But if you’re really inclined to wag a finger, there is nothing disrupting your business more than the Internet. The MPAA has worked hard to force file-sharing sites out of business or push them to the Web’s fringes. At first, the studios tried to kill file sharing with lawsuits. Then they hired security firms, such as MediaDefender and MediaSentry, which promised to discourage file sharers by blocking or slowing the sharing process. None of that worked.

Maybe that’s one reason the MPAA overhauled its “antipiracy” operations three weeks ago. CNET reported on Friday that the studios’ trade group decided to change the name of the “antipiracy” unit to “content protection” and fired three leaders, including the MPAA’s general counsel.

Read the full article over at Cnet – End of the world as Hollywood knows it.

The second article pertains to TV specifically, attacking the outdated distribution and revenue model for the shows. The main point that the author is making, albeit indirectly, is that viewers value two things above all else: quality and convenience. Quality is two-fold: that’s to say the artistic quality of the show (why you like it) and the visual quality of the content (HD). Convenience is a no-brainer. It is far easier for people to pirate a show and watch it at their convenience without interruptions (commercials) than it is to catch it on the tube or deal with using a Tivo. Here’s a snip from that article:

What I’m doing is downloading TV shows and sending them to a media player near my TV. I’m doing this because there exist two separate infrastructures that interface imperceptibly at one key point – the official cable and online distribution networks and the shady underworld of pirate distributors. Right now that interface is a trickle, but it will soon be, pardon the pun, a torrent.

The first infrastructure is the studio system. While I’m talking specifically about TV here, we can also extrapolate to talk about movies and music. This infrastructure is based on the advertising or distribution model in that they make all their money placing advertisements around their content or by placing their content onto physical media. But what is important to note is that the TV industry is in a completely different business from the music and movie industry. They’re not “selling” a product. They’re selling the space around a product. They they commission artists to make that product better in hopes of raising the price of the space around that product. They sell DVDs, sure, but that’s a sideline.

I think the true testament to all of this is the fact that it is no longer (or maybe never was) a faux paux to admit you’re pirating TV shows and films because “everybody else is already doing it”. Indeed. Read the full article at CrunchGear – What “on-demand” media really means and why your cable company should be scared

For years The Pirate Bay’s users have been able to share files without censorship or charges, but this is all about to change. Rosso said that under the new management, the 3.7 million Pirate Bay users (or whatever userbase remains) will have to pay a monthly fee to access the site.

The money collected from user subscriptions and advertising revenue will then be used to pay off the copyright holders. The exact monthly fee is yet to be decided, but Rosso did confirm that the more files people share, the lower it will be.

[...]

In addition, GGF hopes to cut deals with ISPs. “We hope to introduce a new BitTorrent technology that will optimize ISP traffic,” Rosso said. “We can save ISPs up to 80 percent of their resources. Half of the Internet traffic is file sharing and half of that traffic is Pirate Bay.”

Not sure how anybody in their right mind expects this to work, but anything is possible I suppose. Story courtesy of TorrentFreak.

The majority of those films are likely downloaded and shared through peer-to-peer online sites by a small subset of broadband households. But rather than go after those households with lawsuits, treat them as criminals or lobby legislators for more copyright protection, In-Stat said studios could instead convert them into legal purchasers by making it easier for them and other consumers to watch movies when and where they want.

[...]

He predicts that as consumers become more used to watching content when they want it, more people will fall into the group of heavy users that do use P2P networks to watch shows when they can’t find them legally.

“These represent the next generation of consumers,” Nissen said. “Content holders should be watching these people. If you set up strategies for monetizing online video or video in general, and you satisfy this group, then you’re setting yourself up for long-term success.”

By converting illegal viewers into paying customers, Nissen projects that content holders could generate $1.4 billion in subscription revenue and $1.1 billion in advertising revenue.

Nissen said simply making movies available on Netflix’s streaming service would make it appealing enough for most P2P users, many of whom are already Netflix subscribers, to just watch there rather than use illegal file-sharing networks to get downloads.

But beyond that, the way to satisfy P2P downloaders, Nissen said, is to include watermarks on downloads that note who owns the download and what rights they have. Nissen said the technology is already available to use DRM to let users pay different amounts depending on what they want to do—studios, for example, could charge one price for a simple rental as they do now, more for a permanent download, more if a user wants to watch that download on a TV or mobile device and more if they want to use a clip from a TV show to make a mash-up video for YouTube.

Full report over at VidBiz.

Toronto has been a focus of the organization, which has sent their own inspectors out to York Region malls that have also been the targets of raids by York Region Police and the RCMP. So far, Toronto is the only city in the CMPDA’s sights because of the prevalence of illegal DVDs and videos, a spokesperson said.

But despite the enforcement, the Toronto Star obtained a copy of Wolverine easily at a Scarborough mall for $3.

Earlier this year, the International Intellectual Property Alliance said Canada should be put on a watch list since it is the only member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development to have taken quot;no meaningful steps toward modernizing its copyright law.

Critics say Canadian jobs are at stake, as well as Hollywood money.

