Results of the Louis CK Experiment
Louis CK is being very open about how his video experiment is performing.
The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.
Copyright Culture
Andy Baio on copyright culture:
Here’s a thought experiment: Everyone over age 12 when YouTube launched in 2005 is now able to vote. What happens when — and this is inevitable — a generation completely comfortable with remix culture becomes a majority of the electorate, instead of the fringe youth? What happens when they start getting elected to office? (Maybe “I downloaded but didn’t share” will be the new “I smoked, but didn’t inhale.”) Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance. You can criminalize commonplace activities from law-abiding people, but eventually, something has to give.
Apple offers music pirates permanent amnesty for $24.99.
Once Apple has replaced all the 5,000 plus non-iTunes songs in my music library with clean 256-Kbps non-DRM copies that are mine, permanently, with all the benefits of iTunes in the Cloud, why would I pay for a second year of the service? The job is done, thank you very much, I’ll take it from here.
For my kids — and all those other kids who are still building their music libraries — the question is more complicated. A one-time charge of $25 to convert up to 25,000 pirated songs to legal iTunes-plus quality copies is a no brainer. If they plan to continue stealing music, however, they’ll have to make a calculation at the end of the year. Have they collected enough new music to justify spending another $25 to bring them into the iTunes fold?
If you update your iTunes, the first version of the iCloud is already available — it’ll let you download iTunes purchased music, apps and books to your computer. Except in Canada, where the music option isn’t available. Because Steve Job is racist.
Netflix is kicking the shit out of BitTorrent. As Matt Mason would say, competing with the pirates is good for the consumer.
8-track piracy is killing music. [via]
Want to end piracy? The pirates have a list of demands. They seem reasonable.
The 2011 edition of Andy Baio’s Pirating the Oscars.
Continuing the trend from the last couple years, fewer screeners are leaking online by nomination day than ever. Last year at this time, only 41% of screeners leaked online; this year, that number drops again slightly to 38%.
The Pirate Bay is threatening to blow up what’s left of the music industry.
The most pirated films of 2010.
LimeWire gets shut down.
