A New Blog and A New Paradigm

Every time I try to grapple with the oddness and awkwardness of writing something that is simultaneously only - in all probability - going to be seen by a dozen people, but yet something that will float around as a series of zeroes and ones as long as the internet is kicking, I just end up writing in circles and feeling stiflingly meta. So that's all the meditation on medium that I'm going to allow myself.

It was January 19, 2012, and the denizens of SoHo 2 Short were lounging around, segueing into the logistical realities of a new semester. Then, the shit hit the fan. To be more precise, a certain piece of news hit the collective consciousness of the internet, news that Megaupload and its sister site Megavideo had been shut down permanently by the US government. When I broke the news, you'd think I'd just announced the death of some venerated leader, the room was so quiet. Murmurs of disbelief. Jaws dropped open.

Silly (and possibly immoral) as it sounded, Megaupload & Co. was an institution for me and for many of my generation: hands down the most reliable, least spam-ridden, and most widely-stocked file-sharing consortium many of us non-torrenters had ever known. It had been there ever since the first time that - curious, frustrated, starved by a cliffhanger- we came to realize the cornucopia of stored media that the internet had the potential to be. To hear of it wiped off the face of the virtual map was unthinkable, until it happened.

From the viewpoint of an objective, adult observer of the media market - and not a teenager cursing the inanity of Netflix and dying to start the next season of West Wing - I understand the logic behind the frenzied lobbying and prosecution on behalf of the content-producing industry that, eventually, led to MU's downfall. I recognize that, through the eyes of baby-boomer board of directors, piracy is a direct threat to the bottom line, and simply must be quashed. Identify enemy. Aim. Shoot. Boom. Problem solved.

Except it's not. And anyone with even a passing familiarity with the highways and byways of the internet, the etiquette, the patterns, the culture, knows that - while the takedown of MU was certainly a blow to prospective file-sharers - it was hardly a fatal one. Furthermore, I'd suggest, they know intuitively that playing Whack-A-Mole with various sites is not a sustainable or ultimately an effective means of tamping down piracy. Piracy is, in my view, not a disease in and of itself. It is a symptom.

I only speak for myself and for my own anecdotal evidence here, but I'd posit that piracy is not so much a sign of opportunity and moral decline, of an outright refusal to pay for valued content - the position of the finger-wagging anti-piracy ads, likening it to outright theft - but rather a response to the changing power dynamics of the media business, a shift that - while internalized and deeply ingrained in my generation - is still seen as a threat rather than an opportunity by media execs: specifically of the major producers of audiovisual content (television, movies, etc). Back from the beginning of audiovisual media, the producers and the film business more broadly had ultimate control. They constructed the theaters, they set the times, they completely set the parameters by which media was available. Audiovisual media was something the companies deigned to offer, and to offer only on their terms. Then came the television, opening up a way to choose the location in which to view our media. Then the cam-corder, allowing us to create media ourselves. Then the VCR and DVD and TiVo,  allowing us to view media on our own schedule, at our leisure. All these developments reaped huge rewards for the various innovators and wave-riders in the film and media business, they created a pervasive television structure, they led to the creation of entire new profit-generation industries. But beyond simply being more accessible to the consumer, and thus more desirable and profitable, I think they fundamentally shifted the norms, and changed way we conceive of our relationship to media. Media shifted from something handed down to us into something we shaped to suit our lives, something we should, by rights, be able to control.

And then it came, the big kahuna of all democratizing media innovations: the internet. Now media doesn't just live in our TVs, it permeates a network in which we are immersed, a network in which a savvy enough surfer can find just about anything. The relationship hasn't been totally inverted, but I'll say it's a good 150 degree shift from the 1920's. Media can no longer be corralled and controlled, or at least not without a lot of headache and ill will. The consumers are in a position to dictate the terms of their relationships with content producers, and for an industry used to setting its own terms without complaint or objection, I'd imaging that's a terrifying prospect.

