Saturday 12 June 2010
Sunday 6 June 2010
Thursday 8 April 2010
Holiday work Exam preparation
You should be spending quite a bit of your time preapring for the exams in June. I have put three examples together below. They are all Bs - Ruby and Mike are high Bs. Notice that they have different marks for different parts and so you can compare to see what got them high marks for certain questions. When you look at the Institutions and Audiences questions (the last question for each of them) highlight all the examples they have used and put all of that into notes for yourselves) then look at all the concepts they have ued (things like The Long Tail, Convergence etc) Read back over the handout which is on the blog about these concepts and work out before we get back which ones you are happy with and can use in essays and which ones you are not so sure of. You should all be aiming to produce work of the standard you see in htesse essays and some of you will be looking to be a grade better. You should all feel thta you can improve on the first two of these answers as you have been working on evaluating your practical work and it should be fresh in your minds.
Things in the News (Internet) to look out for are - The Digital Economy Bill which is just being passed. Ther was a lot about The Gang of Four (a band) choosing to sell their music on the internet rather thatn sign a record deal.
Three exemplars together - all from our students:
Exemplars Jan 10 G325 Merged
Here is the sample mark scheme from the exam board so you can see what the marks are given for:
OCR G325 Sample and Mark Scheme 10
Things in the News (Internet) to look out for are - The Digital Economy Bill which is just being passed. Ther was a lot about The Gang of Four (a band) choosing to sell their music on the internet rather thatn sign a record deal.
Three exemplars together - all from our students:
Exemplars Jan 10 G325 Merged
Here is the sample mark scheme from the exam board so you can see what the marks are given for:
OCR G325 Sample and Mark Scheme 10
Saturday 3 April 2010
Liquid Soap
Episode One Launched Monday 12th October-->Liquid Soap. The RTS award winning TV comedy series written, produced and directed by students at Bath Spa University. Set entirely in the toilets of the caf� at �First Central University�, Liquid Soap reveals the hilarious world of gripping micro-dramas that are played out daily in this intimate location. Episode One, �Fumbling In The Ruck�, kicks the series off in typical no holds barred style - one of the First Central University rugby team seems to be having a crisis of sexuality but the question is, which one?
It�s Marion & Geoff meets Shameless; The Office meets Skins; Spinal Tap meets the The Smoking Room.
Watch all 5 episodes of the first Liquid Soap series.
You can click on the channel buttons below to choose an individual episode to see.
The series was initially webcast in 5 minute episodes but the scripts where developed so that 5 episodes can also be broadcast as a single 25 minute episode. Some episodes have themes of an adult nature.
Making of Liquid Soap
Watch a short documentary about how the first five episodes where made.
Episode One went live on Monday 12th October. Every Monday for the next four weeks another episode was released culminating in the release of the 30 minute Omnibus on Monday 16th November. On October 12th Bath Spa students celebrated the launch at the University�s Newton Park campus with the help of Liquid Soap�s charity partner, Wherever the Need and their toilet-themed fundraising project Doorway to Dignity. This Bath-based charity initiative is a unique community arts project fronted by high profile celebrities, such as Sienna Miller and the Duchess of York, and is open to anyone who wants to pledge their support to help raise money to build eco-sanitation toilets and provide clean drinking water for people in India.
Liquid Soap: The Artswork Media webcasting project, led by Eastenders Producer/Director Chris Jury and Touch Films Producer Nic Jeune, aims to provide an ongoing professional production environment for all Bath Spa students but especially our Broadcast Media students, Performing Arts, Design and Screenwriting.
Press
The Project has already attracted attention from the National, local & trade press with coverage in The Stage & Broadcast Magazines, The Bath Chronicle, local BBC & Commercial radio stations and on BBC TV.
Royal Television Society award nomination on the BBC website
BBC Points West report on the shoot
Stage Article
Broadcast article
BBC Bristol article
Bath Chronicle article
For further information members of the Press should contact the Liquid Soap Press Officer Lindsay Endean on 01225876133 or email her at l.endean@bathspa.ac.ukLinks
www.artsworkmedia.co.uk
www.bathspampa.com
www.bathspa.ac.uk/schools/humanities-and-cultural-industries
www.bathspa.ac.uk
via liquidsoap.tv
Sunday 14 March 2010
Monday 22 February 2010
What is the future shape of media? | Media | The Guardian
Cenk Uygur Founder The Young Turks
Papers and magazines are in a world of trouble. Classifieds are gone, their ad rates and share of the market are unjustifiable. They have to start charging incrementally for articles read online otherwise the whole thing is going to collapse. Television still has a lot of time and money left, but its days are also numbered %u2013 not TV as a concept but the networks. The main competitive advantage of the networks was reach; now YouTube is in every home. Tick, tock.Jeremy Silver Creative adviser Technology Strategy Board
The greatest opportunity online for media companies that have been in the business of commissioning programmes is to transform themselves into businesses that create and exploit their own intellectual property. These businesses need to develop direct relationships with their audiences and build brand values in the approach, presentation and style of their productions to generate direct dialogue, loyalty and ultimately consumer sales. Production companies will have to negotiate contracts that allow them to retain online and international rights %u2013 and broadcasters will need to open up their contracts in recognition of this. Those that fail to brand themselves and create broader online and non-UK followings will struggle.Nick Appleyard Digital Britain programme lead Technology Strategy Board
We propose that those concerned about the viability of their current operating models should first build their understanding of how their customers prefer to use their content and services, and then redesign their monetisation strategy accordingly.
