The Irate Flashbulb Pirate

IDM / Breakcore musician The Flashbulb, a.k.a. Benn Lee Jordan, speaks out against major digital distributor Itunes for selling his music without paying him a dime in compensation.

Jordan turns to Bittorrent as an alternative form of distribution following along the lines of the non-conformist footsteps of superstars Radiohead (although the concept was born long before R. did so last year). The "Buy it if you like it!" model is picking up steam and several artists across the genre board are finding this alternative quite viable.

Here are two of my favorite quotes from the Torrent Freak Q&A session with The Flashbulb.

"...So, my new album currently has 6381 downloads at the time of this interview on what.cd alone. Using that deceitful equation, my losses are over $100,000. If I wanted to, I could subtract those losses from my profit and completely get out of paying any income taxes. It makes sense from an evil, corporate, criminal-minded standpoint, right?"

and...

"...The thing RIAA is scared of is that their billion dollar backbone can no longer shelter people from exploring music themselves. Their business plan had evolved into telling the world what they will want to listen to and buy, and now they’ll have to actually compete with talented artists again..."

Keep on Keeping on Mr. The Flashbulb.

RIAA Petitions Judges to Lower Artist Royalties

There are times when yours truly loses it. When 'respectable' news organizations such as CNN and the New York Times lose their objectivity to bottom lines you wonder if the people will ever know the other side.

Here are the links to the story and its repostings
original: The Hollywood Reporter
IGN
Engadget
Tuaw.com
Tinimixtapes

...among many, many others...

On CNN for example, when you search for "file sharing, all you see is "File Sharing going to the Supreme Court", "Music Companies Take Crackdown to Campuses", always one sided in the interests of big business.

Here is the final broken straw in my quest to understand whether piracy affects media industry as much as we are told it does. This story's headline, you will never see it on a major news site.

The RIAA is so confident in their resources and models that they have the gall to play both sides (the consumer and musician) against each other for their own special interests, making more money for the owners of the Big Labels.

Before jumping to the conclusion that I'm just mad about people getting rich read this: look at how the music revenue is distributed, and then you will realize how much of a bureaucracy the arts have become. The RIAA is doing nothing to help the artist or the consumer. Online Piracy seems like human nature's way of leveling the playing field.

The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis

This study has been kept away from the mainstream for some time now. It is published in the Journal of Political Economy based in the University of Chicago, and has been shedding light on a topic conveniently assumed to be as simple as an evil vs. good battle.

The article has resurfaced on technology related sites including slashdot.org arstechnica.com, and tech.netscape.com among others.

The Federal Trade Comission used this study in their 2004 conferences titled "Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing Technology: Consumer Protection and Competition Issues." Check out some of the other presentations and make your own judgement in which direction the FTC is 'leaning' the research.

Abstract:

For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet provides a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection because it drastically lowers the cost of copying information. In this paper, we analyze whether file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music. While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry, and Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files. We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays. Downloads have an effect on sales that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period.

Quote:

"With no clear theoretical prediction, the effect of file sharing on sales is an empirical question. Most of what we know about the effects of file sharing is based on surveys. The evidence is mixed. File sharers generally acknowledge both sales displacement and learning effects, and it is unclear if either effect dominates."

Vanity Fair presents: Pirates of the Multiplex

Vanity Fair has provided quite an insightful current events article in the war between Big Media and The Pirate Bay. Illegal media downloads have been the hot topic for some time now, yet this article manages to refresh the current state and update with interesting tangents. Here are some quotes:

Pirates of the Multiplex

One person who is relishing the idea of asymmetrical warfare with the M.P.A.A.
is Pirate Bureau chief Rasmus Fleischer. "Mark Getty [the photo-archive mogul] said that intellectual property is 'the oil of the 21st century'—and oil apparently means war," states Fleischer. "Copyright is so incompatible with so many cultural and technological developments. This is going to be a growing
problem for years ahead."

"The modern M.P.A.A., as if to prove itself capable of a more nuanced approach to the file-sharing threat, recently collaborated with the Boy Scouts of America, who are now offering a merit badge for anti-piracy activities. "

Among the few senior entertainment executives who have been able to absorb this seemingly basic aspect of human nature is Anne Sweeney, president of DisneyABC Television. In her keynote speech at the October 2006 MIPCOM audiovisualcontent market in Cannes, France, Sweeney broke ranks with her boardroom peers to make a bracingly pragmatic statement. "Piracy is a business model," Sweeney said. "It exists to serve a need in the market—consumers who want TV content on demand. And piracy competes for consumers the same way we do: through quality, price, and availability."

And now that iTunes has leveled the distribution playing field to the great disadvantage of major labels, Birgersson poses the question "What do you need these multi-billion-dollar companies with all their skyscrapers for? We shouldn't sacrifice a lot of these gains to prolong that system for another few years."

Sweden's "Broadband Jesus" appears to be suggesting that the sun is setting
on the era in which Ben Affleck got paid $15 million for Paycheck.