Why I don't rent movies

Three associations of rental movies stores, one Portuguese, one Spanish and one French, joined efforts and created an "anti-piracy civil movement". While I could argue that "civil" is a bad word to describe such movement, this wouldn't catch my eye for long, but it did, since they created that movement for the purpose of getting the Telecoms Package to be approved by the EU Council without the emend 138 (that states that whatever the Package says, personal rights should not be trumped over), and they actually managed to get what they wanted. Anyway, when confronted about how bad for European citizens it would be if the amend was dropped, they failed to justify why they don't like it, and instead mumbled over and over about piracy piracy financial losses piracy piracy piracy... I tried, for three days, to get them talking about 138, and why they don't want that, but instead of getting a justification, I've heard tons of things about piracy and how bad their business was.

During the discussion, and because they felt that I must be pro-piracy (which I actually am not) because I don't agree with them, they tried to confront me by asking a curious thing: what was the last time I rented a movie?

Now, more sober from the discussion, I started to think more about that question. There are lot's of people that never really were into renting movies, but that's not my case. My reply was something like "for years", but now, thinking more about it, I can say with some certainty that the last movie I rent was more or less four years ago. Why?

Well, I lived in Lamego in my youth, and there I never was really into renting movies. The offer there was poor (and last time I checked it was even worse), so there was really no point in spending money and rent a movie when I could spend the less drinking beer, hanging out, or even acting like a potato couch and seeing silly TV shows. When I moved to Coimbra all was different. Specially in my first years there, I was quite addicted in cultural stuff: almost every day I had a concert to see, a theatre play to attend, and exposition to watch, a movie to see. I spent lots of money in one of the cinema's there, where I usually watched all the movies that were shown in that venue. Also, I used to attend to every thing that was going on the Academic Theatre (TAGV): mainly movies, plays or concerts. And I also started renting movies, specially when with friends: we would get a couple of movies, crash in someone's house, and do a "movie party". Life started getting busier and busier, but it wasn't uncommon to see me browsing in Tintarella's shelves, since that particular movies rental store had a quite nice stock of recent and good alternative movies, European cinema and science fiction, and a catchy section with weekly highlights. In my latest years in Coimbra, sometimes I was found in the middle of the night with a couple of friends on the multimedia room of one University department, watching a just-rented movie.

Then I came to the big city of Lisbon, and I never rented a movie again. Do you think it is my fault? First I lived in Carnaxide, now I really live in Lisbon. I know where a/the movies rental store in Carnaxide is: I went there exactly three times, sold there used CDs, bought there one second-hand CD, and their movies selection was... unattractive. I live in "real Lisbon" for almost three years now. And I never saw a movies rental shop.

Now, do you really think that it is my fault that I never rented a movie anymore? Is it caused by piracy? No way. I don't rent movies because I don't have the habit of doing so, I don't know any rental store and I don't feel any urge of finding one. If you take into account that I used to be a client of that kind of stores, their "industry" lost a client. They did not know how to keep me. They failed as business people. They did a bad job. They are doing a bad job. They can throw rocks to piracy, freedom, rights, or anything they like. They might even get the chance to implement any laws and regulations they dream of. They will never have a successful business until they realise and admit their flaws and mistakes. Hurting people is not a way of making them your clients. Slowly, really slowly, the music industry is starting to learn their lesson. Movies rental businesses should too.

The future of the music business

Take notice that this post talks about the future of the music business, and not of the music industry. History shows us that when companies are quickly falling, and those who constitute the actual music industry are, are quite imprevisible: it's a matter of when do they wake up. On the other hand it's pretty hard do conceive that in the next few years we'll stop having a music business...

I've been reading a lot of studies and reports lately about the music business, including the music industry in general or some of its companies in particular. At the same time, I've been discussing some of this matters in several communities and with several individuals. With that, I've formed a simplistic idea of what do people "feel" about this matter, and what researchers have to say about it.

Starting with the end

The overall music business (amount of profit per year) is going to decrease year after year at least until 2012.

Digital sales and Emergent business models

Digital sales will increase year after year, at least until 2012. By that time, digital sales aren't still bigger than the other ways of profit.

Revenue coming from emergent business models, like ring tones, ad-profits, subscription services and such, is going to increase, but it's total will still be irrelevant.

Compact Disc's, DVD's, Vinyl and Compact Cassette

CD and DVD sales will keep falling vertiginously, and that is going to be the cause for the overall decrease of profit (as it is right now), at least until 2012. Probably the fall of CD sales will keep further than that.

The Vinyl market is re-emerging, and will keep doing so, but in three or four years it will start to slow down and stagnate. This is a format that will not dye in the next couple of decades, and it is expected to survive longer than the Compact Disc.

The Compact Cassette survives for so long for a various amount of reasons. It's presence in every car player for so many years was probably the biggest longevity kick it had, and when audio books started the Compact Cassette was the best format since would give you more talk-time for less money. While some niche groups exist, the format is slowly falling and it will eventually dye. It will probably be sooner than the Compact Disc, but not so soon as the majority of people think: it is declining but slowly, and the latest trends slowed down even more that tendency.

Gigs, merch, the rest

Last but not least, gigs and related stuff is commonly seen as the "salvation" for this trends. It might be, in a more distant future, but the predictions tell us that the profits that they generate will maintain themselves, at least in the next five years

Piracy

Most people download music illegally, but at the same time most people think it is fundamentally wrong. Another wing says that a digital copy has no costs, so there's nothing immoral about doing such thing. But for the soon-to-be future, or at least until there isn't a collective position regarding it, what matters is that piracy is here and it's something that will not stop. So, more important than thinking about "right" or "wrong", let's take a look about the repercussions. Most people are convinced that piracy is the reason why the music business being less profitable day by day, probably induced by all the lies the general population has been consuming lately from the music industry. One other sign of that is that many people believe that "digital piracy" is theft, even if that's illogical if you see the definition of theft (I've wrote about this in the past).

What studies tells us is that the goal of measuring if the impact of piracy in the music business is positive or negative has never been reached. In its process, these sub-conclusions:

• piracy is directly related to music consumption, and in many cases piracy boosts music sales


• until now, no one managed to establish a relation between piracy and the decrease of sales

Good or bad? It really doesn't matter - even if its impact is proven to help the decrease of sales, it will never be in the order of magnitude of the decrease we're seeing in the last couple of years.

Stop!

What does this mean? Is the music business doomed? No!!!! Who should I blame? What can I do?

The funny part now: this doesn't mean really anything. As in any market, the music business has been inflated by the music industry for a long number of years, so it is now naturally deflating. The fall is aggravated by the fact that the music industry itself never knew how to adapt themselves, basicly living in their comfortable model and ignoring any other tendency. What happens to businesses that don't innovate? But you don't stand being a watcher? You feel the urge to help fix this whole mess? There aren't much choices but two things that can be done: first, buy music, buy a lot of music. Secondly, help define the new music industry, the new business models. Support the "good labels". Boycott the "bad labels". Act as people do in any aggressive market. This is an aggressive market, so if you want to influence it, don't be passive, be active.

The "Music Industry" does it again

It never ends, the tactics are old but they keep using them - oddly enough they keep working next to politicians.

The sales of music in Portugal fell 40% in the first semester of 2011, comparing to the same period of 2010, according to the Portuguese Phonographic Association (AFP).[1]

They attribute this fall to so-called "piracy" (the unauthorized copy of copyrighted material), failing to explain how to they infer the correlation, and ignoring the studies that suggest exactly the opposite. Worse: still according to them, "this is the hugest fall in a total of 50 different markets in the world", and those include countries with both a bigger and a smaller piracy rate, suggesting that actually there's no relation at all.