Nicole Yershon, Director Ogilvy Labs
The survivors who will flourish will be the businesses who are open to change or collaboration with experts, without an enormous middle layer that still thinks that just doing the "day job" is acceptable. All platforms will be relevant %u2013 youth probably covers all areas from mobile, social media, gaming and IPTV. We mustn't get too much in our bubble of "digital excellence" %u2013 there are still many who get home from work at 6pm, have their dinner and are ready and sitting on the sofa, waiting for the BBC to serve them EastEnders at 7.30pm.Gerd Leonhard media futurist and author
There are a few things that are on their way out, and that includes monopolies that have outlived their usefulness, the concept of "selling copies" as a business model, "protecting rights" as the way of making money, and using friction to get payments. Most major record companies have a good chance of hitting the wall: they do way too little, way too late, and are still in love with controlling what consumers do, which prevents them from getting on with anything. My hunch is that the music industry will be 60-70% independent in five years.Google will do very well, so will Facebook (in my view, the next BBC), Apple, Amazon and Twitter. News media can do well if they embrace the switch to digital "reading" and cross-media content consumption. The main thing is to resist the temptation to charge too much while setting up hurdles that the users will hate. The future is in collaboration %u2013 not domination.
Philip Orwell Partner venturethree
I'm convinced that more and more people will pay directly for what they really want. So my mood is violently anti-ads and buoyantly �pro-subscription. The only way to be sustainable is to have great content and an easy way for people to get it, all delivered via a brand that lets you go deeper and further, if you want to.Steve Pomeroy Systems programmer MIT Mobile Experience Lab
In the world of mobile media, a relatively new delivery model has come about: the mobile store/market (the Kindle store, iPhone app store, Android etc). While an excellent tool for the company providing the mobile device, it takes away people's control of the �software and media on devices they own. If this continues to get out of hand, as it did back in July 2009 with Amazon remotely deleting books from people's devices, more people may become wary of this model.People could choose to subscribe to stores, much as they subscribe to a podcast or RSS feed. This would create a secondary "market of stores", which could help open up devices to a variety of niche stores, akin to the multitude of speciality stores already on the web.
Steve Purdham Chief executive We7
The big media companies will continue to be the big media companies, some will evolve and some will be absorbed but their balance sheets will continue giving them time to change and adapt. Any media company that adapts and embraces change and is not locked down to traditional economic structures can become sustainable. I still believe the unique model of the BBC has a �pivotal role to play in the localised UK market in showing the way forward.Rebecca Miskin General manager iVillage Networks
Most sustainable models are flexible and multi-tiered. Spotify, for example, has done a great job offering people an ad-funded and subscription model %u2013 each delivering value to users. Businesses will have to move toward a mix of revenue options that work for the value proposition they are offering their users.The Changing Media summit takes place on 18 March at Kings Place in London. For further information go to guardian.co.uk/changingmediasummit
via guardian.co.uk
Warner Music may stop licensing songs to free online streaming sites | Music | guardian.co.uk
Users can get a paid subscription to Spotify or listen to music for free alongside advertising
Warner Music has indicated it may stop licensing its songs to free online streaming services such as Spotify and We7. The record label's chief executive, Edgar Bronfman, said yesterday that allowing people to access free music on such sites was "clearly not positive for the industry".
A spokesman for Warner Music confirmed that this will not affect deals currently in place, meaning songs by artists such as T.I, Fleetwood Mac and Estelle will still be available to hear on the likes of Spotify. He could not confirm how this would affect future deals, except that Warner did not feel ad-supported free services was a sustainable business model for the music industry.
Bronfman's comments come in response to the latest financial figures posted by Warner Music, which show a loss of $17m (�11m) in the last quarter of 2009. CD sales for the third-largest record label in the world continue to shrink, but figures show digital sales were up 8% on last year.
Bronfman expressed his reservation over Spotify, which is currently only available in Europe, entering the US market as a free streaming service. "The 'get all your music you want for free, and then maybe with a few bells and whistles we can move you to a premium price strategy', is not the kind of approach to business that we will be supporting in the future."
Instead, Bronfman suggested Warner Music would be looking to take a bite out of Apple's share of the market with iTunes by offering its own subscription service.
