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Rovio,
the company behind the smash hit Angry Birds, took a look at the music
industry's struggle against piracy and decided that piracy ain't so bad
after all. In fact, it may actually be a good thing:
"We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There is tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which is not officially licensed products," said [Rovio CEO Mikael Hed].
"We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy."
Hed explained that Rovio sees it as "futile" to pursue pirates through the courts, except in cases where it feels the products they are selling are harmful to the Angry Birds brand, or ripping off its fans.
When that's not the case, Rovio sees it as a way to attract more fans, even if it is not making money from the products. "Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day."
Like Tim O'Reilly said, obscurity is a greater threat than piracy: Link
See also: Angry Birds stuff from the NeatoShop
Pirates
and file-sharers, rejoice! The Missionary
Church of Kopimism (just say it out loud) has been recognized as a
religion in Sweden:
Since 2010 a group of self-confessed pirates have tried to get their beliefs recognized as an official religion in Sweden. After their request was denied several times, the Church of Kopimism – which holds CTRL+C and CTRL+V as sacred symbols – is now approved by the authorities as an official religion. The Church hopes that its official status will remove the legal stigma that surrounds file-sharing.
All around the world file-sharers are being chased by anti-piracy outfits and the authorities, and the situation in Sweden is no different. While copyright holders are often quick to label file-sharers as pirates, there is a large group of people who actually consider copying to be a sacred act.
Philosophy student Isak Gerson is such a religious file-sharer, and in an attempt to protect his unique belief system he founded The Missionary Church of Kopimism in 2010. In the hope that they could help prevent persecution for their beliefs, the Church then filed a request to be officially accepted by the authorities.
After two failed attempts, where the Church was asked to formalize its way of praying or meditation, the authorities finally recognized the organization as an official religion. The Church’s founder is ecstatic about this news, and hopes that it will motivate more people to come forward as ‘Kopimists’.
Can I get "Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Amen?"
The following is an article from Uncle John’s Supremely Satisfying Bathroom Reader.
Here at the BRI, we’re huge fans of Richard Zak’s books. They’re great bathroom reading. He has a new book coming out: The Pirate Hunter-The True Story of Captain Kidd. Here’s a teaser from his masterpiece, An Underground Education.
WORKIN’ FOR THE MAN
While the popular image of buccaneers is peg-legged, eye-patched rascals, the ultimate anti-authority free agents, roving the seas, plundering ships, raping women, and brawling, the reality is much worse. They did all that and worked for the government.
Prior to 1856, it was standard operating procedure for western nations either to commission privateers directly or to wink at the actions of freelance pirates, so long as those thieves were preying on the commerce of other nations. Piracy was often state-supported economic terrorism. Captain Kidd, for example, was no Joan of Arc, but he was no “Captain Kidd,” either.
MEET CAPTAIN KIDD
William Kidd
William Kidd (c. 1645-1701) was a plain-speaking, high-tempered Scotsman who had made his fortune as captain and ship owner, trading goods in the colonies. In 1696, the 51-year-old Kidd was a prosperous New York businessman, comfortably settled with his wife and family. That year, Kidd and his friend Robert Livingston connived with the newly-appointed governor of New England, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamount, the King of England’s cousin, to receive an unusual privateering commission.
In times of war, wealthy investors routinely funded privateering vessels to attack the enemy’s merchant ships and divvy the plunder. This was an English naval tradition dating back to Sir Francis Drake. But what was extraordinary about this commission was that it also entitled Kidd to attack pirate ships of all nationalities and keep their booty -no questions asked. It was an amazing financial opportunity.
SMART INVESTMENT
Kidd’s royal commission -secured by Bellamount- did, in fact,
give and grant full Power and Authority to Captain William Kidd, Commander of the ship Adventure Galley …to apprehend, seize and take into Custody the said Thomas Too, John Ireland, Tho Wake, and William Maze, and all other Pirates, Free-booters and Sea-rovers, of what Nation whatsoever, whom he should find or meet with, upon the said Coasts or Seas of America, or in any other Seas or Parts, with their Ships and Vessels, and all such Merchandise, Money, Goods, and Wares as should be found on board of them.
The mission began as an attempt by Britain to crack down on four colonial pirates, but was cunningly expanded so that Kidd would have maximum leeway to capture “prizes” -non-English ships.
In addition to Livingston and Lord Richard, four of the most powerful men in England secretly invested the £6,000 it would cost to outfit the ship. The prospect of profit from this legal larceny was dizzying. If Kidd captured two large ships, the backers could easily received a hundredfold return on their investment in a year. In the official contract with Kidd, four obscure merchants were listed as the investors, but they were shills. The real backers were John Somers, Lord Chancellor of England; Sire Robert Wadpole, Earl of Orford, First Lord of the Admiralty; and two secretaries of state, the Earl of Romney and the Duke of Shrewsbury. The king was to receive 10% of the booty as well, “chiefly to show that he was a partner in the undertaking,” according to The Real Captain Kidd- A Vindication, by Sir Cornelius Dalton. Kidd and Livingston stood to receive 7.5% each, while if the haul totaled more than £100,000, Kidd was to be allowed to keep the ship.
more …
Before MP3, there was the music CD. (Note to younger Neatorama readers: ask your parents about it. It’s those shiny round discs that look just like DVDs.)
