Category: Internet

The Game of Protection

Posted by DarkJedi – February 17, 2009

What is the difference between protecting your Intellectual Property from Illegal Copying and Trying to control the consumer and the free market? The difference is often difficult to spot if you are a company in this digital age apparently… The first thing that goes wrong is that you start of with the assumption that every possible customer is a criminal. The second thing that goes terribly wrong is that you mistake illegal copying with stealing. You do not loose the original when you copy – big difference! Imagine someone stealing the Mona Lisa compared to someone who can make a perfect duplicate… BIG difference! The third and last mistake is that companies thinks that this problem can be solved using DRM…

How did they expect their customers to react when they are essentially taking over the rights of the customer’s PC? … And when customers complain they keep singing that old, worn-out song of piracy problems even though nothing in the ever-booming sales numbers of videogames supports this! Let’s be realistic here. This has nothing to do with piracy and the company already knows this. They are instead fighting a market they have little or no control over and which costs them millions of dollars each month: The second-hand game market. Normally you would not be against the forces of the free market and just be happy that you are in a market that keeps growing with incredible speed in the midths of a major financial crisis… but not in this market! They want to control the customer, their PC and instead lease their products for full price…

Of course when you act that way in the face of your customers you better not mess up and that’s exactly what Epic did with their major title “Gears of War”. Of course EA had already created a great fuss on the market by creating some of the most restricted DRM on the games market ever on their release of their major hope, Spore, which was suppose to take over the success of The Sims. However, they quickly found out that in this digital age gamers will let their voices be heard quickly once you try to screw them like EA did. It didn’t help that the CEO of EA came out and showed the whole world what little understanding of their customers and how much arrogancy EA had at that point. Later on EA put the same titles on Steam – now without the DRM…

Now, there’s no denying that piracy exists to some degree, but since the numbers can never be validated it will always be used as a poor excuse. However, as Valve and others keep reminding us: Pirates are just unsatisfied customers! Why not try to find out at what price mark pirates vanish, like you do with other software in third world countries? Why not offer the choice between a cheaper copy with DRM and the “normal” game for a normal price without DRM – thereby letting customers show their intent with their vallets. Naturally this can only be done if the companies start to make it clearer on the boxes for their games what restrictions actually applies when they sell DRM-ridden titles.

Ubisoft has already had its trouble with DRM and are now searching for new alternatives. They have now released their newest Prince of Persia game for PC without DRM to see how it fares. Naturally it can easy become a quick excuse for Ubisoft: “See… We did it without DRM and we didn’t sell 100 million copies over night! Pirates will never change!”. A poor game will never sell – even without DRM.

At this point in time gamers are fed up with non-functional DRM schemes that only hurts the paying customers. Pirates never feel the poor quality of DRM since their version never contain any, which in itself is the clearest point one can make in this matter. The DRM doesn’t help because every title is out there in a pirated version – WITHOUT DRM – so only the remaining paying customers are being screwed. Lately gamers, together with the EFF, have started speaking out publicly about the many problems in DRM, which are illegally taking away user-granted rights without consent.

Let’s hope that some headroom is finally made. The situation is unacceptable. We all know that DRM is doomed to fail. A perfect solution doesn’t exists and never will. It is clear now that this situation with ever increasing strictness of DRM is a passing period – however, one that is annoying to be living in. In five years time everything will be digitally sold and shipped and at that point those silly schemes will have been replaced by a few centralized, transparent dsitribution solutions, like Steam. God, I wish I had a time machine… and so should many of the game publishing companies! EA and Epic aren’t the last to make a big public scandal on DRM and who knows which company will end up being remembered as the Sony of the gaming world with their version of the XCP copy protection and the following massive lawsuit, followed by a publicity nightmare… I can’t wait :)

Sony’s problem

Posted by DarkJedi – February 7, 2009

Red as blood. That is the only way to describe the latest numbers of lacking income at Sony. A company that once was at the top of the hardware business with enormous successes such as the Walkman, the Trinitron TV technology and the PlayStation 1 and 2. A hardware company that lead the business with innovation for many years. Now the times have changed and some might be wondering why. The answer, however, is painfully obvious… Sony is no longer one company, but rather a gathering of businesses with opposite directed interests.