Bronfman also hinted that a merger with EMI, who posted losses of �1.8bn since March last year, was not out of the question.
via guardian.co.uk
The true cost of free music downloading - Times Online
Why do people illegally download music? Because they can. The Government recently announced that it has persuaded the internet service providers (ISPs) to sit down with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and thrash out measures to curb illegal downloads by creating a voluntary framework that might work within anticipated tighter legislation.
This has been welcomed by most musicians, industry organisations and fair-minded consumers. Reasonable people agree that musicians should be paid for their work. I declare an interest, as deputy chairman of the BPI, although I am writing this in my private capacity as a songwriter, performer and label owner.
But there has been negative comment. Last week I read an article by an otherwise sane and respected musician and journalist who said that downloading music free was like %u201Cdownloading air%u201D, implying that because you can%u2019t see it, it should be free. He also said that it is %u201Cso cheap to get recorded music to the audience that artists no longer need a major label%u201D.
Hating major labels is about as useful as hating film companies and supermarkets. They exist. There will always be dominant players, but there are also about 800 independent record labels in the UK including my own, Dramatico, which has 14 staff and a network of about 50 freelancers around the world. Without the toil and passion of my employees my artists wouldn%u2019t be selling records. Without payment for the music made by our artists we wouldn%u2019t be able to pay our staff. Then the staff would leave and so would the artists.
If you could download a loaf of bread free you would. But you can%u2019t, thank God, because otherwise bakers would cease to exist and there would be no bread to download. Then we%u2019d all be dead, and good riddance to us, because we humans are greedy, thieving, conniving bastards, every last one of us. That%u2019s why there are laws to stop us.
It is tempting to top up your profile by giving your music away free on the web, or as Prince did, by means of a newspaper cover-mounted giveaway to millions of people (his previous album had sold fewer than 90,000 copies in the UK).
But let%u2019s not forget that Prince was paid handsomely for the stunt (at least �150,000). Equally Radiohead, who last year set up an honesty box for their Mercury-nominated album, In Rainbows, had already made millions with their previous albums, so you could argue they could afford to ask people to pay what they wanted to. And anyway, without being being cynical about their motivation, the %u201Cexperiment%u201D also wasn%u2019t bad in attracting attention for the physical release of the CD, which followed a few months later.
It%u2019s nothing new that the entertainment business is %u201Cdog eat dog%u201D. When I came up to London three times a week on the train from Winchester in 1968, a hopeful 18-year-old trying to sell my songs or get signed by, well, anyone really, there were four majors %u2013 EMI, Pye, Phillips and Decca. And there are four today %u2013 EMI, Universal, Warners, Sony/BMG and Universal. It was just as difficult to have a hit then as it is now. Just as hard to get noticed. The business was just as full of arrogant charlatans with kind, helpful faces.
Today it%u2019s a different mixture, though, with different challenges and opportunities. Bands and artists can display their wares on YouTube and MySpace, and record companies can audition artists without even leaving their offices.
But, because of this easier access, telling wheat from chaff is more difficult. Record companies have it easier and harder. It%u2019s easier to get the music to the online customer, but harder to protect it from theft. New business models are being sought and invented all the time. ISPs talking to record companies in order to limit online music theft through their broadband channels is good news for everyone except those who think all music should be free and musicians should go out of business.
Saturday 6 February 2010
Friday 5 February 2010
Thursday 4 February 2010
Link from Twitterrific
SAP Launches a Google Wave for the Enterprise - http://mashable.com/2010/02/03/12sprints/
Tuesday 2 February 2010
Sunday 31 January 2010
Wednesday 27 January 2010
Essay Advice - Production
A few of you have asked me about the Production bit of this question - How has the internet affected production and distribution of the media.
Part of the difficulty is not as much (as distribution) yet in Film and Music (think about News where lots is now being produced by amamteurs on Blogs and Youtube - lost more interactivity with audience etc) - it is fine for you to make this comparison - don't go in to too much detail about News though.
But there are impacts -
Prosumers - far more people are producing - Youtube etc - the barriers to being a producer are less - leads to surprising hits and more people being involved in producing
This links to the Long Tail - there are now more producers producing for a Niche audience - they can therefor produce music in alternative genres and stil make a living form it
Web 2.0 means you can get feeedback and interact with audience - again breaks down barriers
Producers now collaborate more online - especially with film in finding funding and sharing resources and ideas
in music their is the idea of the e-session where artists put there early versions up on line and other artists do their own verisons or help improve it
The future
producing for convergence - eg films for different screens - films that will suit small screens - short films have already got more of an audience through the internet.
involving users in the production - Games are on the verge of looking as real as films and you can interact with them - will we end up that we write ourselves into films/games and interact with the actors - we already have DVDs with alternative endings
This should be plenty - but it is fine to talk much more about distribution as it is haaving more impact there at moment.