Remember those? And remember why you don’t buy them anymore? Well, the music industry would like to attribute demise of the music CD sales to the rise of digital music format and so on, but what is the real reason?
This interesting report over at NPR All Things Considered explains the rise and fall of the music CD. Turns out, it’s all about greed:
… At first, executives at the major record labels didn’t like the new format. But they started to come around — thanks in large part to Jac Holzman, [...]
"The CD was sexy. And it would bring higher prices — from about 8 dollars for cassettes or LPs at the end of the ’70s, to about $15 in the early ’80s," Holzman says. "You could resell your best catalogue again. CDs were lighter and cheaper to ship, which is a big consideration."
All of that meant giant profits for the music industry in the 1980s and ’90s. "The CD sold so well. And it created this gigantic boom in the industry," says Steve Knopper, the author of Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. "And everybody got rich. And people just got incredibly accustomed to this. To the point where in the late ’90s, the only way that you could get the one song that you liked was to buy the 15 to 18 dollar CD at the Tower Records."
At first, Knopper says, people didn’t mind paying a lot for the new format. "You didn’t hear the outcry at the time of, ‘Hey, we’re getting price-gouged.’ Instead the public was going, ‘this is much better sound.’"
The record labels promised that the price of CDs would come down eventually. And the discs did get cheaper — to make. But the labels kept retail prices – and profits – high. Jac Holzman says that was a mistake.
"It’s fine to keep that up for two or three years. But the labels kept it up far too long. And I think it was a fraud on the public, and on the artists."
Pirates operating in the waters off of Somalia have opened a stock exchange in order to encourage investment in their industry. The market has thrived, and the exchange now provides a business forum for 72 “maritime companies”. Mohamed Ahmed writes for Reuters:
It is a lucrative business that has drawn financiers from the Somali diaspora and other nations — and now the gangs in Haradheere have set up an exchange to manage their investments.[...]
“Four months ago, during the monsoon rains, we decided to set up this stock exchange. We started with 15 ‘maritime companies’ and now we are hosting 72. Ten of them have so far been successful at hijacking,” Mohammed said.
“The shares are open to all and everybody can take part, whether personally at sea or on land by providing cash, weapons or useful materials … we’ve made piracy a community activity.”
Link via io9 | Image: US Department of State
Maersk Alabama, the cargo vessel that was hijacked by Somali pirates back in April 2009, was attacked again. This time, however, the ship was prepared:
An on-board security team repelled the attack by using evasive maneuvers, small-arms fire and a Long Range Acoustic Device, which can beam earsplitting alarm tones, the fleet said. [...]
The owners of the Maersk Alabama have spent a considerable amount of money since the April hijacking to make the vessel pirate-proof, Murphy said, including structural features and safety equipment. The most dramatic change is what he called a security force of "highly trained ex-military personnel."
"Somali pirates understand one thing and only one thing, and that’s force," said Capt. Joseph Murphy, who teaches maritime security at the school. "They analyze risk very carefully, and when the risk is too high they are going to step back. They are not going to jeopardize themselves."
The wife of the Maersk Alabama’s captain, Paul Rochford, told WBZ-AM radio in Boston that she was "really happy" there were weapons on board for this attack.
"It probably surprised the pirates. They were probably shocked," Kimberly Rochford. "I’m really happy at least it didn’t turn out like the last time."
Long Range Acoustic Device? Turns out it’s an acoustic cannon (or super megaphone) that produce 150 decibels of sound, causing excruciating headache and ear pain. From Spiegel:
Until now, it wasn’t widely known that the US Defense Department was sharing the so-called Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) with commercial cruise ships. The weapon is essentially a small dish that beams hellishly loud noise that is deafening but not lethal. Weighing 20 kilograms and as big as a TV satellite dish, the device looks deceptively harmless. But once trained on its target, it blasts a tight beam of painful siren-like sound.
It’s not known how the grinning pirates 160 kilometers off the coast of the Horn of Africa reacted as they suddenly were hit by the LRAD. But they were close, and the closer one is to the sonic cannon, the worse the effect is. It’s possible they received permanent hearing damage, but at the very least they experienced an excruciating headache and ear pain to the point that they could no longer see or hear. They also quickly lost the desire to board the ship. Of course, even Captain Blackbeard would have quickly set sail when confronted with 150 decibels of pure noise.
Software piracy ain’t anything new (before there was the Internet and all these fancy P2P piracy, there was the old school Sneakernet kind).
Royal Pingdom blog has a very interesting, blast-from-the-past article about fighting piracy through various copy protection methods, including code wheels, dongles, and feelies. For example:
Dongles
Dongles started appearing in the early 80’s and were used both for games and commercial software of other kinds. The dongle would need to be plugged in to the computer somehow, often through the serial or parallel port. Without the device plugged in, the software wouldn’t run.
The very first program to use a dongle was Wordcraft on the Commodore PET in 1980. Its dongle (the inventor named it so for lack of a better word) connected to the computer’s external cassette port and was two cubic inches large (32 cubic centimeters). We were unfortunately unable to find a picture of it.
These days some software uses USB dongles for copy protection, so we’re not rid of them yet. Dongles are pretty unpopular among users (it’s arguably one of the most hated software protection methods ever), so usually only more specialized and expensive software get away with using them.
Link – via GeekPress (Photo: GamesRadar)