But why do they want to suggest such a relationship? Well, AFP requested a meeting with the Culture State Secretary, where they intend to ask the Government to introduce a gradual response law[2] in order to "stop piracy". Such a law would make people considered guilt without the right to a fair trial, take the right to privacy to every citizen, make people pay for a (private) service they can't use, and take off Internet access to an whole family because one of its members was simply accused of doing "piracy" (all together ignoring the fact that Europe is opposed to such kind of laws[3]).

Also interesting to see is that AFP doesn't really care that much into actually doing what they can - without any law changes - to reduce piracy: take for instance into consideration the research[4] that concludes that dumping DRM has both the effect of increasing sales and of reducing piracy, and compare it with the pro-DRM stance they have.

All in all, and to sum up, the answer politicians must give to this kinds of tactics of requests is really simple. AFP's Eduardo Simões stated that piracy destroys the income of musicians, authors, artists and record producers. The answer to such an allegation can only be: "Where's proof?"

[1] http://blitz.aeiou.pt/=f77109

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduated_response

[3] http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number6.17/3strikes-opposed-isoc-europe

[4] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/a-game-we-all-win-dumping-drm-can-increase-sales-while-reducing-piracy.ars

The Impact of Illegal Downloads On Total Sales

One frequent rant of mine is the fact that there's no credible study about the impact of "illegal downloads" (not my wording) on total sales, and that, yet, there are lots of policies being made based on plain wrong "studies".

Lately, many things are happening (including arguments behind the approval of the Gallo Report) around Tera Consultants' "Study on the impacts of digital piracy on the EU's creative industries" (March 2010). If we carefully read the report (yes, reading more than just the abstract), thou, we find lots of interesting things. For instance, the fact that the study didn't research the "impact of illegal downloads on total sales", but, instead, decided to have a non-scientific approach to find some kinds of "average values" from the eight "relevant studies" on the issue. Well, in fact, they used the summary from those eight relevant studies presented on Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf (2009 - a working draft). And here, I have a couple of things to highlight:

1) Instead of using Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf latest release paper, they decided to use a working draft;
2) Instead of using Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf conclusions (that can be summed up as "file sharing can be blamed for part of recorded music revenue declines, [but] that hasn’t eliminated artists’ incentive to create and consumers have benefited from increased choice"), they decided to use only a decontextualized table from that report;
3) Many flaws were pointed to the Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf research, but let me talk about one: while in their 2005 paper, where they found no negative impact of illegal downloads on total sales, they used their own data, in this new paper - guess what - they used the same as Tera Consultants: a non-scientific approach to find some kinds of "average values" from the eight "relevant studies" on the issue.

So, let's look to those eight "relevant studies":

• Hui and Png (2003) - If you actually read the article you see that the authors acknowledge that:
  
  • their data is completely dependent of the piracy numbers provided by the IFPI (mind you, the most interested party)
  • they acknowledge that they ignored the need to research the demand-side externalities positive impact of piracy on sales (as proven to be needed in Conner and Rumelt (1991); Nascimento and Vanhonacker (1988); Shy and Thisse (1999); Takeyama (1994))
  • in the same way, they didn't estimate the positive impact of piracy on sales thanks to means of more effective price discrimination (as proven to be needed in Bakos et al. 1999; Besen and Kirby 1989; Jacob and Ben-Shahar 2002; Liebowitz 1985; Takeyama 1997; Varian 2000)
  • Last, and yet the most important (in my opinion), their study only analyses data until 1998 (that's right, 12 years ago!), and they highlight that this is all data "before Napster" (dare I say, now, "before p2p", "before torrents", "before pirate bay", "before web 2.0", "before social music services", ...), and that's a really important behavioural shift, that probably changed all the ecosystem of illegal downloads and their impact on total sales
  In other words, this study should not be considered;
• Peitz and Waelbroeck (2003, 2004)
  
  • they use as data source the IFPI World Report of 2003 that provides industry data from 1998 to 2002. As pointed before, IFPI is the most interested party in influencing the results, so the validity can be argued;
  • they assume, because they don't know how to estimate, that the quality of music (which englobes que quality of the music release - compare, for instance, a signed limited edtion 12'' 2LP with the album in DRM-encumbered 128K digital file...) has no influence in buying habits (assuming, thus, that the number of people who use "piracy" to "try before buy" is zero, which is obviously wrong - simply ask your friends);
  • they assume that each "act of piracy" is equivalent to the loss of a CD sale (which is obviously wrong), and then...
  • they assume that you can do a direct correlation between the rise of usage of p2p networks and the fall in music sales, just because they saw a bigger fall in sales at the same time they saw a fall in music sales
  • They state that with broadband, non-piracy times can be spent doing a number of "replacement activities" other then enjoying music, and so people have less time - thus attention - to the music market. Yet, they fail to try to correlate attention-shift with loss of sales
  • In the "Discussion" section, they point out several flaws on their model (like the fact that they don't measure "intensity" in piracy activities, or that they aren't considering the non-renewal factor (the industry failed - at least until 2004, where the study focus - to keep their renewal cycle, when people were buying the same album in a different format, cassette replacing the vinyl record, CD replacing the cassette or vinyl, we just weren't seeing people buying the album in a DRM-encumbered digital format after having it on CD or a "previous" format) as a cause of loss of sales). Yet, they decide to ignore those observations on their conclusion...
  In other words, this study should not be considered;
• Zentner (2006) - Now, this is actually an interesting study, it just isn't a good study to taking a conclusion on our particular issue. In fact, as the origin dataset did neither contain information on quantities of music purchased nor on intensities of music downloads, he assumed that it was not directly possible to calculate the impact on record sales, and thus, for that specific part, he decided to assume things (and that's stated quite obviously on the article): "if 15 percent of the population downloads music, if downloaders are twice as likely to buy music than nondownloaders, and if – conditional on buying – downloaders and nondownloaders buy the same quantity of units". Notice that he didn't get inspiration for this assumptions in any study at all.
• Michel (2006)
  