Some exmaples to have a look at which are relevant to consumption as well
An Inconvenient Truth - there is a community that is built up around the film online - probably more improtant to the consumers of the film than just watching it
Open Cinema - an Orange film project produced Elephant's Dream - an open source project where people could contrbute financially or get involved http://orange.blender.org/press
Swarm of Angels - online collaboration for film - http://aswarmofangels.com/
Part of the difficulty is not as much (as distribution) yet in Film and Music (think about News where lots is now being produced by amamteurs on Blogs and Youtube - lost more interactivity with audience etc) - it is fine for you to make this comparison - don't go in to too much detail about News though.
But there are impacts -
Prosumers - far more people are producing - Youtube etc - the barriers to being a producer are less - leads to surprising hits and more people being involved in producing
This links to the Long Tail - there are now more producers producing for a Niche audience - they can therefor produce music in alternative genres and stil make a living form it
Web 2.0 means you can get feeedback and interact with audience - again breaks down barriers
Producers now collaborate more online - especially with film in finding funding and sharing resources and ideas
in music their is the idea of the e-session where artists put there early versions up on line and other artists do their own verisons or help improve it
The future
producing for convergence - eg films for different screens - films that will suit small screens - short films have already got more of an audience through the internet.
involving users in the production - Games are on the verge of looking as real as films and you can interact with them - will we end up that we write ourselves into films/games and interact with the actors - we already have DVDs with alternative endings
This should be plenty - but it is fine to talk much more about distribution as it is haaving more impact there at moment.
Some exmaples to have a look at which are relevant to consumption as well
An Inconvenient Truth - there is a community that is built up around the film online - probably more improtant to the consumers of the film than just watching it
Open Cinema - an Orange film project produced Elephant's Dream - an open source project where people could contrbute financially or get involved http://orange.blender.org/press
Swarm of Angels - online collaboration for film - http://aswarmofangels.com/
Sunday 24 January 2010
Last exam advice
Revision.
A reminder - you should be preparing a model essay for this question - What difference has the internet had on the distribution and production of the Media. Remember to use examples from music and film.
look at the post with examples of paragraphs and the notes that 12b took in the lesson.
The mark scheme and an example of what the paper will look like are also up on the blog.
Also prepare at least a detailed plan of the essay on convergence I gave you a title for last week (it is on the example paper).
Go through the blog looking for examples to back up your points - I have just put up a post about the Digital Economy Bill - also look a the links on the right especially about debates about impact on downloading and music of media.
If you feel yoou would like more ion film have a look at this film -
http://www.fest21.com/en/video/berlinale_keynotes_film_20_is_cinema_toast
A reminder - you should be preparing a model essay for this question - What difference has the internet had on the distribution and production of the Media. Remember to use examples from music and film.
look at the post with examples of paragraphs and the notes that 12b took in the lesson.
The mark scheme and an example of what the paper will look like are also up on the blog.
Also prepare at least a detailed plan of the essay on convergence I gave you a title for last week (it is on the example paper).
Go through the blog looking for examples to back up your points - I have just put up a post about the Digital Economy Bill - also look a the links on the right especially about debates about impact on downloading and music of media.
If you feel yoou would like more ion film have a look at this film -
http://www.fest21.com/en/video/berlinale_keynotes_film_20_is_cinema_toast
Notes from 13b lesson
Here are your revision notes from the lesson on Friday inclding Ruby and Chantelles about the 1a and 1b questions - you might need to go to full screen to read the A3 ones.
Student Notes From Lesson
Student Notes From Lesson
Sample paragraphs
These are the sample paragraphs we put together for the essay - What differences have the internet made to the production and distribution of the media.
Sample Paragraphs
Sample Paragraphs
Saturday 23 January 2010
@mashable, 24/01/2010 18:05
 Pete Cashmore (@mashable)24/01/2010 18:05 What the Web of Tomorrow Will Look Like: 4 Big Trends to Watch - http://bit.ly/5QDePL |
Sent with Tweetie
@mashable, 23/01/2010 02:22
| Pete Cashmore (@mashable) 23/01/2010 02:22 YouTube Working to Bring Major Studios to its Movie Rental Service - http://bit.ly/7sX736 |
Sent with Tweetie
Thursday 21 January 2010
Wednesday 20 January 2010
Friday 15 January 2010
Independent movies online
http://www.indiemoviesonline.com/
Look at how they fund this- royalites are paid to the producers. Notice how many short films are on there.
Look at how they fund this- royalites are paid to the producers. Notice how many short films are on there.
Thursday 14 January 2010
Digital economy bill promises action on piracy, games and ITV regional news | Media | guardian.co.uk
A clampdown on unlawful online file-sharing, a push for the switchover to digital radio in 2015, tougher laws to stop children getting hold of violent video games and power for Ofcom over the provision of regional news on ITV are the highlights of a rather anaemic digital economy bill, to be published on Friday.
The bill, announced in the Queen's Speech today outlining this Labour government's final legislative programme, will also include a simplification of the UK's complex copyright laws, making it easier for people to use images on the internet without having to get permission.