The three faces of Sony is their hardware business, Sony Pictures in the movie industry and Sony BMG in the music business. The main problem appears, however, in their software department. While the hardware business is trying to create open, innovative hardware, the two content businesses Sony Pictures and Sony BMG is trying to prevent that hardware from being used in piracy. Here is where the customer gets completely forgotten. We then see failures such as the rootkit fiasco in their CD publishing part and the Walkman relaunched that was supposed to smash the iPod but failed completely because of unusable software as it was too ridden with DRM and copy protection technology making it impossible for customers to use. The Walkman’s price was slashed by more than half, but little did it help. The software was useless and people kept returning their Walkmans as they saw them as broken.

Sony, however, learned nothing from this. They still struggle with technologies that Sony Pictures and Sony BMG wanted to push in order to control their customers. Think of the many failed formats Sony has tried to push: ATRAC, MiniDisc, SACD, MemoryStick and so forth. ATRAC is a perfect example here. When the rest of the market had already accepted MP3 as the standard and Microsoft was pushing WMA Sony kept forcing their poor customers onto ATRAC and nothing else. After several years of being practically the laughing stock of the MP3-player market with a ridiculously small percentage they finally yielded to MP3 and released the Walkman player which could play both formats. However, the software was so riddled with DRM og copy protection technologies that it failed completely. Hardware is only as good as its software. Why didn’t they learn?

Even though music has been distributed over the Internet for nearly fifteen years Sony BMG and the rest of the music industry still hasn’t found a digital strategy. In this field Sony is also showing its many faces. It wants to give its customers as many options as possible, but also to completely control their use. This can be seen clearly in the fact that Sony is one of the companies pushing the hardest for the power to use selectable output – a technology that takes away a lot of the consumers rights without asking. So on one side Sony wants to push HD content in all your equipment – on the other side Sony wants complete control to fully disable all your equipment and remove the ability to display the HD content.

Then came the PlayStation 3 and Sony’s newest push of technologies. Now it wanted its customers onto the Blu-Ray path, so that it could force new copy protection technologies onto its poor customers. Another HD technology riddled with DRM. However, when one focuses too much on technology and marketing and forgets about software, which has always been Sony’s soft spot, one is set up for a major disappointment – especially when one is as arrogant as Sony Entertainment. The PlayStation 3 didn’t quite know what kind of machine it wanted to be. It wanted to be a game console, but also a media center and a Blu-Ray player… but as everyone knows: The Jack of All Trades is a Master of None… And that also happened with the PlayStation 3, who is suffering greatly on the market today.The holiday sales has shown that in this time around Sony is way behind its two competitors…

What Sony failed to do Nintendo did to perfection. They focused their console on a major market and didn’t put everything into the console – only what the market was asking for. The result is remarkable – especially compared to the once master of the market, Sony. Even their newest competitor, Microsoft, understood where they needed to beat Sony. Microsoft didn’t have Sony’s innovation in hardware or even remotely their experience in this field. When it comes to software, however, Microsoft is million miles ahead of Sony. They made the right tools for developing software on their platform and they made a brilliant working network service in Live far ahead of Sony’s PSN, which most of all looked like a small afterthought from Sony in hindsight of Microsoft’s success. Microsoft success came from ensuring a lot more titles than Sony did – especially when it came to exclusives, where Sony was once master. Sony simply forgot that consoles are about games. At the same time Microsoft is cutting prices making it harder for Sony to sell consoles, who are already seen as expensive…

Times has changed. Hardware is no longer everything. These days a console is measured by its software and in that field Sony is having serious problems – not only with its countless delays, but also with the quality of the software, which almost always fails to live up to the hype. A clear example of Sony’s problem with software is that every game studio claims that it is much simpler and thereby cheaper to develop on Microsoft’s Xbox platform compared to Sony’s PlayStation platform – even such former Sony exclusives as Square Enix.What is Sony’s response to this criticism? Well, even more strange… They claim that they have made it difficult to develop on the PlayStation 3 on purpose to make it last the ten years they somehow expect this console to last – even though it is far behind all its competitors in every way… sheeesh!

The strangest thing about this is that Sony doesn’t seem to learn anything. They keep on lying through their teeth and spinning numbers in their marketing. They keep on screwing their customers with DRM and copy protection and the removal of consumer rights, using lobbying. One would think that a company that makes a PR nightmare like the CD rootkit would learn something, but it doesn’t seem to happen. What Sony needs a common sense czar…

Digital Music or Digital Protectionism

Posted by DarkJedi – January 25, 2009

For many years the digital sales have only gone one way – up and up! Consumers wants an easy to use music and movie download service that just works. iTunes is already doing what the music business should be dreaming about. Alternative earnings are hitting the music business from unexpected sides, such as the console market. Most businesses would be happy in such a situation. In the midst of a financial crisis they have upcoming market with unlimited potential, but how are they reacting now that they haven’t done anything to spur this development for more than a decade?