  • The author states that "a possible problem with this approach is that computer owners who did not engage in file sharing may have decreased their music purchases for reasons unrelated to file sharing (yet inherent to owning a computer)", which is not considered in this study. As stated previously, it is fair to assume that there is an (unaccounted) percentage of non-sales directly related to this fact;
  • An analysis in this study's "Table 1" suggests that trends and influences greatly vary year by year, possibly in a two-years basis. This is actually why the researcher has data from 1995 until 2003, and yet can only assume a relation between file sharing and CD sales in 2002-2003. Also, in "Table 4" analysis, the author concludes that "the relationship between computer ownership and CD expenditures [, the only relationship being studied in this paper,] weakened from 1998 to 2003. In III.B), the author identifies other four reasons why this paper might not be valid, but the really important thing to quote is in the conclusions section, when the author state, above all, that "results should be used carefully when predicting the long-term viability of the music industry in an environment where record labels (or artists) compete directly with free file-sharing services". While it is arguable what the author means with "long-term", with the previous data we can assume that a) we can identify 2 year cycles, b) in 5 years the relationship weakened, so, if that trend is maintained (which is arguable, but wasn't in Mars' report) nowadays, 7 years later, the relationship might be completely dissipated, so...
  ...taking the previous items in consideration, it is fair conclude from the article data itself that this study can't be considered valid nowadays;
• Montoro-Pons and Cuadrado-Garcia (2006) - This study doesn't appear anymore in the table in the final version of Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf's paper;
• Hong (2004, 2008) - This study was centred only and exclusively on the impact of Napster in 2000. As stated before, and shown by the other papers, we can't infer the current correlation between "piracy" and music sales from some event that happened a decade ago;
• Leibowitz (2008) - the conclusion of this paper, and on Oberholzer-Gee & Strumpf's paper, is quite different from what's presented by Mars' study: in fact it concludes that if we consider all markets (where the universe was 89 different US markets), we cannot relate internet usage with changes in music sales;
• Leung (2009) - This is a nice study made by using data from college students of seven different undergraduate classes (from the tone of the paper, I'm assuming this is on USA, but I'm not sure). We're talking about heavy music consumers with no money (they buy four or five digital tracks per month, and one CD every two months). The study implicitly also shows, while it's not its focus, that those students would buy more if they had more money (or if the cost of CDs, iTunes tracks and iPods was less than it is). So, I'll argue that this is a nice study but only representative of a small subset of the global "pirate" reality, specially different from the EU reality, where we have differences like the fact that more than 40% of our countries don't have access to the iTunes music store. Actually, I can go ever further, and tell you my belief (no, I don't have any study showing I'm right or wrong, that's the real issue on this blog post...) that, since you can see that this college students consume nowadays much more music than others (for instance, people with 15 more years than them, even if those others have a lot more money) that it was the setting in which they live - including the cultural influences made by the existence of "digital piracy" - that made them such music fans, and when they grow to have more money, they will be better consumers than they are nowadays. In other words, this is a nice study, but one that only proves that there are lots of dimensions to the problem which need to be researched until we can take any scientific conclusion regarding the impact of piracy in music sales.

So, what I have to say about Tera Consultants' study, and everything else that uses it as a base to take a conclusion or decision? Only that I'm really ashamed, as an European citizen, that we pay blind attention to any study, specially studies commissioned by entities like ICC, whose body of members include three of the four major labels.

Police shuts down Portuguese Trackers

This blog post talks about the news that the Portuguese Police shut down three Portuguese BitTorrent trackers. The whole issue arised many coments in the media and in the blogosphere. All my comments in this post are based on the press releases from four entities, PJ, FEVIP, ASAE and AFP, and the statements they've been giving about this issue (that I had access to, not everything). Also, I'm afraid I'm not using the correct English legal terms in some cases - sorry. Also, I'm not saying here that I approve the actions of those behind the websites and trackers that were shut down. What I am saying is that I abhor disinformation, specially at this level.

The press releases

FEVIP tells that there were two crime claims that led the Police to start this process, one from AFP with FEVIP, and other from FEVIP only. That led PJ and ASAE to start at the 24th of July a fiscal operation on illegal share of music, movies and games via Internet, using six search warrants.

Discrepancies start. According to the Police, the operation was a "fight against Piracy", and they then define Piracy as the reproduction of content that is protected by Authorship Rights via Internet. For that, they claim, they used human and logistic resources, including "digital proof supports", whatever that is (I really wonder what they mean with that). They say that they did this operation to reply to two enquiries (and not crime claims as FEVIP tells about). ASAE's press release complies with Police's, including their definition of "digital piracy".

FEVIP tells us that the operation stopped the illegal sharing of contents using P2P programs and websites, such as www.btuga.pt, www.zetuga.com and www.zemula.org, that were being used by more or less 200.000 users to swap material protected by authorship rights without consent.

The Police talks about a program named P2P (which I don't know of, I only know P2P technology), and also talks about more or less 200.000 users swapping material protected by authorship rights without consent.

ASAE goes further, and talking about the illegal sharing of "the contents of the program P2P", and about the more or less 200.000 users swapping material protected by authorship rights without consent.

FEVIP then talks about a protocol named "Bit Torrent". Goes on saying that Btuga.pt was developing for a long time a service for illegal sharing of files (I would love to see evidence on that).

The Police press release says that they apprehended servers, computers, DVD's, CD's, hard drives and documentation, and then saying that they made a high value apprehension that will change the act of reproducing and swapping content protected by authorship rights. They end asking parents to be alert on their children's usage of the Internet, even if inciting values is something that is really out of their action scope. Investigation follows.

Facts

A lot more could be said about this press releases, but let's stop with that. Here are some facts, for a change:

1) You should ignore almost everything about the media is saying about the case. The piece in the "SIC" TV channel is one great example - don't believe in a single word of what they said.

2) All this case isn't about "sharing illegal content". If the content was illegal, there would be no Copyright laws to be applied about. There's an huge difference between "sharing illegal content" and "illegally sharing content".

3) From the statements given from the three entities involved in this case, there's nothing about "illegally sharing content".

4) There's nothing illegal in the concept of a BitTorrent tracker, as proven in similar cases in other European countries. A BitTorrent tracker provides a number of .torrent files, and those files aren't copyrighted in any way. That being, there's nothing illegal in providing .torrent files, and since a BitTorrent tracker is just something that provides .torrent files, a BitTorrent tracker is not illegal.

5) The press releases talk about the apprehension of copies of copyrighted content (in CD's, DVD's and hard disks). If they can prove that those aren't private copies (please see the concept of private copies in the Portuguese law), then they might have a case.

6) It seems that some of those websites, besides being trackers, were selling software (clients for their trackers). That activity might have been illegal (just speculation here, mind you), but that activity is not directly related with operating a BitTorrent tracker.

7) Some people speculate that BTuga's software was a fork from Azureus. If that's proven to be truth, then that software was illegal because Azureus is based on a GPL license, and BTuga was selling closed-source binaries of the client, which would be in clear violation of the GPL license. Note that I don't know if the client was or not based on Azureus, and since I don't have a copy of the client I can't get that straight. If you can help me on this one, I would be thankful.

8) Illegal or not, if I was one of the persons behind the shut down trackers, I would be preparing myself right now to sue a hell lot of entities for defamation.

9) We have to assume that the Police press release is wrong, and if it is the case it would be good to have it corrected. There they consider "piracy" as "the reproduction of content that is protected by Authorship Rights via Internet". If that's the case, than piracy is not illegal, since the reproduction of content that is protected by Authorship Rights via Internet is not illegal. It that's to be right, then I would like to know why isn't the Police doing an operation to "fight piracy", since that would be "fighting something legal", which obviously is way beyond the scope of the Police.

10) In P2P trackers you don't swap, you share.

11) In the Internet, you don't have transition of materials, you have transmission of content.

12) You don't need explicit consent to get most of the copyrighted content (see more on the Portuguese law on this).

Since the Police says that the investigation ensues, I'm just waiting for the next set of press releases, and hoping that, in there, the story is set straight. Yet, there is lot's of stuff to talk about this issue, so I might come be back on this issue sooner than that.

Bazaar Blanket - Blanket Licenses done right

Bazaar Blanket, a term I've just invented, is my intention to (re)define blanket licenses in a way that they might in fact work. For that matter I'm going to try to explain the concept of blanket licenses, what are the flaws of that licenses, and how could they work.