"My government will introduce a bill to ensure communications infrastructure that is fit for the digital age, supports future economic growth, delivers competitive communications and enhances public service broadcasting," the Queen said in her speech.
The digital economy bill is due to be announced in parliament tomorrow, with full details published on Friday.
Some of the flagship Digital Britain initiatives are not in the bill because they require new tax measures to be introduced.
Plans for a £6-a-year tax on all phone lines to raise cash for the next generation of superfast broadband networks, which was the big surprise in June's final report, will be included in the pre-Budget report on 9 December.
The Treasury secretary, Stephen Timms, who took over responsibility for implementing Digital Britain from the former communications minister, Lord Carter, in the summer, has pledged that the next generation of superfast broadband networks, which will allow people to download movies in minutes and music in seconds, will be within the reach of 90% of UK households by 2017.
Meeting the government's ambition that everyone in the UK will have access to a basic broadband service with a speed of at least 2Mbps by 2012, which was the centrepiece of Lord Carter's interim report in January, does not require legislation.
Next month's pre-Budget report may also include a "cultural" tax break for the video games industry, which is struggling to compete with the financial incentives offered by rival countries such as Canada.
The UK could lose its place as home to the world's third largest video games industry this year, falling to fifth place before dropping into sixth in 2010, according to recent research by the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (Nesta), because of the favourable tax regimes being offered by other countries. Negotiations are still ongoing between the Treasury and the video games industry, which contributes more than £1bn to the country's annual GDP.
As a result, the most headline-grabbing part of the digital economy bill will be a clampdown on online piracy. Last month, Peter Mandelson set out the government's plans for a scheme which would see persistent online sharers of copyrighted material sent a series of warning letters before having their broadband connections slowed down or even suspended.
Music companies welcomed Mandelson's move, which goes further than the measures suggested by Carter in June's Digital Britain report, but internet service providers have warned that the cost of implementing the measures will outweigh the benefits.
There are also fears that innocent internet users could have their wireless broadband networks hijacked by pirates and fall victim to the tough new regime. One of the UK's largest internet service providers, TalkTalk, has already warned that it will launch legal action if the plan is put into action.
Many of the other measures in the digital economy bill, however, are less far-reaching. There are to be changes to the regulatory framework for the radio industry to make it easier to push for digital radio switchover in 2015, while the remit of Channel 4 will also be updated so that it includes the provision of public service content on all media platforms, including the web
The remit of Channel 4 will also be updated so that it includes the provision of public service content on all media platforms, including the web.
Communications regulator Ofcom will be given new powers so that it can appoint and fund new independent ITV regional news providers. The Digital Britain report called for the creation of independently funded news consortiums, which would plug the gap in regional news provision left by ITV's proposed withdrawal from regional news production.
Digital Britain said the £130m a year of BBC licence fee money currently used to pay for the most vulnerable to switch to digital TV should be used to fund ITV regional news programming. The digital economy bill, however, will leave unanswered the question of exactly how the consortiums will be funded.
Earlier this week the Department for Culture, Media and Sport reiterated that it wants to trial regional news consortiums in 2010, with three pilots – in Scotland, Wales and one English region – funded from the money left over from the digital switchover licence fee fund.
But in response to a lengthy consultation on the issue, the department added that "the government's preference remains the contained contestable element but a final decision will be made before the licence fee settlement process in 2012".
As a result, even though the digital economy bill will give Ofcom the power to establish the regional news consortiums, exactly where the funds will come from to pay for them will be up to the next government. If the Conservative party wins next year's general election, it has already pledged to scrap the plan for ITV regional news provision.
Finally, the digital economy bill will change the way that video games are given age classifications, making age ratings compulsory for all boxed games designed for those aged 12 or above. The Digital Britain report in June called for rules to be introduced that would make it illegal to sell a video game rated 12 or over to an underage buyer, and take away the classification of games from the British Board of Film Classification.
The report included plans to introduce the PEGI or Pan-European Game Information system, already used in many EU states, as the sole method of classifying video games. It would replace the current hybrid system – which results in games with both a BBFC and PEGI stamp – under which the BBFC only had to classify games that depicted "gross violence or sexual content" while all other games were classified on a voluntary basis.
Instead, the report called for the Video Standards Council to take over age rating with all games having to be classified. Any developer making a false declaration about a game's content would face a fine of €500,000 (£425,000). The VSC will be able to ban games it believes are inappropriate for the UK market.
The current PEGI ratings are 3, 7, 12, 16 and 18. The 12 rating, for instance, allows violence of a slightly more graphic nature than would be found in, say, Tom and Jerry cartoons, but only towards fantasy characters. They can also include non-graphic violence towards human-looking characters or recognisable animals. The 12 rating also covers video games that show nudity of a slightly graphic nature but any bad language in this category must be mild and fall short of sexual expletives.
