Piracy as a leading indicator of sales
One great way to determine whether your digital product is destined for greatness is how many people want to steal it. As the television industry is starting to realize, there's a great deal of positive information that can be gleaned from illegal torrents of the shows. If no one wants to watch it, no one is going to steal it.
The open-source analog, of course, is the download. If you aren't getting free downloads, then it's probably futile to try selling a product. Downloads, in other words, tell us a lot about future purchases, assuming there's a compelling business and revenue model behind the download. According to an article on Last100.com:
Tech-savvy consumers have been boldly declaring that piracy can help and not hinder industry for years (especially when it comes to music downloads), but I was shocked the first time I heard the same claim from some very knowledgeable marketing types one day over a year ago in a boardroom. One of them simply asked, "Is the show on BitTorrent? How many people are downloading it??" The rest of the group looked genuinely interested in the answer from a demand point of view, not from an outraged one. I've since heard the same thing again several times, from different companies.
An even more interesting thing has started to happen: unofficial, but sanctioned television show leaks on BitTorrent. Broadcasters aren't posting their shows directly on PirateBay yet, but they are talking informally and giving copies of shows to a friend of a friend who is unaffiliated with the company to make a torrent. Why? Well, it's partially an experiment, but the hope is that distribution of content this way will lead to new viewers who wouldn't have been reached through traditional marketing means. Early signs indicate that these experiments are working.
The TV industry needs to explore ways to take advantage of piracy. While people will gladly take a free product if offered it, they'll also likely pay for a complement to that product. Hence, TV watchers have long "paid" for free TV with taxes (U.K.) and advertising (U.S.). In a world of TiVo, there may need to be new means of monetization devised, but the value of the piracy for indicating a potential market should not be underestimated.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
informatiuon cannot be stolen in a zero knowledge sense ... entropy is positive ... encouraging disclousre and discussion is the sole competitive advantage in an age when the information being sold is easily copied without attribution ... good or bad ...
the american system foir portecting and attributing value to the individual, the iconoclast, the reardon, the entrepreneur, is unique but highly misunderstood -- very unfortunate since it is vbecoiming unclear who is responsible for information that causes damage to your property ... [[http://a side notes, there are NO more submarine patents 20 year statutory limit from date of file -- versus copyright which is 50 plus years tagged to the end of the copyright "creator" and all patent filings are disclosed publicly within 18 months of filing ...]|http://a side notes, there are NO more submarine patents 20 year statutory limit from date of file -- versus copyright which is 50 plus years tagged to the end of the copyright "creator" and all patent filings are disclosed publicly within 18 months of filing ...]]
hoiwever, the great equalizer :: business (huge, big, small, tiny) must compete for people's attention and determine a willingness to pay, which with trust is the real limited resource, time is exhausted not the information being sold ... and, nothing is more authentic than the real thing baby ...
now about that balance between piracy and privacy (which incidently are different saides of the same coin) -- an equitable accounting syste,m for attributing value and apportioning the revenue according to that equitable distribution isbecoming possible because of the radioheads, madonnas, a-rods, kobe bryants, et al ... they get paid for their time ... what is the value of your time?
moma said : it all comes down to identifying who pays you how much they pay you and when exactly payment is received ...
I will also add since I'm currently living in the UK, while I suppose the above is technically true on the surface, only the BBC is funded that way and they only have 4 tv channels if you include the 2 on cable/satellite. My satellite package includes 597 channels and 593 are supported via advertising or the movie channels are premium and you pay upfront like HBO. It is weird though needing a 'license' for tv whether you want BBC or not, especially since they are so not needed anymore for their original purpose with so much choice but I suppose they do have good news coverage. ITV,4 & 5 are also free over the air national broadcasters (like NBC, CBS etc) are they all have to support themselves with ads.
I can't tell you the current movies coming out, or the "deal busters" they are showing on TV. And I could care less. As for show distribution, I am careful and avoid that. I record broadcasts for my own use and my drive is smaller that I'd like to have. So end of season I wipe out the seasons episodes, keep a few movies on, and prepare for the next seasons run.
At 2 gig/hour it eats up space pretty fast. Edit out commercials and it's down to 1.3g/episode (42 minutes).
Yes, I'm a cynic, but not due to fear rather observation.
Take, for example, Anime. Anime is being killed off by piracy (fan-subbing). Because of fan-subbing (piracy), REAL people are loosing jobs, companies are closing or scaling production and distribution back. Piracy as a leading indicator doesn't always translate into sales. Sometimes, it translates into pink slips, unemployment and death. ~ Mr. Turd
- by micheal676 December 15, 2007 11:09 PM PST
- as regards to anime, the current system is outdated. fans in the u.s. and else where want the shows soon after they air in japan, they don't want to wait a year or two for it to maybe come out on dvd. then when is does come the pricing scheme is very different from what the u.s. market is used to for one season of a show. you can easily pay several times what you would be used to. plus as for the quality of the subs a lot of time when they are professionally subbed they put what they think you would understand the easiest not straight translations at least imho.
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(10 Comments)i would glad pay a subscription fee to watch an anime a few days to a week after it originally airs, with ads even, but as with most of my generation and those younger, we don't have to the patience to wait years for an overpriced mediocre subbed product.