We're, fortunately, starting to hear about "Blanket Licenses" more and more, specially related to the music world. This is a concept that appeared as a way to redifine copyright and its issues. As you surelly know piracy is growing more and more, and while we're allways listining that "piracy is bad", "piracy is wrong", there are two statistics that should not be ignored: for one people are listening to more and more varied music, and seem to be more interested in music and art in general; on the other hand most people who practice any form of that so-called "piracy" don't consider or feel that they are doing something wrong, even if they know that they're doing something that society says it is wrong. So, copyright might be outdated (I believe it is, and I may talk about that later, but that's not the point of this article). But do we really need copyright? Some people thought that, while the concepts behind copyright might be good (I say might because you have to believe that copyright is aimed to give financial and moral retribution to artists) they also think that the actual scenario is wrong, with big corporations get the big stake of the profits and the control of the art without being really involved in the process, while artists win nothing but exposure with the deal, and consumers are treated as criminals (and these are really the two parts related to the art itself). So, they think that all this mess could be solved with a "blanket license": people pay a fair fixed price per month and have the right to have access to any form of copyright material they want to (legalizing the big bulk of p2p traffic that entities like RIAA or MPAA want to anihilate). Those same people usually point out uniquely one downside of this: its implementation would have to allow the perfect calculation of what content and how many times is being transfered, as a way to pay for the copyright holders for it, and that's difficult.

Now my part: I've allways said that I don't agree with blanket licenses, which amazes many people. Here's why: I don't believe you could implement a fair blanket license.

First, you would have to force people to pay, or they wouldn't. See, I pay my water bill, but if I don't I'll stop having water at home. Now, if you would have water in the pipes anyway, do you really think that people would pay for the water? Notice that we're talking about the same people that many times can buy the music they're downloading in an online shop, but they don't. Of course that you can avoid that and do what some countries, including Portugal, do with physical media: every CD, DVD, hard drive, pen disk or other physical media they remembered of pays a "copyright tax", so everytime you buy a CD-R you're paying a copyright fee, and every time you're buying a CD burner you're also paying a "copyright tax". The problem here is quite obvious: I never burnt on my CD/DVD burner any CD-R or DVD-R with copyrighted material without permission, but still I payed that tax, and I don't like it. So, if you force people to adhere for that blanket license and pay for it, is it really good?

Then, the question of retribution: how can you see which copyright holder gets 100 and which ones gets 10? Thinking that you can implement such scheme is completely ridiculous: that doesn't even work (nor is fair) in radio station licenses, where there's a similar scheme implemented, with the particularity that it is a closed environment (one entity to pay to, one list per month to report to that entity, each licensee needs to give that list). But let's look wider: if RIAA can't stop (and is avidly trying to) piracy, do you think they could do the tracking necessary (basicly the same) to make blanket licenses fair, specially when they're getting their money anyway (so they don't really get any monetary benefict in doing such an effort)?

So, how to fix "blanket licenses" and turn them into something praticable? Welcome to the "Bazaar Blanket". First of all, this is almost a request for comments, this ideas I'm writting aren't really well defined. This is something that must evolve until reaches a state of "full praticability", meaning that it must be in a way that it turns out to being the obvious way to lid with this matter. Also, I know quite well that this is almost "radical", utopic, and I know that the actual copyright industry would never let such thing to be implemented.

Abolish the concept of copyright. Copyright is outdated. Copyright doesn't work. Plus, copyright isn't needed, at all. I'm starting with this so you understand from the start why I say that the copyright industry would never accept this: without copyright there's no copyright industry. But that's exactly the particularity of abolishing copyright that makes that abolition necessary. See, to get the most of art, you need artists that are free to be artists, and you want that anyone, in any case, can get access to art. Societies without art do not evolve (I really should put a reference here, but if you fuss a little you'll find thousands of resarch papers telling you this). Copyright could be defined as the process of putting barriers between the artists and the general public, so, as we don't want barriers, we don't really want copyright. Oh, BTW, abolishing copyright is what I'm really calling "Bazaar blanket", since it solves everything.

Let me explain. The first issue I pointed out to blanket licenses is that people would be force to aquire such licenses. Well, without copyright they don't, no copyright means no need to have a license that lets you have access to the content. The second issue is that artists should get money fairly. Well, paying for the art is a astonishing concept that we're forcing to accept, but I defy someone to really understand and deffend it. See, I understand that artists should get money - I really do, and I want that they can get that money with this Bazaar Blanket, but if you can reproduce something tending to the infinite with a cost tending to none, then the price of the thing you're reproducing tends to none. Damn, I'm listening to an awsome music that I didn't pay nothing for, and I'm not taking nothing to no one while doing so: this CD was bought by a friend that lended it to me, but since there's nothing like "while you're listening to it I can't" (remember, the reproducing cost is virtually none) I'm not priving anyone of anything. So, should music be free? YES! That doesn't mean that artist shouldn't make money. See, there are physical costs with being an artist. For instance, I'm listening to a CD, and while the music in it does not have costs, the CD itself has. As going to a concert has. As a DVD has, as a book has. You don't need copyright to be able to sell stuff if you abolish stuff. Plus, you stop having to worry to who deserves more money. Pick Don and Joe. Don has a musical project, makes some gigs and people dig him, he records some CD's at home and do some nice DIY packaging for them, with some photos and an autograph, he goes to the next retail store with 50 CD's and sells them to the store so the store sells those CD's. He's making money. No copyright - no rules - no laws - he makes money and all this is legal. Jon though "hey, that's easy money!" so he decided to make something simillar but since he doesn't know nothing of music he skips the concerts part, and just into recording a CD. He makes 50 CD's full of, er, grunts and burps and tries to sell them. No one buys, of course. This is the Bazaar Blanket.

Bazaar Blanket - a concept disruptive and caustic, but fair and praticable, more than Copyright. Just so far from the actual reality that most people won't get it. What are your thoughts?

Weird feelings

Two episodes that I lived in the last few days, both while having a meal.

Last week I went to lunch somewhere in Moscavide, in a zone I'm not used to go, because I needed to go nearby to buy a cushion, and so I decided to eat near there after the deal was made. After being there, I soon realized that that place was really full of usuals trying to make money there: from little gipsy girls asking for some change to Cais sellers begging to sell a magazine (or if I could at least give them a few coins, despite "thou shall not beg" being one of their rules). But what astonished me, and soon enough made me unconfortable and disgusted was when a guy entered the place with hundreds of pirate CD's and DVD's to sell. Now, liking underground bands like I do, I've already seen a really fair bunch of poorly-packed demos, but those CD's and DVD's were even worse: bad printing in a folded sheet of bad paper with a cheap CD-r or DVD-r inside of it. Two guys in the table next to mine stared at him and started dealing: each CD costed 2.5€ but they managed to get five for 10€. While choosing the CD-r's the guys at the table were happilly chatting about "how bad piracy is", but that it is "also funny" and that they "like to help those sons of bitches". Their words, not mine. In the meanwhile, the "dealer" (I don't even know how to call this guys...) was patiently waiting, with no signs of fright or hurry - at all. It was like he was selling postcards - and passing a receipt. Unbelievable...

This evening I went to dinner to a simmilar kind of restaurant here in Lisbon, and while I was having dinner, alone, I couldn't help myself but listen to the atrocities the kids in the tables near mine were telling. They all make more money per month than me. Really. They know the underground, who to talk to, and - they said - the Chinese were the biggest buyers. I just can't make my mind on if they were only talking about the CD-r DVD-r business, or also other things... I only know that they all wake up before me and get into bed after, but they also makes a big load of money... at least partially out of piracy - true piracy. When the conversation diverged to their xenophobe bullshit (according to them Chinese people should be deported) I got so sick of listening to all of that that I went off that place.