The digital economy bill is the culmination of the Digital Britain process begun by Carter in October last year.
Carter's ambition was to give the UK's creative industries – which he nicknamed "the poets" – both protection and support in the digital age, while also fostering investment in the next generation of digital infrastructure – which he nicknamed "the pipes".
However, while his final Digital Britain report in June was shot through with a grand ambition to create a new digital economy to would help lift the UK out of recession , the digital economy bill is more plumbing than poetry, in many places little more than a series of disconnected tweaks to existing legislation.
• To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
• If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
via guardian.co.uk
Wednesday 13 January 2010
Link from Twitterrific
CONFIRMED: Netflix is Coming to Nintendo Wii - http://mashable.com/2010/01/13/confirmed-netflix-is-coming-to-nintendo-wii/
Sent from my iPhone
Sent from my iPhone
Sunday 10 January 2010
The Big Question: First music, now film – so can the entertainment giants defeat piracy? - Big Question, Extras - The Independent
Why are we asking this now?
Last week an unfinished copy of the forthcoming summer blockbuster X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was leaked online and downloaded an estimated 100,000 times in just 24 hours.
Film studio 20th Century Fox called in the FBI and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to investigate the leak; but this week its affiliate news operation, Fox News, was forced to fire a columnist who admitted to downloading the film himself. Roger Friedman, who worked for the Fox News website for 10 years, wrote in his regular Thursday column that downloading the Wolverine movie was "much easier than going out in the rain" to see it in the cinema – it's released on 29 April.
What else is happening?
Related articles
In Stockholm, the young men behind the Pirate Bay – a Swedish file- sharing website that indexes links to pirated content from across the internet (including the Wolverine rough cut) – are awaiting the verdict in their trial for copyright infringement, which is due next week. The trial has generated considerable attention as a test case for future prosecutions of those who facilitate the distribution of illegal online content.
How does file sharing work?
Internet piracy began with Napster and its ilk, so-called "peer-to-peer" (PP) programmes that allowed two internet users to share files with one another. In 2000, Napster was successfully sued by the record companies and shut down, but in 2001 a new form of filesharing software was invented: Bit Torrent.
What is BitTorrent?
Rather than sharing files between two users, BitTorrent allows downloaders to collect pieces of a file from many users, simultaneously, across the entire file-sharing network. This "file-swarming" makes downloading more efficient, and much faster. Though BitTorrent itself is legal, it is inevitably used to share illegal content, such as pirated versions of films, music and games. With the advent of fast home broadband, millions of people are able to download entire, DVD-quality films in just a few hours. "Torrent portal" sites such as the Pirate Bay and Mininova (which is based in the Netherlands) do not actually host pirated BitTorrent files; they merely collate links to those files elsewhere on the internet. They would argue that they are merely search engines, much like Google, and thus should not take responsibility for the files their users choose to share.
How many people are involved in this illegal activity?
A lot. BitTorrent has more than 150 million users worldwide. The Pirate Bay has almost 3.5 million registered users, approximately 21.5 million unregistered users, and gets a billion page views per month. According to a 2006 study by the internet consultancy Envisional, filesharing networks account for at least 60 per cent of all internet traffic. In 2007, in the UK alone, more than 6 million people shared an estimated 98 million illegal downloads, and it is becoming ever easier for the average user to find pirated material online; The Pirate Bay recently created a "share on Facebook" function, allowing users to recommend downloadable content (legal or illegal) directly to their Facebook contacts.
Who is responsible for placing the content on the internet?
The Pirate Bay and Mininova are just two of many torrent tracking sites. And their content is provided by countless enthusiastic uploaders, who race to be the first to upload copies of a film to the net before its release. These anonymous pirates often mark their files with pseudonymous identity tags, such as FXG, Klaxxon and the most popular pirate of all: Axxo, a mysterious figure whose most uploaded films (recent Axxo titles include Role Models, Seven Pounds and Punisher: War Zone) are downloaded by up to a million users each week.
How much money does the entertainment industry lose every year?
Nobody really knows, whatever its representatives might claim. Large numbers are regularly cited, like £486m a year in lost revenue for British television and film-makers, or $18bn per year in losses to piracy for the global film industry. None of them are proven, and some rely on the shaky premise that each pirated copy of a film represents one lost ticket or DVD sale. Piracy might be booming, but so are box offices. The major studios suspect this year will be the first in which they reap $10bn in ticket sales. British cinema admissions are up 16 per cent on 2008.
Of course, piracy does considerably more damage to the home entertainment market. Hence DVD sales, which studios use to shore up the losses from any poor box office performances, continue to tank. Still, the most pirated film of 2008 was, according to the blog TorrentFreak.com, The Dark Knight, which was downloaded more than seven million times on BitTorrent. This didn't seem to hurt its box-office numbers, though; it was also the biggest-grossing film of the year, earning almost $1bn worldwide. And 3 million copies of the DVD were sold on its first day in the shops.
