Tag Archives: piracy

Copyright Holders Should Take Advice From Neil Gaiman

Entertainment, Internet

15 Feb

The battle against copyright infringement is something I’ve always frowned upon, not because I don’t think authors should have the right to protect their material, but because of the way it is usually done. The likes of RIAA spend millions in lawsuits every year, some of them as ridiculous as suing a student for $675.000 for downloading and sharing 30 songs.

So it’s great to hear, directly from someone who has had their work “stolen” several times, that this “stealing” actually helps the author. Neil Gaiman, a best-selling author and a creator of works of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics, and drama, explains how he discovered that piracy is not really something to be feared. Money quote:

Nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free. What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people. You’re raising awareness.

That about sums it all up, and it’s something I have been saying for a while now. And I believe this not only applies to books, but also movies, music and games.

In related news, the Canadian torrent site isoHunt has been sued for $4 million in a major attack by 26 record labels in Canada.

(Source: ORGZine)

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Wolverine, Star Trek and Piracy

Internet, Movies, Rants

14 May

If it wasn’t clear enough in my post about the conviction of the Pirate Bay founders, I’ll say it again:

I don’t believe piracy is hurting the movie/music/game industry.

On the contrary, I believe piracy is helping these industries, by giving even more visibility to their products, with no cost for the publishers. They’re basically getting free publicity and benefiting from the fact that people who wouldn’t even think about buying their album or watching their movie might just feel inclined to do it or to buy some other kind of related product.

You might argue that there’s no proof of this. Well, of couse this theory is very hard to prove, but a blog post over at The Inquisitr presents some interesting facts on the recent X-Men Origins and Star Trek movies.

A month before X-Men Origins hit the movie theaters, a workprint copy of the movie was leaked to teh Internets. The copy was far from being finished, and most of the special effects were not yet included. 20th Century Fox screamed in pain and begged the authorities to find the culprits. The FBI was called in to investigate and one movie reviewer from Fox News was fired.

Star Trek had a flawless release, with no leaks or any other kind of fuss surrounding it. Pretty boring, uh?

Now let’s look at some numbers, more speficically to opening weekend box office dollar figures:

Interesting… So the movie that was leaked 1 month before the premiere and presumably was downloaded 4 million times actually had a  better opening weekend than the one that managed to remain safe from those horrible pirates and had everyone dying to watch it. I know what you’re going to say. Maybe the Wolverine movie was just so much better than Star Trek, and that’s why so many more people went to watch it. Right?

Wrong!

It turns out that, according to Rotten Tomatoes, X-Men Origins is pretty crappy, while Star Trek is one of the best movies of the year so far.

So there you have it folks. The movie that caused the most uproar over piracy in recent time actually earned more money than the other hot movie that garnered critic praise and not a peep about piracy. In the process an ISP data host lost millions of dollars and had their reputation severely impacted. As well a long time FOX freelance movie reviewer has lost his livelihood. All because of the pirating of an incomplete film that ended up earning more money on opening weekend box office that the golden boy movie.

Still think piracy is hurting the movie industry?

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