Well, not very inspiring to say the least. The Greedy Business ™, consisting of the Big Four in the music business, IFPI, MPAA and the likes of those, instead wants to crumble the rights of the Internet users and expect special threatment on the Internet. They want complete monitoring of the Internet – and naturally they do not want to pay for it. For some reason they expect the tax payers to pay for monitoring themselves in order for the Greedy Business ™ to misuse this monitoring for protecting their market. They are dead scared that the powers of the market is shifting and they want to use fear and money to pull their weight around to ensure that no one starts making money on innovation in this business.

In the mean time the Greedy Business ™ are spending their time publishing papirs on Internet piracy to get some support to their “take-control-over-the-internet”-scheme. Naturally these papirs are as filled with errors as the one would expect from these blind managers. They simply doesn’t know the rules of the scientific world and instead are just proving how little truth they have in what they claim instead. Perhaps they should invest all that energy into innovation instead – might be a welcome change!

The problem for the Greedy Business ™ is perhaps that they simply weren’t ready for the realities or for the fact that most business have to actually do something in order to earn money. Instead they just kept on claiming that it was the pirates’ fault – not theirs. They did nothing to better the situation – just kept on complaining! What a normal business would do in such a situation is to change ones strategy (or actually make one in this case), not act like a spoiled child and start suing your customers thereby ruining your market of tomorrow. However, the Greedy Business ™ kept on acting like idiots without an idea in what direction they wanted to go and showed no understanding of what their market demanded what so ever!

Even when it is going perfectly in their sales in the midst of a financial crisis they keep on crying piracy … Won’t you guys just shut the f*ck up and die soon?!

On Gaming Piracy…

Posted by DarkJedi – December 21, 2008

I just read this rather long, but somewhat serious, article on Piracy in regards to computer games… Naturally a business guy like that would end up with a conclusion sounding like this: Don’t do piracy and it’s okay to do DRM as long you behave!

Well, frankly I don’t quite agree! I hate piracy as much as the next guy. No, I don’t find it to be an “okay demonstration against some big business, who is doing you wrong!”. People that pirate are just freeloaders! They do not understand the massive commitment and work it requires to make a game these days – even a poor game (which the market is apparently filled with). I don’t like demos myself. They always leave all kinds of crap on my computer and I hate those regular re-installs. I can, to some degree, understand those people that claim that too many titles these days are utter crap, wasted money, or just not enough bang for the money (like Mirror’s Edge with only 6 hours of gameplay) and therefore try out the pirate version before shelling out good cash. However, guys that use this excuse over and over and never actually buy anything as they keep claiming that there are no good titles: Shut the fuck up! If there were no good titles how come you spend 20 hours plus every week gaming?!… I hate those guys! Stop complaining about game quality when you don’t support good games! Stop complaining about poor performance, too many bugs, poor service when you are using a pirate version, riddled with malware and virusses! Buy good games … it’s that easy!

Games are often good value for money – especially compared to movies, where you get 1,5 – 2,5 hours of entertainment for the approx. same price where the games often deliver 20 – 40 hours of gameplay and a more immersive and often better social experience!

However, the one area where I hate the conclusion of that article is on DRM… I refuse to accept that crappy DRM schemes on my computer! I am not a pirate, i am not a thief… I have 60 plus original titles on my PC alone, not counting my console games… I refuse to receive a copy of a game that denies me much more than the pirate version, which is available for free! Instead offer some free extra stuff and good online parts for us paying customers – NOT CRAPPY DRM-schemes! Hint: they don’t work and they are a nightmare to support! Just give it up and let the market decide! Then it will be easier for the companies to expose the ever growing freeloaders! Yes, I know… companies like EA will still make a lot of poor value titles or easy follow ups on public franchises without any proper content or gameplay, but then don’t buy them … And don’t go for the pirate version of a game you claim is poor!

I hate those double standards… It is easy to shout your moralistic view all over the internet and find a common voice… It is a bit more difficult to live by those beliefs! And believe me when I say that you fucking freeloaders don’t make it anymore easy on those of us that actually pay for good games and don’t pirate! So grow up and smell the free market! Vote with your wallet, not your sorry cry-baby voice!