What can be done to stop this?
In January Lord Carter, the communications minister, drafted legislation that would require internet service providers (ISPs) to issue warnings to users suspected of sharing illegal files. Should they persist, the offenders would be reported to the entertainment industry and rights holders, who could then take legal action. It remains to be seen whether such a law will succeed. A similar measure was recently scrapped in New Zealand after the parties involved failed to agree upon a code of conduct. The Swedish government has enacted a controversial new law allowing rights holders to acquire the names of internet users suspected of pirating their copyrighted material. In the US, a bill signed by his predecessor requires president Obama to nominate a copyright "czar" to oversee such issues, though he currently has more pressing appointments pending.
Has prosecution had any effect?
Generally speaking, the prosecution of individual downloaders has earned the entertainment industry few friends, and plenty of bad press. Prosecuting uploaders such as Axxo unfortunately requires them to be identified first. And sites such as The Pirate Bay, which provide a shop window for prospective pirates, can currently argue their innocence under the law.
Should they even bother trying to catch the perpetrators?
Piracy, by its nature, spots gaps in the mainstream market and exploits them. It may prove simpler not to stop pirates at all, but to beat them at their own game – and the film industry could do worse than following the example of the music industry.
What has the music industry done?
iTunes produced a legitimate alternative to illegal MP3s, and quickly became the world's biggest music store, on or off-line. Radiohead, to the dismay of their former label EMI, cut out the middlemen and distributed their album In Rainbows themselves using an online, pay-what-you-want system. Experts suspect the band made more money from In Rainbows than from their previous six albums combined. Now, ad-supported free music streaming sites such as Spotify and Last.FM have provided a new, legitimate model for music sharing that would have been impossible without the innovations generated by piracy.
Is online piracy always a bad thing?
Yes...
*Piracy causes huge losses to the entertainment industry and puts the jobs of countless workers at risk
*Without any income, the film and music industries will be unable to produce or distribute films or music
*Artists deserve to be remunerated for their work. Piracy is theft, plain and simple
No...
*Piracy forces the entertainment industry to innovate and modernise its practices to match the market
*If at least 6 million Britons are breaking copyright law every year, it's the law that needs changing
*The extent of piracy's effect on profits remains unproven. They told us home taping was killing music
BBC News - Downloads up as album sales drop
Susan Boyle's I Dreamed A Dream was the biggest-selling album in the UKAlbum sales continued to fall last year, despite being boosted by a growth in digital downloads, figures show.
Statistics released by trade body the BPI showed overall album sales dropped by 3.5% in 2009 to 128.9 million, the fifth year in a row they have fallen.
But the fall was eased by a 56.1% rise in album downloads to 16.1 million, now accounting for one in eight sold.
The news comes days after weekly sales of singles - on CD and download - recorded an all-time high.
An unprecedented 4.22 million singles were sold in the last week of 2009 - more than in any previous week. The sales boom was put down to the use of new MP3 players received as Christmas presents, as music fans downloaded a wide range of tracks, old and new.
Across the entire year, singles sales increased by 32.7% to a record 152 million, with 98% of those being digital downloads.
And downloads of entire albums have helped cushion the declining sales of albums on CD - down a fifth since 2004 - the figures from the BPI showed.
Disappeared retailers
The BPI said the album market was aided by a "healthy stream" of releases from artists such as Susan Boyle, Lady Gaga, Michael Buble, JLS and Robbie Williams.
However, downloads are not generally as profitable to the industry as physical products. And despite the healthy state of singles sales, these do not usually generate significant profits for record companies, who look to album sales to recoup the investments they make in up-and-coming bands and singers.
To add to the woes of the sector, two of the best known music retailers - Woolworths and Zavvi - collapsed last year.
BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor said: "Despite difficult trading conditions and the ever-present competition from illegal downloading, UK music sales remained relatively resilient during 2009.
"While sales of physical CDs continue to trend downwards, music fans are clearly responding to the explosive growth of digital retailers and outlets selling and streaming music in the UK. 2009's record singles result is clearly encouraging."
Kim Bayley, director general of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said: "2009 started on a low note after the collapse of Woolworths and Zavvi, but entertainment retailers across the board worked with their suppliers to end the year with a far better result than anyone had expected."
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BBC News - Singles sales soar to record high
Entertainment reporters, BBC News
Lady Gaga's latest single Bad Romance is the current UK number oneMP3 players given as presents have helped boost UK single sales to an all-time high in the week after Christmas.
According to Official Charts Company figures, 4.22m singles were sold in the last week of 2009, beating the previous record of 4.03m over Christmas 2008.
And the Christmas chart battle between X Factor and Rage Against the Machine may also have had an effect.
"It has opened up people to downloading who may never have done before," said Music Week editor Paul Williams.