So, there's really bad piracy to be fight on. It allways had been, but kids nowadays do less drugs and more bad-quality music and movies. What can I say? I just wonder why aren't the law entities fighting them, the real thing, and instead of that I must to bear with a clip full of "downloading is stealing" bullshit when I go to a movie theater, or have to deal with restrictive technologies like DRM, that sometimes stop me from watching the movies I have the right to see.

The Pro-DRM argument

Finaly, after all this long, advocating against DRM, I finaly found out not only one but two Pro-DRM persons. Hey, calm down, I'm not talking about those who don't care, or those who "I would prefer not to have it, but it doesn't pisses me off". I'm not talking about companies that use them "because it's better for US". Even the content industry knows that DRM is bad: let me remind you of a statement from a Disney executive:

'If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it works, we've already failed'

Now, what I found amazing on these two is that they really believe that DRM is good and needed. The arguments that were presented in favour of DRM were, basicly, these:

1. Actual implementations of DRM suck but future ones can be better


2. DRM isn't "copy restriction" technology


3. DRM represents Author's Rights


4. You might be able to buy a DRM-free version, for an extra cost


5. We must have a way to protect authors from piracy


6. Even if there are no perfect systems, DRM is getting better


7. Bad DRM implementations get rejected by users


8. This Internet Era is making piracy to reach really scary levels

OK, take in consideration that these are just some of those arguments, and believe me (or, if you know how to read Portuguese, check for yourself) that all arguements were refuted. For these:

1. "Better" means "less annoying". I don't want to be annoyed, at all


2. That doesn't mean anything, if DRM is an annoying piece of technology


3. DRM does not represents the Author's Rights - laws do. DRM enforces a set of rights and restrictions


4. I don't want to pay extra to get what I should in the first place. DRM takes me some freedoms, and then those who put there the DRM try to sell me those freedoms? No, thanks!


5. As a consumer, I don't have to do nothing. As a consumer, I just don't want to be restricted from my freedoms. As an author, I don't feel vulnerable to piracy, like most authors. Don't call the intermediaries as "authors".


6. Better is not enough. If DRM restricts me, an "almost perfect" DRM restricts me only a tiny bit. So, I'm still being restricted from my rights, just because some companies want DRM. That's no good - my freedom is not for sale.


7. Bad DRM implementations flood the marked, and restrict consumers. I don't care what is their lifetime, if it restricts one person, one time, one little bit, it's bad.


8. Piracy is getting bigger - so what? It's not a consumer problem, so the consumer must not suffer from it. If some companies in the industry have problems with that, well, they have to deal with it. They just can't do that by messing up with consumer's freedoms.

And so the discussion went off, until the veridict came: the final issue. Since the discussion came to an end, and not with a quit but with a conclusion, and since the pro-DRM part is still pro-DRM, and the same for the anti-DRM counterpart, then there must be a conflict of beliefs, right? Right.

The big philosophical argument:

• [Pro-DRM:] Às vezes deve pagar o justo pelo pecador - roughly translated to "sometimes those without sins must pay for the sins of others";
  
• [Anti-DRM:] I don't care about the sins of the others, I don't want to pay with my freedom because of them!
  

Vote on this poll!

2007 so far - movies

Keeping up with my "2007 so far" series, today I'm going to talk about the movies that I've seen so far this year and that I think are worth talking about, and maybe convincing you to see them. It's quite hard to write about movies and books without spoilers, which I refuse to write here, so I'm just giving my relation with each movie. If you get curious about some of the movies, but still not decided to see it, I encourage you to check more info about it on IMDB or such.

On Piracy. I talked about this movie by the time I saw it. This is basicly a movie about what's usually called "Digital Piracy". It shows an imparcial vision, allways talking to both sides on each issue, and focusing on several aspects of Piracy. It is refreshing to see a documentary of this kind, since we're used to see allways the same stuff from the content industry, saying that "piracy is evil and is a form of terrorism", and here we see the real oppinions of both sides, and not only the legal side of the question (what is legal? what is not? what is moral? what is not? what is fair? what is not?) but we also see the cultural issues (Why do people download music? Why does the music industry refuse to reinvent their business model?). To make it even better, this movie is free.

Les glaneurs et la glaneuse is another documentary, but this one reflecting on human nature. Of course, the theme isn't real that one: it's a documentary were we see various examples where people live with what others don't care to see. What is garbage for ones, can be vital for others, or can be used as art (just to give you a pair of examples). Also, with this you see alternative lifestyles, away from what's commonly accepted, and yet, it seems, more human. This movie is, in fact, a reflexion, but the great thing about it is really the fact that, while it explains and explores each argument for that reflexion, it settles the ground for you to do a reflexion of your own.

PlayTime, or my introduction to Jaques Tati. And, well, I'm way too curious to see all the other stuff he made (I actualy didn't stop with PlayTime, as you'll read in a moment). A futurist movie, describing the mechanical world and the mechanical animals. Each angle has ninety degrees, each city works the same way, everything has a place to fit. What happens if someone just doesn't fit in? Probably the world doesn't care. While a far topic from dystopias, I imagine that the fan of PlayTime will be those who are fans of dystopias - specially mathematicly inspired ones, like Zamiatyn's "We".

Fahrenheit 451, an addaptation of Ray Bradbury's book. I was talking about dystopias, so here is one of those stories that I consider the "obligatory four dystopias": We, 1984, Brave New World and Fahrenheit 451. The adaptation of the book to the big screen is better than I was hoping, and every little storyline change is well justified and justifiable. Also, this story has the particularity that even Ray Bradbury liked to change and adapt it to the medium it was going to be told - from several forms of writting to several forms of playing. I wonder if Ray was living only nowadays he would like Clive Barker's thoughts on art, and release it as a game instead...

Mon Oncle, another Jaques Tati movie. Far lighter that PlayTime, extremely funny, it ends talking about the same kind of concepts than PlayTime - it almost seems that it is a previous chapter of the story (which maybe it is, I don't know the release date of one and the other). Also an excelent movie, this one that tells a story of a family of father, mother and son, and their new home. Of course, there is also the uncle, best friend of the kid but not really into the social standards of the family... It's fun to see that, while PlayTime is "one society black sheep", Mon Oncle is more about a culture clash between social levels, told in the funniest way.

Having Cypher on this list is somewhat like cheating, since this was not the first time I saw it. What made me wanting to see it for a long time was the fact that it was made by the same guy from "Cube" (an awsome movie, IMHO), but I didn't really know much about it when I saw it. When I did, I really liked and it was one of those movies that I didn't forget about, and several times recalled it. The problem is that I never thought of it as "Cypher" but allways as "that movie where 'a' and 'b' happens", so when the movie was being played again in a movie festival in Coimbra, this year, I read the movie descriptionand didn't relate it to the movie itself. I had the same thought, "if it's directed by the same guy who worked on Cube it must be good", and I only recognized it as being the same when I first saw the movie start. And I'm glad, 'cause this is one of those movies I don't mind watching more than once.

Four Eyed Monsters is an exquisite movie: it was made by too persons that met via the web, and the movie is about their story. But that's not it: the movie not only was made, hyped and distributed using a lot of new technology, namedly social networks, blogs and so on, they also focus that new means of connecting and getting toguether in the movie. The movie can still be viewed and downloaded for free on YouTube (I don't know for how long), being the first featured movie on YouTube. The movie was all made with money from a huge bunch of credit cards, that they're now paying for. It's arguably the first "Movie 2.0", and while that would be encouraging enough for you to see it, the story and plot are also very good - even better than the concept itself.