I think that the predominant reason piracy is so rampant - and why content producers seem locked in an economically unproductive, counter-intuitive, and brand-undermining war against the people who love their content - is that companies have, by and large, been either too scared or too stagnant to offer content in a way that respects the way people of my generation consume media, a way that emphasizes speed, unlimited accessibility, convenience, and self-direction, and, most importantly, STILL ALLOWS THE COMPANIES TO MAKE MONEY. Though I can only offer my own mentality and viewpoint, I fervently think that convenience and on-my-terms media - rather than FREE media - is the real draw of piracy. Because if the content producers don't offer that latest episode of Doctor Who, within 12 hours, nestled within an apparatus that generates returns, that potential consumer will likely find the episode somewhere else, somewhere where YOU, my dear media CEO, are seeing none of the profit from those lovely little dancing World of Warcraft ads.


Though I'm under no illusions that major media conglomerates care one iota what I have to say (or, more infuriatingly, what their potential consumer base is saying by "voting with their clicks") I'd like to propose a potential solution to many of the profit-draining effects of piracy, in the form of a hypothetical site, a sort of Netflix PLUS.

[[I have a dream, my friends! I, the erstwhile media consumer, have a dream that one day, the West Wing and Doctor Who will play together, in one expertly-designed site, with modest ad revenues...]]

1) This site, as I envision it, would ideally be a joint project of major industry players, would incorporate all major serials and shows from involved companies. Even if it starts out with only, say, 60% of media providers involved, ideally it would become necessary for stragglers to join to compete.

2) Impeccable design, and the fastest servers you can build. Also, we'd really appreciate taking the ax to Microsoft Silverlight.

3) Shows are uploaded within 12 hours of airing, and all previous seasons of shows are accessible.

4) The site runs on a system that replicates, to the greatest degree possible, the psychological/behavioral dynamics of the television model: of access rather than actual purchase and ownership. Offer plans with a certain amount of viewing credits (so that, on point-of-viewing, the user isn't paying actual money, but using a "credit"), and then offer unlimited plans. Offer plans with advertising, and offer plans with advertising excised. Not only does this show goodwill to consumers by offering them the choice, but it reinforces the actual value of advertising to the consumer.

5) Get BBC on board. I don't care who you have to bribe. Pay them whatever they ask. Buy out the British government if you have to.

6) Beat the service of the pirate sites. Believe me, if most piraters had a beautifully designed, efficiently run, non-skeezy alternative to putlocker and gorillavid and sockshare, I think they'd likely use it. Make it compatible with all browsers. Offer chat features so that fans can connect socially through watching similar shows (a la Spotify, the music industry equivalent to this plan) Besides which, as industry heads, the heads of the site would have the ability to offer special extras - sneak peaks, interviews, exclusive chats with creators, artists and actors - accessible only to members of the site. Lure in the obsessive fans, and you're golden.

It may be a less profitable alternative then, say, forcing everyone who watches a streamed copy of that new Doctor Who episode to pay full boat for it (the way the economic cost of piracy is often calculated on the part of the producers) but it would likely succeed in funneling some, and potentially a majority of the traffic that would, in all likelihood, go NOT towards purchase of legal content but simply towards finding alternative content, into appreciation of and profits towards your company.

I meant to ramble on a bit about the politics of student loans, but seeing as how my sentences are becoming increasingly incoherent, and how I already wrote a novella here, I'll save that for tomorrow. All the best to all of you out there reading this (particularly those here because of my jumping ship from Facebook as of Friday). 

Wishing you Butterbeer, bow ties, and beauty, 

Cody


Arabic Word of the Day مصباح Misbaah - Lamp, constructed as the operative noun (to make/bring) form of sebaah', meaning morning.

Quote of the Day

"When you do not speak, the thousand stars that la upon your tongue slide back down your throat only to be swallowed one by one, jagged, pointed, and weighing more than planets"- Tama Kieves