Inside Popcorn Time, the Piracy Party Hollywood Can't Stop

Insert disc, press T, then P, and you are watching the movie, no BS. Took maybe 5 seconds tops after disk mount.

Turned out to be popular, so I bought a real DVD player for the family, and we hated that thing.

"Aladdin" is talked about a lot, but it's true! Every single time the kids wanted to watch that thing, it was something like 15 minutes of previews for all this other cool stuff, over and over.

That was the first DVD I ripped. Couldn't stand it. And once setup for that, I ripped 'em all, and also got the benefit of younger ones not destroying fragile media at some considerable expense all the time too. That and losing it, or swapping with friends...

For a number of years, I replaced that "real" DVD player with OGLE setup to just play the movie no matter what.

Was great OSS advocacy. Suddenly, a whole bunch of people knew who a "geek" and "hacker" was, what software was, how it can impact lives, and all sorts of other good things just because DVD media producers just HAD to annoy the crap out of people. Funny that!

The TV apps are crappy, with the exception of Netflix, which is actually quite good. Best thing on the TV itself.

Over time, my family has consistently preferred either a PC for viewing (laptop), or a game console or a PC connected to a TV for viewing.

The little boxes are crappy, and using a TV remote is too.

There are a few use cases here:

1. Massive pirate. Won't pay for anything. If we made it a perfect world, they would just mooch off other people in the extreme, never paying for anything.

They won't be customers. Ever. But they do talk about stuff, make recommendations, etc... So they can be leveraged in that way. Show them an AD, or have them do some other minor league thing of value, and trade on that for some value. Good as it gets.

And it's important to factor these people in. Their copies and views don't devalue anything. Ignore their $0, and consider anything of value derived from their mindshare as a bonus.

2. Casual pirate. These people will pay, but don't want to be annoyed. Good service, making it easy, etc... all counts, and massive numbers of them will subscribe to lots of things. Cord cutters fall in to this bucket too. Cut out the $150 cable bill, and sign up for a few services, then buy things on top of that. Big cable loses a revenue stream, but content creators and service providers gain one.

3. Buyer. They typically have more means than most, and just pay because it's not a big impact to them. Upper middle class and above here mostly.

What people make, and what $10 means to them is absolutely a factor in how to compete with free works. The difference between #2 and #3 here is important.

Secondly, entertainment dollars are largely fixed for many people. Actually, my experience is this is true for most people. There is some flex in it, but there aren't billions laying around unspent somehow as most entertainment centric arguments imply. Most people have a coupla hundred bucks to spend. And the various forms of entertainment compete too. A summer of good movies? Yeah, maybe buy one less game.

Recognition of this means understanding price points, incentives to spend and how / when / why to compete with other entertainment forms to optimize revenue. Very little is being said about this, but we are seeing flat rate services compete fairly well while delivering consistent revenue.

All of this is particularly relevant to #2 above.

Considering all of these together highlights some ways to compete with free.

Be the free source. Pirating has some negatives attached to it. So side step those and give people options that can send value your way.

Increasingly, it's possible to stream now. I am a fan of AMC "Halt And Catch Fire" and do not have cable. I can't go and buy AMC just yet, and they didn't put the show on the services I do subscribe to.

On a quick check, there it was! Right there on the AMC site, and they want me to watch an AD, maybe participate in the little activities and potentially do other things in return for my eyeballs on the show.

Result?

Incentive to pirate goes way down. I've got a path in, and would gladly have gave them money for the views too.

Cory Doctrow does this with his books too. If you want to read 'em, he's the source for that. Grab and go. If you want to translate, or do fan derivatives, he will source that too.

I did that with "Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom", and really liked his work. Bought a lot of hard copies of his stuff since then. Had it not been that easy and obvious, I might have gotten some PDF, or other, or more likely, not done anything and would not know the guy at all.

Mindshare matters. Buying it with views to compete is a perfectly valid business model. And giving people options like sharing / recommending / gifting means those who can pay with dollars will, and those who can't or won't, can do some work that leads to dollars. It's all dollars in the end, done right.

So there are a couple of ways right there. Both compete with free, both leverage mindshare to get some value while at the same time offering purchase opportunities.

The more of this there is, the less people will pirate, leaving us with just that use case #1 above, and there is nothing to be done with those people, other than to leverage their mindshare somehow.

Maximizing revenue is all about the other use cases and recognition of the nature of entertainment dollars and pricing on that understanding, IMHO.

And yes, that distinction does matter. When somebody infringes, nothing is lost. The opportunity for a sale still exists, the property is still owned by those who own it, and so forth.

For there to be theft, there needs to be some meaningful loss on the part of the person claiming theft.

We have the word infringe for this case, because nothing is actually lost. What actually happens is somebody does something they aren't supposed to do, which is a different thing, and not inclusive enough to be theft.

Now, citing theft is nice, because it's easy, clear and very negative. People identify with theft easily, and that's potent. Advocacy centered on theft is understandable, but it does as much harm as it does good.

Why?

Because theft and the direct equating to lost sales does not reflect the realities in play. Where we make law on that basis, we tend to get crappy law that is ineffective.

People see stuff like $150K / infringing act and or proposed jail time, and it's laughable compared to something like rape or real theft that carries far lighter penalties, and that actually is theft as opposed to infringement.

I submit we really can't make progress on this without also entertaining a rational discussion, and tossing theft in here really isn't rational. It's too coarse and inaccurate.

Infringement is wrong. And it's a harder discussion, but a necessary one. Until average people get it, and understand all of it, we will continue to see a big disconnect in both the discussion and law, leaving the door open for more piracy and fewer solutions that can compete with it, etc...