M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Moerder is another movie that you can download and see for free, but this time not on YouTube nor because the author lets you do, but because this is a Fritz Lang movie that is already in Public Domain, so you can get it (with subtitles of your choice) at archive.org. As you might remember from an earlier post of mine, I'm a fan of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and I was curious for a long time on "M". Seeing it was a great experience, and I really recommend this movie almost-dystopian movie, that shows a dark side of humanity and society, while telling you a preety easy to follow plot: a child murderer is out there, and everyone is both afraid and wanting to catch him. What scares the most is that the movie is as actual now as it was at the time.

Det Sjunde Inseglet is a movie from Ingmar Bergman, that recently died but will never be dead, and is considered one of the movies that helped defining the European cinema. From 195, this black and white movie was the only one that I've seen from Bergman (yet), but that something that I have and want to fix soon enough. This movie reflects about death, God, religion and myths, and shows, among other things, that Bergman had guts. While the movie itself is excelent, I felt that I need to see more of his works (specially those made near this one) to have a full understanding of what's going on Bergman's mind with some particularities of this movie. But making me wanting to see more of his movies is one good indicative that I liked it, and I really expect to like his other works.

Piracy?

They call it piracy, I call it bullshit. This year I still only bought 3 CD's, but, as a compensation, 4 other CD's were sold thanks to me. Three of those four were sold not only thanks to me, but also thanks to piracy. Two of them were bought from someone that didn't use to buy music for years. Piracy? Bullshit.

Poll about "piracy", please vote and spread the word

OK, I'm asking and pointing out for years about the fact that so-called "scientific studies" "proving" that "piracy" ("unauthorized" download of copyrighted material) is bad (like this latest about how many VAT countries are arguably loosing thanks to "piracy") always have the same (and biased) flaw: they assume - obviously wrongly - that each downloaded without authorization piece of copyrighted bits (whatever they are: movies, music, books, software,...) would be a sale if the person didn't have the chance to download it. In other words: these studies assume that you would buy every crappy movie or album you download from the pirate bay if, well, the pirate bay wasn't there. Which I wholeheartedly believe is utter crap.

So, since nobody does nothing about this (yes, I'm criticizing the journalists out there), I decided to do something myself. I know this is not scientific, but I spread the challenge: get me a scientific study about this and I'll use your data. Until then, well, this is what I've got. I wish I had at least 100 votes to give some meaning to the results, so, please spread the word about this poll. Thank you.

PS -> The poll is on the right sidebar of this blog. If you're reading this via RSS, please go to http://mindboosternoori.blogspot.com. There's also a direct link to the poll.

Thank you.

[UPDATE] seems that the good folks from Google decided they didn't like the poll, so they took it down. Last time I've checked, more than 40 votes where in it, and 0 of them were in the "I would pay for everything I download if I couldn't download it" option. A new blog post about this will come soon.

[UPDATE 2] A new blog post about this, and with a new poll, not hosted by Google, is here.

Anti-Piracy in Portugal

So, the theme of the day here in Portugal has been the fight against piracy in Portugal, with Music industry's anti-piracy lawsuits in Portugal.

From the article:
The international record industry will for the first time sue people in Portugal who illegally share music over the Internet, the head of an industry trade group said in an interview published yesterday.

The big problem here is that people still fail to see that the major problem in all this discussions and takes is that nobody is caring about the artists and the consumers, only about the record industry and their profit shares.

A rotten Apple

I know that this isn't exactly "news", but following a discussion I just had, I feel I have to comment on the recent claims from Apple that avoiding DRM technologies is the same as sponsoring Piracy.

Now, I understand why France thinks that anyone who purchages a song must be it's owner, thus being able to listen to the mp3 in any device they want. When I buy a CD, I like the fact that I'm able to listen to in in my CD player, on my computer and on my cellphone (that nowadays acts also as my mp3 player). The same way, if I download legally an mp3 by purchasing it, I want and feel to have the right to listen to in where I want.

On the other hand, I understand why Apple is pissed off: if the law passes in France, they will have to either stop selling in France or take off their DRM so there's no limitation anymore. Either approach costs them more money than having PR people talking to the media and trying to convince the general population that the law is bad.

What I don't understand, and quite pisses me off, is what Apple's PR's are caliming.

They said that, if the law passes, “legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers,” the company said. Free movies would follow close behind, the company asserted, “in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy.” Apple also predicted that iPod sales would increase, because customers could load their players with music that can’t be protected, including music from illegal sources.

Now, that are obvious lies. People who buy music to Apple, would buy it as well if that music wasn't with DRM. And people that doesn't buy DRM'd stuff (like me) would possibly start buying music to them instead of using non-DRM'd alternatives.

My top 10 of books read in 2011

Unlike with music, and unfortunately, my "books consumption" isn't that high in the last few years, and 2011 was terrible in that aspect: I only read 35 books in the whole year. So, instead of doing a "Top ten of 2011 books" like I did for music, I'm doing a "top 10 of books I've read in 2011".

Take notice that this list has no particular order.

Iain M. Banks is an awesome writer, even if I've (still?) never read anything from him apart from The Culture novel series. In 2011 I "ended" the series: I've read Look To Windward (2000), Matter (2008) and Surface Detail (2010), and all those three novels ended up on this top 10. Let me explain what's this "The Culture" series: "The Culture" is the name of a (fictional) technology-advanced alien civilization, but the books are more political or philosophical than what you would expect from "SciFi with aliens". That's right, my kind of SciFi. The Culture is an anarchic socialist utopian civilization, but, while "utopian" is on their description, the fact is that nothing is perfect and they're sometimes confronted with big dilemmas - and sometimes they make mistakes. On "Look To Windward", someone wants to get revenge from The Culture from a mistake they did 800 years before. One thing that quite teased my mind on this one was the whole concept of the Sublimed having created a Heaven. "Matter" is quite different from the rest of The Culture novels (and the first to need a glossary), because it "zooms out" for the reader, and describes other cultures and civilizations, how they get together and co-exist on the Universe. That would be mind-exercising enough for a good read, but the hints on the relations between groups with levels of power of different magnitudes also gives many food-for-thought. Finally "Surface Detail", which is probably one of the most interesting novels from the series, and that kind of picks up the theme hinted by the Sublimed Heaven from two books ago (well, and the virtual approaches from Matter), and takes it into a cross of ideas from virtual worlds and concepts of Heaven and Hell. I just hope he doesn't leave this theme as "written", and a thematic sequel appears. But, most importantly, I really hope Banks releases another Culture novel soon - I'm already anxious to have more.

Still on SciFi, but now entering the Cyberpunk field, Charles Stoss's "Rule 34", a sequel (you don't have to read the previous to understand this one) to "Halting State", actually creating an "Halting State Series". This is not only a good book, it is a book that made me create my first entry on 2014's wish list: "The Lambda Functionary", its sequel, is planned to be released by then. What is Rule 34 about? Well, it has porn (obvious by the title), it has spam and Nigerian scams, it has bugs, it has AIs, it has surveillance and everything a world with SOPA's and ACTA's will end up having - including all the aspects related with the fact that no law enforcement can shut the network down or control it. A must-read (the series, in fact) for those interested on where are we walking towards in this matters.