Now, another reason I personally hate DRM is something that is rarely mentioned in the internet article, but matters a lot for me. I take backup of my games. I hate having to have the physical disc laying around everywhere. In the fully digital distribution age this will not be a problem, but we are not there yet, so it is! Therefore I make backups on my NAS, which is a nice way to access my games when I want to play them. A nice solution, I like to think. The problem is with titles that contain DRM that I have to go to shady sites on the Internet to get noCD patches to get them to work without a DVD in the drive. Why should I be punished for being a faithful customer compared to the pirate? Why shall I be forced onto shady sites to get noCD patches to be able to make backups? How come the industry themselves aren’t offering my this as a faithful, paying customer? There is a reason I complete stopped buying games with DRM… They do not supply me with the options I need. This is a digital age – I should be able to handle my product in a digitally flexible manner!

So, instead of pirating games because you don’t want to pay for the honest work of men and women in the gaming inudstry stop playing games. If you want to change the industry start paying for games, but only those that do it right!

If companies, like EA, doesn’t listen to you then… well… they’ll find out in the one language that company can understand – MONEY!

DRM : Is the gaming industry growing up?

Posted by DarkJedi – December 3, 2008

Even though I do not expect an old-timer company like Electronic Arts (EA) to see this coming before the rest of the industry have done it for years it actually appears that the gaming industry is slowly moving towards an adult perception of Digital Rights Management, DRM. The views of the customers are often completely left out of this debate. Every time a customer speaks up he is automatically called a pirate by the backwater companies that act like some sort of Mafia from the old USSR – not a company who lives in a free market world. The difference between the different approaches by companies in the gaming industry is becoming apparent. Companies like Valve is famous for their grown up opinions on this issue, while EA is known for their backward perception of the world. In an article by Ars Technica this difference is clearly shown… Worth a read :)

EA: Lost contact with the law as well…

Posted by DarkJedi – October 30, 2008

In an, by now, unsurprised move by Electronic Ass (EA) they have suddenly given themselves the right to remove your legally bought right to your games if you in their eyes misbehaves in their forum. Apart from the fact that this is clearly illegal since none of their customers have signed any waiver, which throws away their right to their legally purchased expensive content, it is right up EA’s alley. They can decide when you are behaving badly and then when they want you to pay for all your content again – nice move! In the real world where we divide the power into three institutions we are lucky to be protected by the law and not even EA can choose when they want to set aside that law or not. Of course this a nice way to further attack the game-renting market, which they already attacked directly with their 3-install expensive games. Apparently “full control” is the only way EA can think these days on that planet of theirs: User-control with ultra-restrictive DRM, Market-control with “3/5-install-games” and now they think they have control of user demand with their latest streak of madness… Well, another reason to avoid the userfriendly void that is EA.

It is never a pretty sight when a company suddenly consists of 80% lawyers, 17% marketing and only 3% people actually doing something… It happened with the music business and now EA can join them as the first of the gaming publishing company!

However, one would think that a company consisting of 80% lawyers could at least read the law, instead of sitting on that strange planet of theirs and making up their own rules?

EDIT: Now at least some of their 80% lawyers will have something to do up to Christmas :)

EA : Lost contact with the real world?

Posted by DarkJedi – October 15, 2008

After perhaps the most criticized game launch in history with Spore EA has been fighting with a PR nightmare their blinded analysts could never have foreseen. EA that for once are bringing a quality game line up, including “Dead Space” and “Mirror’s Edge” are now faced with a group of fans that feel betrayed by the company. They are angry that pirates get a far better deal on the versions of the games that can be found on the internet – and I am not talking about the price.

Most gamers spend several thousand dollars on their gaming rigs and they are not about to let control of that expensive pierce of hardware in the hands of EA’s runaway DRM-software.

The problem is that EA is no longer a game company, but just a publishing house filled with blinded analysts living in a world which is divided up into only two groups of people: Loyal Customers who apparently buy every EA game and countless expansion pack or the evil pirates who would never pay a dime for a game. It’s right up there with a certain american president’s dividing of the world into good and evil.

