Mark Pesce on hyperdistribution

« Guide data subscriptions for MythTV | Main | Broadcast Machine lets you publish your video online easily »

Mark Pesce on hyperdistribution

Mark Pesce has a two-part series on Mindjack concerning piracy of television content, the impact of p2p networks, the growth of broadband Internet access, and a proposal for a new way to create revenue streams from hyperdistribution.

The pervasive culture of TV downloading leaves the producers of pre-produced television programs high and dry, receiving nothing of value for their work. But is this really true? The absolute, basic motivation of a TV producer is not money — though money is needed for production — but to gain and hold an audience's attention. TV producers want their programming to be watched as widely as possible — by everyone. That's what they care about, and that's all they care about, because, with viewers, everything else takes care of itself: audiences equal money.

This assertion seems so basic, so fundamentally essential to the economics of television, that it's very hard to understand why anyone (other than a broadcaster being cut out of the value chain) would get upset about piracy of television programming. The model as practiced at present can't effectively leverage the economic benefits of hyperdistribution, but that model was created before hyperdistribution was technically possible. The age of hyperdistribution demands the development of new economic models which can harness piracy, for profit.

Mindjack - Piracy is Good? How Battlestar Galactica Killed Broadcast TV

It's as simple as this: we're in an interregnum, that brief period of time before some bright young hacker or some clever company solves this problem definitively. When that happens, when the rest of us can download television programs quickly and easily, it'll seem like a bomb went off - broadband use will soar, people will desert the broadcast networks, and the only producers to survive this transition will be those who harnessed the strength a new value chain, where piracy truly is good.

Mindjack - Piracy is Good? Part Two: The New Laws of Television

While I understand where he is coming from, the industry of media has never been known to be quick enough to understand and capture the true demand of the media content. That being said, all it would take is for one big company to "get it" and the industry might shift their distribution mechanisms within a few years.

Living in Tokyo, and seeing the global demand for Japanese animation content, and all of the fansub communities, it's clear that Japanese media companies have no idea how big their potential market is. Cartoon Network is doing a decent job of it in the US, but the market is much, much larger than that.

After reading the article, how feasible do you think Pesce's proposal is?

Download (using BitTorrent, of course) the live presentation of "Piracy Is Good?", delivered by Mark Pesce on May 6th, 2005 at the Australian Film Television and Radio School in Sydney. (200MB)

by Gen Kanai May 22, 2005 in News

Comments

Pesce is actually right on in his proposal. But it is also true that big media is going to have problems making this transition. They make plenty of money off of closed distribution (theaters, cab/sat, DVDs) and are in no hurry to jeopardize this profitable revenue stream until open distribution proves its potential. Big media is not going to be taking this risk, it will be individuals and small producers who have been essentially locked out of the current model. Once these guys have figured it out, big media will jump in, but this is going to take a couple of years (at least).

Posted by: Alex Rowland at May 23, 2005 1:36:06 PM

This passage from Pesce just makes with scratch my head:
"The producer may fret and file lawsuits and lobby to change the laws regarding the copying and distribution of television programs, but these have little overall effect - though it will anger the audience. Consider that, despite the famed Betamax decision of 1984, it is still just as illegal to time-shift a broadcast television program in 2005 as it was in 1979. Yet no home viewer has ever been prosecuted for it. Why? Because you don't sue your audience. (Just ask Metallica how well that worked out.)"

Huh? It is "just as illegal to time-shift a broadcast television program in 2005 as it was in 1979"? Yes, I suppose it is. It is equally *not* illegal. I'm not sure what he means by "despite the famed Betamax decision" -- are me just meant to disregard that decision? It did, in fact (or rather, as a matter of law) find time-shifting to be a fair use, and thus legal. And of course, while it might be great if content providers didn't "sue their audience" (content providers would say it'd be great if they didn't *have* to) this continues to happen (e.g., RIAA, MPAA lawsuits). I don't know how poorly it worked out for Metallica -- Lars is still rolling in the dough, no? And the RIAA and MPAA still seem to be making money. Whatever backlash we've seen so far doesn't seem to have changed their courses of action.

The rest of the piece makes some interesting points, but with whoppers like these, it's hard to take other factual assertions at face value.

Posted by: pilgrim at May 23, 2005 4:18:38 PM

"Huh? It is "just as illegal to time-shift a broadcast television program in 2005 as it was in 1979"? Yes, I suppose it is. It is equally *not* illegal."

There are a lot of people out there regurgitating the RIAA/MPAA and other content owner "talking points" about this subject, which basically claims that "there is no such thing as a right to fair use" in spite of massive evidence to the contrary.

It's the old trick of creating a "fact" by simple virtue of repeating a lie over and over again until it is accepted as being "true".

Media cartels such as the RIAA/MPAA have spent a lot of money indoctrinating legal theorists, media analysts, and pundits with the notion that there is no such thing as a fair use right, in spite of legal precedent, and they've been successful in brainwashing a lot of people into believing this "meme" as though it were a fact and not merely a devout wish of the media cartels.

Posted by: beware the disinfo at May 23, 2005 10:00:58 PM

Me and a buddy have created a site for the MythTV community to download their Dish Network Pay-Per-View or PPV or Pay per view programs into their guide

Neither me or him actually have either MythTV anymore and we don't have Dish Network Either... Strange story, but visit us at www.MythPPV.com for a free download of all PPV programs for all the US Time Zone.

WWW.MythPPV.com

Posted by: Matt at May 28, 2005 10:03:35 PM

???????where do u get free japanese tv shows

Posted by: m at Jun 13, 2005 4:09:03 AM