and more likely to have attended a concert in the past year (65 percent to 52 percent for non-downloaders).

That’s right.  The very same people RIAA wants fined and potentially jailed are their industry’s best customers!

Honestly, it makes my head hurt to think about how completely misguided RIAA and the music industry have become.

(via)

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If a TV Station Goes Online-Only is it Still TV?

Cory Bergman over  on Lost Remote makes an interesting proposition:

What if a TV station did the same? After all, many in the industry now concede that some markets can only sustain two or three TV stations in the near future. For those who can’t survive, what if they shut down the station and re-emerge as a lean-and-mean local media company with a focus on non-linear video? Clips would be published to the web, mobile and cable/satellite VOD.

This got me thinking about what makes a TV station what it is and how it would be changed moving to an online-only distribution model.  For starters, there is the whole question of streaming live and simple providing programming on demand.  When one looks at local TV networks the main draw is the local news.  This program still holds value in today’s marketplace because NBC Nightly News can’t cover the whole world and your neighborhood.  This leaves a real opening for the local networks.  However, it is still news watched mostly by an older generation less likely to follow the format online.

The big question is, aside from the news, what could an online-only local “TV” network truly offer?  As anyone who has been involved with running or maintaining a video-content driven site will tell you, it is extremely difficult to maintain a high enough traffic rate without a constant flow of new material.  The bread-and-butter of most local networks is the shows they syndicate, but that will not be of much option  online where most of those shows are already available.

There are clearly massive opportunities online for original video content but I am not sure porting the local TV network is going to be the way to go.

(via)