Every stupid comment from EA these days seems to be bridging the gap between this lost company and their former loyal fans. I, for one, own more than 30 original EA titles and that is not going to change… No, I’m not going pirate even though EA wants you to think that! I’m just dropping EA from my shopping options just like I dropped every music CD out there with DRM…

Let me know when EA becomes a gaming company and returns to reality again….

Games : Value for money

Posted by DarkJedi – September 26, 2008

While EA is now facing a class-action lawsuit for putting a crappy piece of Sony Rootkit on its new game on the block, Spore, what is left for people who wants to pay for a game without loosing complete control with your own computer?

Leave EA to claim that DRM is necessary, while its games are being copied more than ever and walk away. There is an excellent alternative to get your gaming fix, get a lot of value for your money and at the same time a perfect way to send the message to the game companies that DRM should be left in the dust… “Good old games” – Yes, classics for a small price on easy-to-figure-out digital download, guaranteed to work on XP/Vista, NO DRM, support, manuals and the ability to redownload whenever/whereever. This is exactly what the market needs. Now you have the chance to support the companies that are risking their titles on this, showing that this is how digital distribution of games should be like!

Instead of paying 50$ for the mediocre Spore, filled with DRM and waiting to claim our money again and again for small expansions you could go to Good Old Games and for example get this instead :

Fallout 1

Fallout 2

Freespace + Expansion

Freespace 2

Stonekeep

Sacriface

Giants : Citizen Kabuto

Descent

Descent 2

… And you still save 2$

That’s a lot of hours of good gameplay that has endured over time!

My respect goes out to Interplay and Codemasters … Now just get the Monkey Island and UFO : Enemy Unknown series up there :)

Greedy Business ™ – The Alternative to “Three strikes and you are out!”

Posted by DarkJedi – August 9, 2008

The French are heading the wrong way, the English have already went down the path… many are soon to follow. The path is one let by the Greedy Business ™, consisting primarily of the music industry, led by the Big Four, and the movie industry and their mafia-sides, the RIAA and the MPAA. The path is one, where a household is denied access or have highly reduced access to a resource that the entire world is dependent upon: The Internet. This lifeline to the outside world, which is essential for todays life on terms of work, information search, social access and exhange with the public sector, is being threatened… And for what?

The music industry earns billions upon billions every year – even though they haven’t adapted or at least their business model in more than 60 years. Imagine that in any other industry? Imagine if the hardware producers had done the same. Rejected the Internet outside their control completely. None of their goods were to be sold outside a physical store in their complete control. They would have surely died. Imagine if the authors had sued Amazon out this world for selling tons of their books online and tried to disable the internet because they found a book online that had been made illegally available? Such thoughts are today unimaginable and still the Greedy Business ™ tries to do this. The ridiculous thing about their attempt is that politicians listen to this.

Lets make one thing perfectly clear: I’m against illegal copying of copyrighted or otherwise protected work… but I am not against copying, information freedom, technology advances. File copying is not automatically illegal downloading. Torrents does not equal illegal download, but an excellent technology that could be used in many different contexts. The Internet is way past the hour where we can just start to disable people’s access to it. It is simply a human right. Why do I say that? Well, as long as the Greedy Business ™ sees nothing on the Internet but illegal copies everyone agrees that it isn’t beneficial to keep. However, in the same moment we call out for the “Three strikes and you are out” adaption we also critize China for not allowing its people free access to information through the Internet. Perhaps soon China will come out saying that they are just regulating against illegal copying and everything will be allright then?

The main problem facing the Greedy Business ™ is that they are no longer functioning as a free market, where the forces of the market regulates. If it had been the case then one or more of the Big Four would have adapted to the Internet more than a decade ago and perhaps even sooner than that – offering people an alternative they were clearly asking for. Take a look at how many portable media devices being sold every year. Then try to go out and find a service that can offer them the media they want, regardless of the platform they have at home (Windows, Linux, Mac)? There are none! Then take a look at what the Greedy Business ™ does offer (after being forced to try something)… Complicated stores, filled with forms that needs to be filled out, again and again, slow download times, extremely low bitrates and quality, DRM, DRM and DRM… and for the same price as you can buy the physical alternative! Don’t try to explain those prices! They simply has nothing to do with the cost of production – as it would in a working market.