Lady Gaga was named on Sunday as last week's top-selling singles artist as Bad Romance returned to the number one spot. X Factor winner Joe McElderry's single The Climb went down to number two.
Williams told the BBC that the growth in the download market had changed the way that consumers behaved immediately after Christmas.
"It used to be on Christmas Day you'd have your lunch and maybe go for a brisk walk or settle down and watch the afternoon film," Williams said.
"Now, increasingly, people are going online to buy - particularly if they have got an MP3 player for Christmas and they want to feed their new gadget."
'Opposite effect'
Download sites took advantage of the Rage Against The Machine chart battleHe added: "It used to be the case that the week after Christmas was pretty dead in terms of chart activity. Very few shops were open and people were really busy doing other things.
"But because there is this online element now - particularly with the singles chart which is almost exclusively download now - it has the opposite effect that people are buying more in the week after Christmas than they would ordinarily be."
Digital sales now account for around 98% of the singles market. The BPI, which represents UK record labels, has said it expects total single sales in 2009 to exceed 150 million.
The previous all-time record of 115.1 million was set in 2008. Final figures for 2009 will be published later this week.
Williams said that Joe McElderry's single bucked the download trend in that most were sold in a physical format. The Rage Against the Machine song was download only.
"We have in the market one particular outlet in iTunes that really dominates, but what happened with RATM was that other online players were cashing in - and therefore they were not only generating more business for themselves but increasing the size of the market overall."
But while the singles market is on record-breaking form, album sales have been in decline. According to Music Week last week's sales were 3.16 million - almost 12% lower than the same period last year.
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BBC News - How internet-based music services make their money
BBC
Online music services generate revenue through a combination of download sales, advertising and subscription.
Since the launch of Apple's iTunes in 2003, digital music has become big business.
A number of new music services have sprung up on the internet, offering legitimate opportunities for people to listen to or buy tracks online.
With the government's digital economy bill threatening heavy action against persistent piracy, legal music services are hoping to increase their appeal.
But digital music is still not the road to riches for musicians.
"Bands should not be under the illusion that they can plan a tour of (say) North America based on digital revenues," says Will Page, Chief Economist at PRS for Music.
"What digital can provide, though, is new information on where demand is, and more options on how you want to distribute your content. There is an element of irony here, in that digital monies won't pay for your tour, but digital data will tell you where your fans are."
The three main ways of accessing music legitimately online are through streaming, downloading or subscription services.
STREAM ONLINEMusic lovers can search for, and listen for free to the music they want using streaming services such as We7, Spotify, Myspace Music, and last.fm.
Of these offerings, We7 and Spotify have the largest range of music available - Spotify has almost 7m songs in its catalogue and claims to be adding 10,000 tracks a day.
Spotify and We7 have advertisement-based business models for their streaming services and will regularly stream short adverts before or in between songs.
Spotify lets users skip the adverts for a monthly fee (£9.99), while We7, co-founded by musician Peter Gabriel, rewards frequent listeners with occasional advert-free days.
MySpace Music and last.fm don't play adverts with the music, but they do display adverts across the website while tracks are playing - click away from the page, and the song stops.
Spotify is the only service that does not let users listen via a webpage - instead offering computer programmes and smart phone applications.
"Streaming online is very flexible," says Paul Stoke, associate editor at NME. "You don't need to ever have any records banked - it's realistic to think that you can listen to most music that's available."
For Mr Stokes, the downside is speed when on the move.
"If you want to listen on a mobile, you're reliant on how quickly the data will download - it's liable to interruptions," he adds.
BUYING DOWNLOADSA myriad of online stores, including 7digital, Amazon, HMV, Orange, Play, SkySongs, Tesco, TuneTribe, and We7, sell tracks as downloads, usually in MP3 format.
Customers can pay anything from 29p to £1 to download a single track, or between £4 to £12 for an album (or a collection of songs).
Price comparison sites such as tunechecker.com can reveal the cheapest prices for a particular piece of music.
"It's the traditional way if you can call it that - basically once you buy it the track is yours," says Mr Stokes.
"DRM (Digital Rights Management) is removed more and more, or you can pay extra for DRM free - that means you can put it on different players. It's closer to owning a physical copy of a record and playing it wherever you like."
Real music lovers however will need large hard drives.
"Downloads take up loads of memory space," adds Mr Stokes. "You will fill up your MP3 player quickly."
And because of the bitrate sampling speeds, some audiophiles may feel that their copy is of a lower quality than the original.
SUBSCRIPTIONA third option for music fans is to pay a monthly fee for an unlimited streaming service from companies like Napster, SkySongs or Spotify.
Prices start from £5 per month, and can include the option to download a limited number of tracks to an individual computer.
Paying upfront for music removes the temptation to click beyond the budget when a lot of good tunes come out, says Paul Stokes.
"The downside is that you will only get music from that source - so if they don't have a deal with a certain record label you might not get the music you want. It also means you're less likely to shop around and get a good deal."
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