Matt Mason’s wonderful book, The Pirate’s Dilemma, is one of the reasons I started this blog. He was my first interview, too. During that interview I asked him about a free online version and he said he hoped to get something out there sooner than later.
Well, it might have turned out to be later but now you can download a copy of the book here and you pay whatever you think is fair. Why would Matt do this?
“By treating the electronic version of a book as information rather than property, and circulating it as widely as possible, many authors such as Paulo Coelho and Cory Doctorow actually end up selling more copies of the physical version. Pirate copies of The Pirate’s Dilemma are out there online anyway, and they don’t seem to have harmed sales. My guess is they are helping. To be honest, I was flattered that the book got pirated in the first place.”
Well said.
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Matt “The Pirate’s Dilemma” Mason has weighed in on the debate that Billy Bragg got rolling in a big way last week in the NYT and well documented right here in this blog.
Matt brings a lot of perspective to the table:
“All the people at the extreme ends of both sides of this debate are wrong. But the truce is coming. Soon enough, there will very likely be a $5-$10 a month voluntary license fee for downloading all the music you want, and most people will be happy to pay it. As long as the money makes its way back to artists, it will help the music business grow.”
And…
“When peace breaks out in the music business, a lot of people are going to have to find something else to talk about (which is why I cunningly future-proofed The Pirate’s Dilemma by talking about piracy in all businesses…). Music pirates will no longer be the face of the revolution, they will be part of the old regime.”
I highly recommend checking out his whole piece. The music industry is definitely the one to watch for what might be in store for books and video.
I think Frans Johansson, author of The Medici Eeffect, gave the best one-liner on the book: “Through a tornado of hip-hop beats and remarkable stories, Matt Mason takes us on a riveting journey to the heart of innovation. In this explosive book, he shows us that companies face a stark choice: Will you allow yourself to be gutted by a pirate or will you actually become one?”
In this interview Matt and I discuss how the book’s been received, the future of the music industry and some exciting news about Matt’s upcoming projects.
Interview with Matt Mason
Matt’s Blog
Buy Matt’s Book
There is a very interesting post over on TorrentFreak about the incredibly high number of TV shows illegally (though I have yet to hear of any prosecution for this in the vein of what RIAA has been doing in the music industry) being downloaded and viewed via BitTorrent.
“It is safe to say that BitTorrent is slowly replacing Tivo. Some episodes of popular TV-shows such as “Lost”, “Prison Break” and “Heroes” get up to 10 million downloads per episode, spread over hundreds of sites. This number is getting awfully close to the average number of viewers on TV in the US. However, the major difference is that the BitTorrent “viewers” come from all over the world.”
While Neilsen’s numbers I posted yesterday are interesting, they simply don’t account for the massive amount of TV that is being watched in this manner. Aside from confirming that far more people are watching extensive amounts of content from the web than is being generally reported, it is also serving as a wake-up call to some of the more established players:
“Anne Sweeney -the president of the Disney-ABC television group- admitted that she was “inspired” after seeing a pirated copy of the hit-show “Desperate Housewives”. The pirated copy of this popular TV show was the main reason (besides the money) for Disney to sell their shows online. “Coming ‘face to face’ with the high-quality, commercial-free pirated version (of Desperate Housewives) told Disney that it was not just competing with other broadcasters, but with digital pirates and as such was an experience that prompted us to do the iTunes deal with Apple.” Sweeney said at the time.”
This is something Mason talks about in The Pirate’s Dilemma – the fact that legitimate players MUST find a way to compete with Pirates if they want to remain in business. The only way to do that is to change their practices to better serve the consumer. All the Pirates are doing is giving people what they want – a completely open copy of the show they can watch on any device.
I am about halfway through Matt Mason’s really cool book, The Pirate’s Dilemma : How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism.
The main concept is that “pirates” have always found ways to subvert the laws of the land to bring the people what they want and, in doing so, caused the laws themselves to evolve and change – ok, that’s probably a vast over-simplification of Mason’s book, but it’s what is striking to me.
The other striking element of this book is how much of it is a trend I can easily see now supporting this grand idea that we are leaving the Industrial Age behind and finally, truly, entering a new period. At one point, this might have been called the Information Age, but that even feels dated. In fact, it is the Networked Age. Everything is connected in ways that have never been possible before and so the basic ways in which we produce and share are going to have to change as well.
There is a great Pirate’s Dilemma blog that’s been started. Check it out.
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June 12, 2008 3:02 pm | 
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