If you started to see where all the money goes inside the music industry you would be appalled – and they know this. How come a CD costs the same as a DVD? You cannot try tell me that the price of production is the same for making 12 small tracks of music compared to a large Hollywood blockbuster involving several major stars and thousands of people involved. Then comes the price of a downloadable version of an album cost the same – and should I be so stupid that I wanted to pay for a tune for my mobile phone the price would be one fifth of the entire album. Don’t tell me that it is representing the true cost in any way. It represents that too many people needs to earn too much money inside this great pyramid where the musician sits at the bottom… An entire industry build up of managers and lawyers that imagine a world that cannot live without their product and therefore keep claiming that they must be loosing money to illegal downloads because every person on Earth doesn’t buy a CD every month, like they did in the 80′ies. Could they only offer some real proof of this, instead of the lying, bullshitting statistics they publish now and then, which are always shot down immediately as being at least of factor of 3 over the top or outright lies…

Instead of focusing on making music they are now spending their time on two things: suing their customers for illegal downloading without proper evidence and spreading lies about technology they do not understand themselves.

The conclusion is simply, if you think of it. Technology doesn’t stand still – people sometimes do, however. What we have is a disfunctional industry that needs to die and be reborn immediately. Instead of trying to disable people’s access to the Internet we should instead disable the Internet access for the Greedy Business ™. This would solve all the problems. They don’t need the real world to make their statistics anyway. Then when they have come up with something that acutally moves technology and the Internet forward, instead of back into the Dark Ages, they should be allowed back on. Now, all I need is a politician that wants to listen to the people and reason, instead of listening to the money of the Greedy Business ™.

Greedy Business ™ : Throwing bad numbers around

Posted by DarkJedi – April 27, 2008

When the music CEO’s are lining up to claim that “The times are changing” they are all wrong. The times has already changed, the entire eco-system around the music and movie industry is already in the new times and has been for a long while. The new generation are frantically leaving the old format in the dust, choosing instead the digital alternative and this development is going fast. Meanwhile the Greedy Business ™ is still acting like we were in the times of old, fighting to put one non-userfriendly DRM out after the other – everyone of them broken before ever entering the market… This attempt to control their customer and the customer’s needs and uses are failing miserably and often ends up in publicity scandals that can never be amended after the fiasco has gone public, like the example of Apple’s latest Quicktime DRM that ended up ruining your entire system, while trying to lock you into a single vendor. Just imagine for a second that any other industry tried to lock a consumer into a single vendor? They would be judged by the court and forced out of the free market immediately!

After a decade of darkness in the minds of the Greedy Business ™ ’s CEOs they finally started to realize that calling your customers pirates, suing your customers while at the same time locking their systems full of DRM might not be the best way to win their hearts. Then Apple along with EMI launched DRM-free MP3 music on iTunes and suddenly Amazon followed with the two more of the Big Greedy Four. All that was left was Sony, who still couldn’t believe why the others would ever want to abandon DRM. After pressure when every blog and newssite on the planet had written about the DRM-free campaign from the other three Sony decided to make their own “DRM-free” option. However, true to Sony’s way of handling their customers it was an extremely poor and difficult way to implement DRM-free, which forced you into a physical store, thereby removing half the incentative. Why would Sony ever want to implement it in such a horrible way? The answer is simple: It is the only way to “prove” that DRM-free doesn’t work. If their silly “DRM-free” attempt was a fiasco they could go out and claim that people didn’t want DRM-free and that the Big Greedy Four should go back to DRM – ensuring Sony a good deal in royalties for their tons of non-functional DRM-schemes.

The main problem the Greedy Business ™ is now left with is their legacy from this decade of DRM and customer-hating. Many analysts predicts that DRM especially will haunt the Greedy Business ™ for a long time. Meanwhile the Greedy Business ™ continues to sue its customers, however meeting a lot more resistance now! The problem with companies like RIAA/MPAA is that their only interest is to make the customers of the company that pay them look criminal – how did anyone ever expect a business model like that to work? EMI has already seen the problem in this constellation and are asking RIAA what it is getting for its annual 250 million dollars, while being prepared to leave the RIAA should their response not fit the bill! RIAA is in dire straits already for showing sides that the music industry shouldn’t like too much. RIAA itself is for some reason not ready to pay artists anything even though they claim to this in their behalf – nor do they ever expect to do this… Why should anyone pay them then? Why not pay directly to the artist that has been exposed to piracy? At the same time they are eager to stay in control in their role as gate keepers and constantly battles individual and independent artists to keep them and the Big Greedy Four in control of the entire music industry, which is also something that would never be allowed in any real free market. Their public announcement often creates hate among music customers and clearly shows that they haven’t got the slightest basic understanding of how a free market should work or what their customers want – or even what they are actually doing!