Blockbuster Canada announced this week that it is cutting prices on new DVD releases by 30 per cent at its 459 retail outlets across the country. A new release now costs $3.99 plus tax for a two-night rental, but that’s still more than what you would pay for your own pirated copy.

The last sentence touches on it. One of the main reasons piracy is on the rise is because content is readily available at minimal cost, and on demand. There is value in not having to drive to your local theater, wait in line, pay for an admission ticket for what most people consider overpriced, buy food and beverages that are usually not your ideal choice and extremely overpriced so that the theaters can stay in business, and then deal with rowdy, noisy audience members who talk on their cell phone or send text messages when you finally sit down to watch the film. Not to mention watching the film in the comfort of your own home and being able to pause the film or eat and drink whatever you like. Especially after investing thousands of dollars in a HDTV and a decent surround sound system. I could keep going, but for now check out the article.

Piracy of digital content has become something of a big business in its own right. Recently, an incomplete version of the upcoming summer movie X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked out, perhaps one of the earliest leaks of a major Hollywood movie to date. Perhaps more interesting, a reviewer for Fox News got into hot water when he reviewed the unfinished movie–ironically, a movie by another News Corp. affiliate, 20th Century Fox.

Meanwhile, the much-ballyhooed trial of the bad, bad boys who run The Pirate Bay tracking site were found guilty. The comments from The Pirate Bay organizers in response to the verdict reads much like something right out of one of Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan graphic novels.

Then there’s the ongoing battle between Hulu and just about any non-browser device or software maker who wants to embed content streamed from Hulu into their device, particularly Boxee.

Finally, Stardock Software has become a victim of software piracy, something the company has tried to avoid by eliminating content protection from their games, which removes one of the major annoyances of PC games. Stardock published Gas Powered Games Demigod, but the game was released a day early by one retailer. Shortly afterwards, Stardock’s servers were hammered by multiplayer game play requests–most of them from illegal copies of the game. A patch or two later, and the pirates can no longer annoy actual owners of Demigod. Still, it’s something of a lesson learned for the Michigan software company, who is trying in all sincerity to develop content protection that serves the needs of game developers without annoying users.

What does all this mean? It means that how we look at content (no pun intended) is evolving at a rate so rapid, the legal system and purveyors of content simply can’t keep up. Trying to find successful business models for writing and disseminating news has become one of the major challenges of the 21st century. While citizen journalism is well and good, it costs serious time and money to do good investigative journalism. Who will pay for that if all news is aggregated coverage by bloggers?

Entertainment media, like music, movies, games, and television are trying to adopt the Web, but are mired in old business models that are both location based and hard goods based.

I can only agree that I don’t know the future, but I’ll be watching just like you.

So the first verdict finally came, almost 3 years after the raid. You might have heard about it in the news…

You, our beloved users, know that this little speedbump on the information super highway is nothing more than just, a little bump. Todays verdict has already been appealed by us and will be taken to the next level of court (and that will take another 2 or 3 years!)

The site will live on! We are more determined than ever that what we do is right. Millions of users are a good proof of that.

We have seen that some people that we dont know have started collecting donations for us, so we can pay those silly fines. We firmly ask you NOT to do this. Do not gather or send any money. We do not want them since we will not pay any fines!

If you really want to help out, here is a list:
* Seed those torrents a little bit more than you usually do!
* Buy a t-shirt and show the world where your sympathy is.
* If you live in Europe, vote in the election for the EU parliament in June.
* Continue to build the internets! Start more bittorrent sites, blog more, start your own lobby group, create, remix, mash up and continue to grow more heads on this amazing hydra that we know as the internets!
* Do not be afraid of using the network. Invite your friends to this and other file sharing systems. Calm people down if they’re upset. We need to stay united.

While the future of VOD depends on an honest system with people willing to pay reasonable prices for quality content, I can’t help but wonder if stopping sites with the Pirate Bay is really the best way for companies to fight piracy. If I had visitors on this site, maybe you could post a few comments.

BERLIN — A Swedish court on Friday found the four operators of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site guilty of accessory to copyright infringement and sentenced each to one year in prison.The defendants, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Carl Lundstrom, were also ordered to pay 30 million kronor ($3.56 million) in damages.

Warner Bros., MGM, Columbia Pictures, Fox, Sony BMG, Universal and EMI had been seeking damages of some $14 million to cover lost revenues from users downloading content via Pirate Bay, one of the biggest file-sharing websites worldwide with an estimated 25 million active users.

Speaking at an online press conference, Sunde said they would not pay a cent to the studios.

[...]

The trial has put the topic of file-sharing front and center in Swedish politics and the verdict is likely to strengthen Sweden’s fledgling Pirate Party and the country’s growing anti-copyright movement. During the three weeks of the court proceedings, the Pirate Party gained about 3,000 new members.

Pirate Party leader Rickard Falkvinge called the verdict “a gross injustice,” adding that it “wasn’t a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure,” he told the BBC.

With this victory there’s a chance the media congloms will go after other popular Bittorrent sites in an effort to gain more compensation for estimated damages. Full story on Variety.