Talking about Cyberpunk, and obviously, I couldn't miss Neal Stephenson's REAMDE. If you know me, you know that, on my scale, Neal Stephenson is the best writer EVER. REAMDE is a very fine book - and probably the most easy-reading of them all - but it didn't stop from being a... kind of... disappoint me. No, wait, listen carefully: the book is great. Thing is, you expect always the unexpected from the best. Every Neal Stephenson's book was mind blowing to me - you read each of those books and they actually and visibly change you. With REAMDE that will happen to a lot of readers, but being an "sort of easy reading book", you'll have lots of action and cool turning-page stuff, but, specially if you've read the rest of Stephenson, there's not very much new stuff to make you think... it's probably not a book that changed me, like the others before it.

And, to end up SciFi and Cyberpunk, but on quite a different form, "Piracy Is Liberation - Deicide". There are only three series of comics, and "Piracy Is Liberation" is one of them. Piracy Is Liberation is a dystopia, sometime in the future, where people live in "the city" and capitalism is the mandatory religion. Instead of explaining it to you, I'll point you to the torrent for the first book (Deicide is number 9) - uploaded and spreaded by the author himself.

OK, so what's next? Non-fiction. I'll start with an author very well known by it's fiction: Agatha Christie, and her best work in my opinion, which is non-fiction and it is delicious: Come, Tell Me How You Live. The title is the question that this book answers: Agatha Christie not only wrote quite some novels in archaeological settings, but she was also married to Max Mallowan (a prominent archeologist) and worked with him. So, when she got back into England, people used to ask her about her life there, and instead of just telling and retelling, she ended up writing this novel about her stories in Syria - and this is an autobiographical and very very very funny book.

Talking about Syria nowadays I can only think about the most recent events there, and from that thought the mind travels to Egypt. And it is about Egypt's recent events that the next book I have on this list talks about: Alexandra Lucas Coelho's "Tahrir - Os Dias Da Revolução. Here's the short review I wrote soon after I ended reading it: "An emotive short report of what the Tahrir revolution was all about. A book everyone should read - really. I won't be surprised to see this translated into English in the near future - and I really hope so too, because no one should be kept from reading it."

The last two books from this top 10 are... books about books. Living with thousands books (wife's a collector) and being a collector myself (but of music), this two books were really exciting, and Paula heard me saying more than once, while I was reading each of them, "too bad there aren't books like this about music". "Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World" tells the (real) story of a couple that started to find interest in books, and how they suddenly found themselves in the amazing world of book collectors - ending up with more than one or two rare books in their own collection. Phantoms on the Bookshelves was written by a collector - a big collector, that is (with more than 40.000 books) - and it is more introspective, a book where Bonnet reflects on what it is to be a book collector, how to be a book collector, what are the perils of being a book collector, and... well, a book that every collector (of books or something else) will probably empathise with ;-)

There, here it is my top 10 of books I've read in 2011. Let's hope I'll find the time to read more in 2012...

"Piracy" - the polls are over.

I'm taking the polls regarding alleged copyright infringement down. After what happened, the votes got back to be on Google. And they were messed up again. I was suspecting something for a long time, but now here's "proof":

Screenshot of the results, taken in September:

and today (December):

 votes are disappearing, huh?

Well, I don't really care anymore, I assume my point as taken. If anyone wants to dispute the results, well, I really would like them to make a "real poll", and study this seriously.

For the record, the results are:

• 18% don't do so-called "piracy"
• 2% would buy everything they "pirate", if they couldn't pirate it
• 54% would buy some of the things they "pirate"
• 16% "pirate" stuff but they wouldn't buy it otherwise anyway

So, for one of the possible uses of this numbers... remember: being the most conservative possible, 34% of the population aren't "taking money from artists", in any possible sense.

Being a musician in Portugal

Swapping e-mails with Cory Doctorow about copyright. Reading new stuff about music 2.0, specially about blanket licenses. Discussing about new music business models and piracy in mailing lists. Doing some consultancy to social music networks. All of this leads me to discussions about how to do things better, and sometimes it makes me forget about the problems Portuguese people have nowadays even for the "music 1.0" era. So, this post is about the biggest problem I find about being a musician in Portugal. Note that this is not only of interest for Portuguese people, since many other countries are in a simmilar (or even worse) state.

The Portuguese law [1] is quite clear about the rights of copyright owners (translation is mine and sucks, sorry):

Are considered works the intelectual creations from the literary, cientific or artistic domain, exteriorized in any way, that, as such, are protected in the terms of this Code, including in that protection the rights of their authors.

Great, so now we know that any music created is covered by this law, as well as its author. Moving along...

For the purposes of this Code, the work is independent of its divulgation, publication, usage or exploitation.

So, if you make a song, you're covered, even if you didn't publish it or done anything with it.

The protection of the work is extensible to its title, independently from the registry, regarding that it cannot be confused with a title of any other work from the same type of another author, previously exteriorized or published.

So, not only the work but also its title is protected just by being created and named, even if it is not registred.

The published work is the work reproducted with its author's consent, whichever is the way the units are made, providing that they are disposed to the public.

So, when you do a track and, for instance, put it on the web to download or stream, you're publishing it.

The author rights are recognized independently of its registry, deposit or any other formality.

Yup, you're the author so you should do anything you want with it, without any obligation.

So... The law is preety cool in this aspects right? So here's the problem: the music industry acts like the Mafia, and in Portugal it's obvious. You know what mafia does: it "convinces" you that you need their (payed) protection, when, in fact, you're being protected... from them. So, the Portuguese entities that supposedly "protect authors' rights" - where you register your work - act in the same way. Want to have an example?

If you are the author of your own work and you want to pay to a Portuguese company to print some Audio CD's (not CD-R's), every of those companies ask you the same thing: you need to register your work to be our client.

So... isn't this acting criminously? What "protection" are these companies giving authors? Isn't this a block for creativity? So, if you think that Portugal is ready for a blanket license, or that the discussion is about piracy or stuff like that... Think twice. We have a structural problem here, and lot's of things worth fighting for.

[1] - http://tinyurl.com/yvf9na

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/williamkunz/196894022/, covered by a Creative Commons license

My top 10 of books read in 2012

Like I did for 2011, here is my blog post about the best ten books I've read in 2012. But first, the same disclaimer I did last year:

Unlike with music, and unfortunately, my "books consumption" isn't that high in the last few years, and 2011 was terrible in that aspect: I only read 35 books in the whole year. So, instead of doing a "Top ten of 2011 books" like I did for music, I'm doing a "top 10 of books I've read in 2011".

The difference here is: in 2012 I've behaved even worse, and have only read 19 books :-( Anyway, here's the list (in no particular order):

The "Piracy Is Liberation" saga continues, and I continue as hooked at it as before. As I said last year,

Piracy Is Liberation is a dystopia, sometime in the future, where people live in "the city" and capitalism is the mandatory religion. Instead of explaining it to you, I'll point you to the torrent for the first book (Deicide is number 9) - uploaded and spreaded by the author himself.

So, this year I've read number 10, "Hypertext Consciousness", which is the best book of the saga so far. Book 11 is out now already and I've had the pleasure of buying it from the artist himself at the latest Feira Laica, but still didn't manage to read it...

The other author that visited one year later was Neal Stephenson. Once again recalling what I've said in the past,

If you know me, you know that, on my scale, Neal Stephenson is the best writer EVER. [...] Every Neal Stephenson's book was mind blowing to me - you read each of those books and they actually and visibly change you.