What is more of a problem is the fact that these “organizations” react so differently which has become painfully obvious in the many lawsuits against college students in America these recent years. The approaches and understandings of RIAA, MPAA and the TV-series are so different you wouldn’t think they even know what they really want – apart from more money. When their lawsuits hits prime news sites like Businessweek with a story of a poor mother who is innocent and who fights back against the Evil Empire ™ of RIAA and the cursed music industry it is a PR nightmare from day one. Of course with their lawsuit approach they are sure to create hate towards the entire industry from the next-generation consumers, which shows their understanding of business. How could the CEOs of the industry miss this? They are once again left with a PR nightmare, which they leave to their owners to clean up, while they still claim their annual wages for ruining the future market for their owners.

If they instead started to look at statistics – instead of “inventing” them – they might see that pirates sometimes actually help companies sell more products… A concept no CEO in the Greedy Business ™ would ever come to understand with their 1980′ies way of thinking. They haven’t even reached Web 1.0, while the rest of the world is ready to leave Web 2.0 and go forth.

What strikes me as particularly inconsistent is how RIAA for example handles its money. They claim to be doing this on behalf of the artists, who pay them quite handsomely to do this horrid job. On the other hand RIAA wants to use a method of pay themselves they refused to the webcasters, while at the same time doesn’t actually go out and support the song writers who is claimed to be their first priority. The RIAA is suppose to be the best lawyers the Big Greedy Four can get, but why are their methods then called into serious question? The same methods are called into question when it comes to the BSA, who are actually forcing companies to turn away from the software-producers who pay the BSA and turn to open source solutions – loosing them for the long run! A company like MediaSentry also quickly removes the earlier proof that they were using illegal methods from their homepage showing that all these companies are breaking the law to “uphold” what they consider to be a righteous cause! All in all these companies are no better than the mafia – and until the Greedy Business ™ understands that they customers will continue to hate them – continuing this PR nightmare!
These days are interesting days. Especially when a hacker found his way into the Media Defenders company and proved that companies like RIAA knows that their actions have zero effect on piracy. This is interesting as it proves that the RIAA isn’t actually working on the side of its employer, but rather is trying to stack up money for themselves while laying to their employer. And what would the BSA do when they see companies like Sony caught pirating software themselves? Sony are refusing to make amends, even though they have forced thousands to do this in a similar situation. How come they only respect copyrights and patents when it helps their own cause?

What are they even doing in the courts? The obvious have absolutely no sense of how to act as a lawyer or how to prove their desperate cases, clearly proven when the RIAA “expert” witness was deemed “borderline incompetent” by real experts in the courtroom, while all their “proving” techniques was called into serious question as well… Why do the Greedy Business ™ hire these guys and pay them so much money for being incompetent? They expect nothing in return, do no real statistics or analysis and still expect customers to buy from them after being sued!

When they cannot win in the markets or in the courtrooms what do they do then? Well the obvious answer if you lived in the 1940′ies Germany or in China today would be to secure a law that indoctrinates the next generation about their view and their view ONLY on file-sharing – ignoring all technological progress made the last two decades all together at the same time. Thank god I live in the real world … and not a country where a new law can make it possible to demand 1,5 million dollars per copied CD – even though no physical pierce has yet to be stolen and all evidence can be falsified digitally! Naturally such a law is made while a large company like Wal-Markt goes out saying that they will no longer accept the far too high prices on CDs as they are experiencing that neither will the customer! Of course a good CEO would know such a thing – if they didn’t read the statistics of companies like MPAA, which are at least a factor of 3 exaggerated and so are those from the college piracy numbers, which they have already admitted!

The grotesque part in this is that even though they are lying wildly and they admits it the CEO’s do nothing. They do not act on this, like a normal CEO would – and therefore they are lost in the digital race completely! The companies are offering no real alternative to piracy. Even the dumbest CEO should know his numbers so well that when he sees that the two biggest piracy nations of the world, China and Russia, bring down their piracy numbers and it doesn’t affect the CD or DVD sales, which continues to fall that this is not a major contributing factor! What a good CEO would do then is to find the REAL contributing factor – instead of relying on statistics that has already been proven false from day one! An industry led by so poor leadership is doomed to fail – and they will… sooner than those poor CEOs will ever realize!