I can't hate on you, Bill.
Still love your show.
And, yes, your concern is genuine.
Ok, you made a documentary and instead of people going to see it, they kept posting and downloading a bootlegged version of it, probably shot with a wobbly camcorder, bad sound and picture quality and all.
But your misunderstanding is in expecting that all those people who downloaded the film would have gone to see it in a theatre.
Not so, Bill.
Just think if the studio had considered simultaneous release of the film in theaters AND for download? I mean a really nice download version with lots of outtakes and extras, etc. Of course that one would have been up somewhere for download an hour after it went up, but you know downloaders gonna download.
The rest of the public who don?t know where such sites are and can?t be bothered to go looking for them AND who wouldn?t think to go see your film in a theater, but who have heard of it and just might give it a try on iTunes or Amazon? those are your lost sales, Bill!
I live in Tokyo where as far as I know, your film is STILL not available in any form, not for rental, not in theatres, not anywhere. And since people who download in Japan can lose internet access, I can?t be bothered to deal with it. That means I still haven?t seen any version of your film.
"We've taken care of everything
The words you hear, the songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes
It's one for all, all for one
We work together, common sons
Never need to wonder how or why
If content companies could, they would claim ownership of every letter of the alphabet, every phoneme of the language, every note on the musical scale and every color the human eye could see.
The human mind is a replicating machine. A bunch of kids heard a Christmas carol last month and within 30 minutes they produced their own variations with new lyrics, timing and beats...
This is culture. The battle is whether we have a read/write culture or a read only culture. That's it.
Your mention of the anime market is a perfect example of a media industry failure. Japanese studios could have prevented most of the piracy just by pulling their heads out of the sand and doing some research on the demand for their products overseas (visiting comic book stores, attending conventions, etc), but they were lazy and couldn't be bothered learning English or dealing with foreigners.
This is where Hollywood is now. They couldn't be bothered learning the technology and developing a online distribution systems until way too late in the game.
What they really don't seem to get is that what they consider products, the rest of the society considers culture. This culture was firmly walled in for most of the 20th century. Back then who could get their hands on a movie, much less re-edit it or make an original video to a popular song and actually have a platform to show these creations to the entire population?
Now this is commonplace. People have access to their own culture again like I imagine they did before mass media commodified it. Now culture is once again our collective sandbox, but this time it's global and we're not about to give it up and pay the price of admission to our heritage!
But I can hear the SOPArians now, piracy is stealing the original intellectual property of others. Really? Have they ever watched a Hollywood or Disney movie? Most if not all of the content is either derivitave or simply copied from the culture stream, repackaged and sold back to viewers as original content.
Of course this is true of almost all creative works, how could it not be? But the problem is claiming IP rights throughout the known & unknown universe and threatening to criminalize the behavior of majority of the population who are basically accessing their culture...
BestNetTech has not posted any stories submitted by davidroy.
I can't hate on you, Bill.
Still love your show.
And, yes, your concern is genuine.
Ok, you made a documentary and instead of people going to see it, they kept posting and downloading a bootlegged version of it, probably shot with a wobbly camcorder, bad sound and picture quality and all.
But your misunderstanding is in expecting that all those people who downloaded the film would have gone to see it in a theatre.
Not so, Bill.
Just think if the studio had considered simultaneous release of the film in theaters AND for download? I mean a really nice download version with lots of outtakes and extras, etc. Of course that one would have been up somewhere for download an hour after it went up, but you know downloaders gonna download.
The rest of the public who don?t know where such sites are and can?t be bothered to go looking for them AND who wouldn?t think to go see your film in a theater, but who have heard of it and just might give it a try on iTunes or Amazon? those are your lost sales, Bill!
I live in Tokyo where as far as I know, your film is STILL not available in any form, not for rental, not in theatres, not anywhere. And since people who download in Japan can lose internet access, I can?t be bothered to deal with it. That means I still haven?t seen any version of your film.
"We've taken care of everything
The words you hear, the songs you sing
The pictures that give pleasure to your eyes
It's one for all, all for one
We work together, common sons
Never need to wonder how or why
We are the priests of the temple of Syrinx..."
at stake is access to our own culture...
If content companies could, they would claim ownership of every letter of the alphabet, every phoneme of the language, every note on the musical scale and every color the human eye could see.
The human mind is a replicating machine. A bunch of kids heard a Christmas carol last month and within 30 minutes they produced their own variations with new lyrics, timing and beats...
This is culture. The battle is whether we have a read/write culture or a read only culture. That's it.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Your mention of the anime market is a perfect example of a media industry failure. Japanese studios could have prevented most of the piracy just by pulling their heads out of the sand and doing some research on the demand for their products overseas (visiting comic book stores, attending conventions, etc), but they were lazy and couldn't be bothered learning English or dealing with foreigners.
This is where Hollywood is now. They couldn't be bothered learning the technology and developing a online distribution systems until way too late in the game.
What they really don't seem to get is that what they consider products, the rest of the society considers culture. This culture was firmly walled in for most of the 20th century. Back then who could get their hands on a movie, much less re-edit it or make an original video to a popular song and actually have a platform to show these creations to the entire population?
Now this is commonplace. People have access to their own culture again like I imagine they did before mass media commodified it. Now culture is once again our collective sandbox, but this time it's global and we're not about to give it up and pay the price of admission to our heritage!
But I can hear the SOPArians now, piracy is stealing the original intellectual property of others. Really? Have they ever watched a Hollywood or Disney movie? Most if not all of the content is either derivitave or simply copied from the culture stream, repackaged and sold back to viewers as original content.
Of course this is true of almost all creative works, how could it not be? But the problem is claiming IP rights throughout the known & unknown universe and threatening to criminalize the behavior of majority of the population who are basically accessing their culture...