Several months ago, I put together a list of TV shows I’d like to see on DVD. Since we are talking about piracy this week, and using DVDs as an example, I thought it would be interesting to:
So first, let’s look at that list:
Last week, we posted an item about the acetate of the first version of The Velvet Underground & Nico going on auction on eBay. (As I write this, the bidding is up to US $107,000.) This weekend, I got an email from a friend who said that he was downloading a digital copy of this album.
So here is my question: are either of these piracy? The auction of the physical artifact and the digital download of the music purportedly ripped from that physical artifact. Is the auction somehow not piracy, but the download piracy?
Funny story. Okay, it’s not so funny, but it’s a story. I was driving to the place I affectionately call the Evil Empire and heard a song on the radio. Okay, not really the whole song. It was one of those filler things they place between story segments on NPR stations. The song, naturally, was “Tank”, which is, possibly, the most amazing theme song for a TV series ever.
Though, in this case, the TV series is a Japanese anime series called Cowboy Bebop. I don’t recall how I discovered this show — possibly it was a way to break my Dragonball Z addiction. Really, I was so far out of the target demographic there, and Inuyasha was on another one of those interminable breaks. And I needed something else.
Read the entire entry …
A couple of days ago, while discussing EMI music exec Alain Levy’s announcement that the CD as we knew it was dead, Kirk wrote this: “music lovers shrugged and loaded more songs onto their iPods.”
Perhaps. But that’s not necessarily the right reaction. Last time I checked, I’m a music lover, and I did neither (of course, part of the reason is that my Nano’s battery keeps acting up, but that’s another story). I actually think that the death of the CD is a potentially bad thing for music lovers. We’re the ones who could easily get the shaft from the wholesale transition to digital music.
With only a month left before the launch of Season Three of what is probably our consensus favorite show around here, Battlestar Galactica, Sci-Fi.com has launched a series of “webisodes” — internet-only episodes with brand-new content.
Obviously, Battlestar isn’t the first TV show to do this, but the webisodes were actually delayed for a month or so because of controversy over compensation. It’s the latest variation of the “new media meets old contracts” meta-issue we’ve seen played out over and over again.
In this case, the legal issue can be boiled down to this: what is a “webisode” anyways? Is it strictly promotional? Or is it brand-new content for a brand-new medium?
We talk a lot about the decline of reviewers at mainstream publications. We have a lot of thoughts on the matter. Luckily, we have lots of server space, thus room for one more.
What is truly missing in today’s review world is passion. Good, old-fashioned, “I loved this so much I had to tell you about it” passion. There is a whiff of the academic in the work of many reviewers. Great, if you’re trying to write your master’s thesis, not so great if you’re trying to inspire your readers.
Let us take this lead from the Los Angeles Times’ review of the final Sleater-Kinney show:
So Snakes on a Plane didn’t do as well as expected. What surprises me is why anybody is surprised about this. But they are, and the backlash against the blogosphere has already started.
“It doesn’t create any sort of mandate for Internet promotion,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations, noting that all the Web hype for Snakes on a Plane didn’t translate into ticket-buying.
Wanna know the philsophical underpinnings of some of our posts here at Medialoper? (I’ll pretend you said “yes.”) The following books have helped me work out some of the concepts that infuse nearly everything that I write about what we are calling the “new media.”
Here they are, alphabetical by author:
In a weird sort of sleight of hand, media analysts reviewing Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail focus on the example of Netflix as both embodiment of the theory and refutation of the impact of long tail revenues. As the Wall Street Journal noted:
The currently popular notion that hits are becoming less important due to the vast reach of cyberspace would strike most Hollywood executives as preposterous. For good or bad, moguls make the opposite assumption. They can be forgiven for doing so; after just three weeks of release, the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel is already Hollywood’s all-time 11th biggest grosser, and No. 63 when adjusted for inflation.
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Sometimes his guitar sounded like a giant door creaking as it opened directly into another dimension.
It's about fracking time.
Too bad he's a bass player. Couldn't they get Andy Summers to do this?
As Kirk keeps saying, it's a make-or-break year for Blu-ray. By next year, it will all be different.
Epically, as the kids who don't read newspapers anymore would say.
Apples also caves on flexible pricing.
Sigh.
Either that, or Bill O'Riley really is gay. He really does protest a bit too much . . .
Ah, we do love a snarky column.
Okay, okay, we'll take Defamer. Or not, looks like it was sold before, well, anyone knew it was on the market (anyone being the staff).
Great, great idea. And a harbinger of the future.
Yep, this is the kind of controversy that occupied the last moments of the official (and unofficial) 'loper vacation.
Is it possible our AT&T service could get worse?!
Or, if you pay attention to (and respond to) what your customers are saying, you might come out a winner.
Uh huh: "I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror." We consider him to be reaping what he sowed.
Once again, the capacity of overpaid executives to make bad business decisions overwhelms our capacity to take them seriously as smart, thoughtful stewards of business.
Zunes everywhere are apparently committing synchronized ritual suicide.
Gamers may be drooling over this, but eBook lovers also have something to look forward to. If true, this could be a serious challenger to the Sony Reader and the Kindle.
You ever feel like the NYT isn't even trying anymore? Just keep writing the same stories with the same angle and hope nobody notices. In this edition, it turns out that musicians are making money from licensing rather than album sales.
We vote more of the same. When it comes to Ticketmaster and its competition, consumers seem to always lose.
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