SHELLY PALMER REPORT: Shameless, Illegal & Not Possibly Profitable: Browsing QuickSilverScreen.com

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When it comes to file-sharing, piracy, bootlegging or whatever name you like to call the act of infringing on other people’s intellectual property (IP) rights there is a general rule: Those with more time than money, steal -- those with more money than time, buy. Although it is a gross over-simplification of a very complex issue, it has certainly held true for the music industry as well as most other content that is packaged as “download-to-own.”

Chapter and verse has been written about the promotional value of pirated content. There’s an entire bookshelf about the process of discovery and how it is helped by bootleggers and social networks. In fact, I have personally argued both sides of this issue for various clients over the years. Let us not argue this point today. Suffice it to say; woefully inadequate as our copyright laws might be, they are the law. Sharing files outside of the legal concept of “fair use” is a violation of the current statute.

The RIAA simply loves filing lawsuits against suspected lawbreakers. In fact, rightholders of all kinds have been suing people and companies for the past few years: Viacom is suing YouTube, EMI is suing Google, and Veoh has been in Universal Music Group’s crosshairs. The list is not endless, but it is very long.

In late 2006, Fox noticed a website called QuickSilverScreen.com (QSS) and they were pretty upset. It was the year of online video and YouTube was all the rage. There was a ton of bootleg content online and lawyers were working overtime to get a handle on it.

It was clear that copyrighted content that was uploaded without the copyright holder’s permission was problematic. What was less clear was the legality or illegality of linking to that content. This was QSS’s gimmick. They created a website that simply linked to content from other sites. In this case, most of the content was pirated video from other sites, but – at least in QSS’s mind, they had found a loophole.

Fox came down on QSS like a ton of bricks and forced the site owner to “give the site away.” I remember this story pretty well, if you take a few minutes to Google it, you can grab all the details.

I haven’t really thought about QSS since then, but today a friend sent me an email with a link http://quicksilverscreen.com/watch?video=25043 to the full version of iRobot (yes, the movie starring Will Smith from 2004) and a quizzical, “This has to be illegal, doesn’t it?”

A quick click and I was watching a full screen, extraordinary high resolution, DivX stream of iRobot. (You may need to download the DivX codec or player for your browser, it only takes a second. The page says that the movie is hosted by Page6.com and that you may need to download the player. For me, the embedded player worked just fine.)

A DivX stream of a pirated movie. Big deal. Obviously, this is not news. This type of stuff has been going on since online video has been available. But, if you have a decent broadband connection, you should treat yourself to an up-close, personal view of high quality piracy. It is very instructive to emotionalize the experience. This is not a small, grainy, low- resolution picture – it rocks! I’ve had television sets that did not tune in a picture this good.

Now, here’s the truly unfortunate part. The only money associated with this particular value chain is the cost of the bandwidth to serve the video. There is no advertising revenue, no subscription money, no pay-per-view – nothing. The people responsible for this particular experience are doing it because they can. Of course, they are also stealing from the rightsholders and breaking the law, but this is not news either. The geekiest among us have been illegally downloading HD-quality movies for years. This is different for only one reason – at QSS today, you don’t need to be a geek to be an exceptional pirate.

Printing presses have been around for well over a thousand years. And, although scholars identify the “Diamond Sutra” (circa 868 AD), as the earliest printed book, the art of printing most likely predates this work. In 1041, movable clay type was first invented in China and, more known to western culture, Johannes Gutenberg invented his famous movable type printing press in 1436.

By 1450, Gutenberg was printing up a storm and, if asked, he would not have had a problem creating a personalized, printed letter addressed to every land owner in Germany’s Rhine Valley. The cost, a day’s wages for a master and an apprentice for several years, would not have been a practical use of time or money. Thankfully, for everyone, junk mail was not invented until the beginning of the 20th Century when Mr. Sears created his first “direct mail” campaign. The cost of personalization was still out of reach. Your name was “occupant” and, if you were greeted with a letter, you were “Dear Friend” or “Dear Customer.”

It was not until the advent of the high-speed laser printer (circa 1977) that serious

personalization became so inexpensive that there was no reason not to treat every piece of printed matter as if it were a personal, one-to-one communication.

Yes, the printing press profoundly changed human behavior from 1436 to 1977, but its evolution from a movable wooden type printing press to high-speed laser printer enabled an entirely new set of behaviors and completely destroyed several businesses that were part of the value chain. Has anyone ordered any photo type recently? If you are under the age of 20, you have probably never even heard the term.

Online streaming video has been around for over a decade (that’s a hundred years in Internet time). QSS in and of itself is no more or less dangerous to the content business than any other file-sharing, file-linking site. What’s bothersome is the exceptional quality of the bootleg content and the advent of the emotionally satisfying, newbee-easy interface. More people will have faster broadband connections tomorrow than have them today. More people will have better computers with better video cards tomorrow than have them today. When honest people can make honest mistakes and enjoy themselves while breaking the law and stealing from you – things need to be rethought.

By the way, I’m not sure if you are breaking the law by watching iRobot online through QSS. Actually, I am sure -- you’re breaking the law. See how easy it is to be a casual criminal. I bet you didn’t think you had it in you.

Shelly Palmer is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2006, Focal Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy® Awards). He is the Vice-Chairman of the National Academy of Media Arts & Sciences an organization dedicated to education and leadership in the areas of technology, media and entertainment. Palmer also oversees the Advanced Media Technology Emmy® Awards which honors outstanding achievements in the science and technology of advanced media. You can read Shelly's blog here. Visit Shelly's website at www.ShellyPalmerMedia.com or reach Shelly at shelly@palmer.net


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