So, this year we have two from him - yay! - "Some Remarks", a very nice-to-read but completely different book from him, since it is an anthology/collection of texts he've written on the most various subjects along the years, and then "Mongoliad - Book 1", which is the first of a series on the "Foreworld" universe that has been constructed by a number of authors, including Neal Stephenson. The Mongoliad books have participation from Neal Stephenson (I've read in an interview to him somewhere that more or less 20% of the text of the first book has his pen), but not every Foreworld media (books included) will have. Anyway, reading Mongoliad book 1 made me want to be a follower of the Foreworld universe, even if I was quite disconcerted about the way the publisher deals with its fans. Let me explain: against all "common rules" in book publishing, Mongoliad's books 1 and 2 had their hardcover edition published after the paperback edition (book 3 have the same release date for both hardcover and paperback). What's so wrong about this (besides the obvious penalization to those fans that are willing to pay more for the limited edition, that will have the chance to start reading the book only later than the others) is that there are three short stories that are only available (on paper, free of DRM) on this editions. Not only that, but worse: all this was only announced after the release date of the first book, meaning that me, amongst many others that bought the (paperback) book on pre-order or in the release date, found themselves in posession of the incomplete edition, being forced to buy the book again (another edition, of course) to be able to read the short story.

But enough of venting about publishers that should know better, let's talk about the rest - and the rest is SciFi... or about it.

You might have heard of "The Hunger Games", and, well, I was sucked into it. After seeing it on the theater (which was actually an accident, we went to see "something" and this was what turned out to be ;-)), we bought the trilogy and read it, three in a row. Not extremely clever or even original, this saga is quite welcome, specially since this kind of themes do not reach mainstream as often as I'd like to...

The British Library has an exhibition about SciFi called "Out Of This World: Science Fiction but not as you know it", and I blame myself for not knowing about it before and travelling to UK just to see it. Anyway, they did an excellent job of summing it up in a book, which is undoubtedly the best book I've ever read about SciFi, and I encourage everyone to grab a copy and read it. Most importantly, if I had to choose "you can only either see the expo or read the book", I'm sure I would prefer the book, so I'm quite happy :-)

The rest:

• Keith Brooke - The Accord
• James Blish - The Quincunx Of Time
• James P. Hogan - Thrice Upon A Time

Piracy talking? Hush! (Or how Google doesn't like what I have to say)

Last month I wrote about "piracy" - you know, the non-authorized download of copyrighted content - in this blog post. For it, I made a poll, using blogger tools (that uses a Google service to create polls), where I was asking questions about "what would you do if you couldn't do non-authorized download of copyrighted content". The options were something like this:

• I don't do non-authorized download of copyrighted content
• If I couldn't do it, I would buy everything I now download
• If I couldn't do it, I would buy some things I now download
• If I couldn't do it, I wouldn' buy anything I now download anyway

I now came to my blog to see something else (don't ask me what, I can't remember), and I just noticed the big 404 you probably see on it:

I don't know why the poll was deleted, I heard nothing from Google regarding it, but I'm surely not going to quit doing this just because Google doesn't like my polls. No, I'm creating another poll. For the record, and I have nothing but my word on this, last time I've checked more than 40 votes where in it, and 0 of them were in the "I would pay for everything I download if I couldn't download it" option.

So, here's the poll, again. If you had voted previously, please vote again, and help spread the word... Thank you.

[UPDATE:] And then, the Google poll is back online. Just to be sure, please vote on both...

Links

One more round of links:

• Lot's of people ask me what's that about me and having music CD's, Vinyl, Cassetes and such in this digital-era. I always told them it was a kind of fetishism.
• Want to see a great free DVD? On Piracy and the Future of media is a low-budget documentary that manages to give a imparcial view on piracy, as no one else managed to do. As a bonus, the movie download is free.
• People keep asking me about linux on cellphones, claiming that it's too much hype and no goods at hand. They even use it as excuse for buying cellphones to DRM-lovers like Sony or, now, Apple. So, here's a list of eight great linux phones. Choose yourse.
• The official program for Moita Lan Party is already out there, next to it's flyer. For those wanting to attend to my presentation about DRM in the Music Industry, there's a free-entry. The event is from 23 to 25, this month, and my presentation is going to be at the 24th, at 16:00.
• For Portuguese people: TSF's Eureka talked about OSS.
• After last years' Barcamp and SHiFT, it was too good to stop. So, in 2007 we had Tecnonov, and now, inspired in the previous ones take off. Take off is going to be an event directed for those wanting to create its own startup. There are already two presentations scheduled, and I'm already eagering to listen to one of them.
• Did you already sign the Brussels Declaration?
• An "Portuguese Open Source Week" is being scheduled for July. Wanna help?

Why I prefer ReverbNation over Jamendo

In the comments of a post in one of the best Portuguese-written blogs, Remixtures, I explained why I use (and recommend), as an artist, Reverbnation. The big issue here is simple: we're living in a world of music like water, where the real value of music in digital format is approaching zero, where artists can - or should I say have? - reinvent themselves, adhere to the whole "Music 2.0" concept. Having a record label nowadays makes no sense. Selling digital music and consider that a business (or at least revenue) model is like waiting for the shit to hit the fan. Physical sales are a revenue source if you do your stuff well: if there's added value in the physical package: jewel case is worthless, but what you can do with it can be priceless. But to record and sell physical albums (like, for instance, CD's) you need money. To do it while cutting the middle man you need more money (even if it will give you a lot more money too, so you end winning). Where are artists getting that money?

Well... you have merchandise, ringtones, gigs, subscription stuff, whatever you can remember. If you're a small band and want to grab some ideas, you can, for instance, take a look on SellABand and see what are bands offering there to grab more believers. Or... you can make money from digital music.

Yes, I know I said that music is like water, that the real value of music in digital format is zero. But that doesn't mean - at all - that the community you can make around those tracks are worthless. As a matter of fact, in this kind of Music 2.0 models you can have a lot of potential value, since communities tend to be created. One of the first, basic, ways to explore that whole potential is - that's right - publicity. If I give you two band profiles on MySpace, I bet you can easily see who is the most succesful. It's not the one with more tracks, or videos, or with the most pimped profile. But it is probably the one with most friends and comments. In other words, with more pageviews: if a community exists, people keep coming there to see what's up. Now, if your fans can give you all that power, and if you can give all that power over to someone who knows and can, better then yourself, turn that power into money, you have a win-win scenario. And there were those who knew how to do it.

ReverbNation and Jamendo are two simple and easy "music social networks" where a band can register and put their songs there, letting everyone download the tracks. What makes these two so interesting to bands is that they share their profits, 50/50, with the bands. Now bands have a reason to be there, and with bands come fans, and the social network just have to wait and collect their share. Everyone's happy. This is something I hope (and think I will) to see more used, with more bands adhering with this model.

ReverbNation and Jamendo, each one has things better and worse than the other. But, for me, there are two crucial differences:

• Jamendo only accepts Creative Commons or Arte Libre tracks. While this fits (almost) well to me, it's something that will push away lot's of other bands. In my case, by chance, it also pushes me away, since one of my tracks (Interlude) is in Public Domain.


• Jamendo lets you download via P2P, ReverbNation via HTTP. While the perfect scenario would be having both options available, having to choose from one or another isn't difficult. I trust that if I give the link to my ReverbNation profile to one of my sisters, they'll manage to download some tracks. I doubt I would be able to say the same if those tracks were on Jamendo.

All in all, there's still an huge space to fill in here. Both services have only a pretty small variety of music and genres, and both have an huge space for improvement. Still, if you're an artist you have no reason to whine about piracy et al.. Want to stop piracy? Earn money by giving your music for free.