SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/250660
Better Legal Alternatives Undercutting Online Piracy by Jason Murphy I n a case of life imitating art, The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrmann's Moët-soaked depiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald's famed 1920s novel about presumed bootlegger Jay Gatsby, was one of the most pirated films of 2013. And like Gatsby, a dark, though less tragic, fate has befallen Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, founder of file-sharing hub The Pirate Bay, who as of early January was under lock and key, awaiting trial in Denmark on charges of hacking into government databases and accessing millions of personal identification numbers. Yet despite prosecution of a key figure like Svartholm, it is not tough enforcement that can claim the biggest recent victory against online piracy. In late 2013, broadband service company Sandvine released "The Global Internet Phenomena" study which reported a major change in Internet user behavior. Netflix, a legal service, was the major source of downloads in the United States, far ahead of BitTorrent - the protocol most used for file sharing, with BitTorrent's share of traffic down from 60 percent to 10 percent over the past 10 years. Does this mean that illegal file sharing is actually on the way out, or is this merely a blip and the media industry, like Gatsby, is still in thrall to a past that can't be recaptured? The best evidence that Netflix is effectively combating piracy may be in markets it has yet to enter. Despite having a tenth of the population of the United States, Australia accounted for the most illegal downloads of the finale of Breaking Bad (18 percent according to piracy website TorrentFreak). Australians' taste for U.S. television series was so strong that the U.S. Ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich, begged them to stop illegal downloading. "Stealing is stealing," he said in a public Facebook post in 2013. One confessed Australian downloader said he pays for cinema tickets but has no compunction about taking popular TV series. "I feel a quality show generating enough interest can find other ways to make money," says Daniel Cross (not his real name). Yet Cross admits that he would consider Netflix if it came to Australia. "I would be interested ... but only if it provided a similar service for a similar fee as the U.S." This poses the simple question: is piracy just due to not making product available at a fair price? Washington Post blogger Tim Lee thinks "Hollywood should blame itself for its piracy problems." He tweeted as much, sparking a vitriolic debate among insiders. Though music streaming service Spotify boasts that it beats piracy, Netflix does not think of itself like that, at least not officially. "We do believe that if offered an affordable, easy to use, high quality alternative, consumers will opt to go that route as opposed to illegal downloading," says Joris Evers, Netflix's Director of Global Corporate Communication. Is he right? The numbers say yes. Netflix has grown from fewer than 30 million users to more than 40 million users in a year, and its total revenue rose by over $1 billion in 2013. Spotify is also booming. "Millions of people are paying for music again who may not have done so for years," says Spotify Artist & 24 SXSWORLD / FEBRUARY 2014 Label Relations Manager, Rene Chambers. Artists can make up to $400,000 for a "global hit album" on Spotify, Chambers claims. But some artists are skeptical that the 0.6 cents they are promised every time a song is streamed will amount to enough. Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich has denied Spotify the right to distribute some albums he has been involved with. "[N]ew artists get paid fuck all with this model. It's an equation that just doesn't work," he tweeted in July 2013. While artists and distributors fight over the spoils, there remains a lasting culture of Internet pirates. On a Last.fm forum, user "evilpoptart" captured that ethos with the following: "I can't think of one thing on my comp[uter] I payed (sic) for, and yes, I am proud of it." But pirates may not be as different as they think. Netflix tracks what is most popular for illegal download as input when deciding what shows to buy. And the peer-to-peer file sharing model might yet be the best way to distribute content. Yet, the company that created the BitTorrent protocol warns that Netflix could be a victim of its own success. "Either there is going to be a huge investment in bandwidth, and that's an expensive investment ... or a BitTorrent type solution," says BitTorrent head of communications, Christian Averill. Sharing files between "peers" is faster than downloading from a central server. The advent of 4K files – four times the size of HD – makes this issue urgent. The solution BitTorrent is developing places a "gate" inside the shareable file. "It can be a pay gate, or a pay-what-you-want gate, or … a Kickstarter model where if so many people donate x amount of money they will release the next episode," says Averill. "Instead of us creating another content store … we put the store inside the content." While Netflix and Spotify are celebrating their recent success, Pirate Bay is launching a new, legal Internet browser that it claims will remove any "central point to attack via the legal system." Sounds like pirates might be finding ways to go straight. n