Bezos: Removing DRM Enables Sharing

Sharing music: a legitimate consumer behavior? That's what I pick-up in this answer that Amazon's Jeff Bezos gave SmartMoney in an interview published yesterday:

SM: Music downloads are available through your Amazon mp3 store. Is there room for more price competition with Apple, the market leader?

Bezos: We are already heavily competing. Apple sells a song at 99 cents, versus our 89 cents. Plus ours are DRM [digital rights management]-free, so that they can be shared. We are also deeply discounting albums through our "Daily Deals."

I mean, although we have heard the voices of many pro-sharing activists on the Web for years, it is not often that you see music sharing sanctioned on the record by the CEO of a company that has deals with music labels at the foundation of its online music sales business.

Thank you Jeff Bezos for sparing us the usual hypocrisy on the subject matter. I see this as a change of business/political attitude in the industry, which bodes well for the future of online sharing being recognized as legitimate.

Social Networks Are Thankful For Their Users... Or Is It the Other Way Around?

Thanksgiving day has finally arrived so it's time to celebrate with your loved ones and to say what you're thankful for!

It has now become a tradition for popular Websites and social networks to do the same by adopting a festive design in tune with each occasion. Below, you can enjoy some of the logos from Google, FriendFeed and Yahoo:

FriendFeed even accompanied its logo with the following sentence:

"We're thankful for you, our users and friends!"

And it got me thinking. It seems logical that a social network would be thankful for its users since it's the users who enable the social platform to exist. But I've also noticed how some social tools such as Twitter and Facebook, to name a few, have changed people's way of communicating and of exchanging information.

So I'm asking you, who do you think should be more thankful? The social networks or their users?

And if you feel like giving something back, I hear that Twitter has cooked up a way for you to make a gesture, by donating to the fundraising to build a classroom in Tanzania. It's all happening on TweetsGiving.

Have a happy thanksgiving everyone! :-)

For EMI, DRM Means "I Don't Trust Fans"

DRM-free music is making its way to iTunes via a major music label and without increasing piracy.

We've been writing a lot about music in the past few months so it's only fair that we talk a little bit about some music label companies that are evolving towards the digital era instead of only fighting it.

In that sense, the EMI Group (Electric & Musical Industries) comes to mind since it describes EMI Music as "a leader in recognizing the opportunities in the digital age to connect its music with fans".

Billboard recently interviewed three EMI executives, Elio Leoni-Sceti, Nick Gatfield and Douglas Merrill to talk about their company and how it fits in the music industry.

When asked about putting DRM-free music on iTunes, Merril answered:

"It gets people engaged with the art in a whole new way by getting rid of artificial rules-like we don't trust you, so I'm not going to give you this content. It just sort of set the wrong tone with our customers."

And when asked about its impact on piracy, he added:

"The pirates are doing a busy business regardless. The best way to get a pirated copy probably isn't to buy it from iTunes and then push it."

We couldn't agree more with his DRM statement! DRM is sending the wrong message to the consumers and its complete disappearance in the music industry as well as in the game industry, for which it is also only hurting the business instead of helping it, would be a great step forward.

Will Monetizing Torrent Videos Help or Kill Mininova?

Hyper MP is a new technology trialled by one of the biggest torrent index to monetize torrent videos through small inserted clickable ads.

Hyper MP, which is a "digital video monetization and solutions provider", is being tried by Mininova in order to attract more legal distributors to distribute their content on their platform.

Battle Therapy, an amateur feature length Australian comedy, is being used for the test run of this technology which, if successful, could enable users "to download and watch licensed movies and TV shows for free".

This sounds great even if we can deplore the lack of Linux and Mac OS support and if Web users have expressed some reservations such as the need to register to play the file, the integrated media player and the fact that it is an .exe file which is unusual for a video.

This last point is all the more significant since an executable file can deliver viruses, so it may scare users in the beginning, especially since there are other initiatives to advertise through torrents which have  turned out to be spams.

Indeed PeerMatrix, for example, presented itself as a revolutionary technology whereas it was in fact an ingenious scam that generates a fake file under the exact same name of any searched query, no matter the type of the file, making people download ads, spams and even potentially viruses.

The line between ads and spams is rather thin and we can understand people's unwillingnesses to welcome yet another advertisement project. However, the future of television is on the Web so any new approach to try to legally gather media and advertisers into the BitTorrent world must be considered with an open mind. Besides, file sharing softwares represent 200 million users so we can see the temptation to target them.

So now the question that remains is: "will people keep downloading torrents if ads are added?" If the technology used is legitimate as Hyper MP seems to be, I could see it working in time. However it will face many reluctances, not just from users who partially turned to the Web to escape ads, but also from big media distributors who are very late in embracing P2P technologies.

We'll have to wait to see if any big movie is released this way and to see if people actually give this technology a chance or if they'll just turn to an ad-free alternative, maybe on another torrent platform...

Credits

Creative Commons wants to Use Private Rights to Create Public Goods - Great Find: Democracy Now!

Democracy Now! is now being distributed via a Creative Commons license, making it available for anybody on the Web!

Democracy Now! is "a daily TV/radio news program, hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, airing on over 750 stations, pioneering the largest community media collaboration in the U.S."

The show is well-known for the depth of its investigations and the high reputation of its interviewees. Besides, the value of Democracy Now! has been recognized through several press awards.

Thus this quality news program will be added to the long list of CC content that will bring us closer and closer to a greater access of digital media.

In that sense, one of CC sentences caught my eye: "we use private rights to create public goods". So everybody wins! ;-)

Bridging the Gap Between Web & P2P

That is what we do at VIPeers: make sure that sharing files and downloading content is easy and efficient for users, whether it is on the Web or on P2P networks.

We have made one big step at the beginning of the month when we opened the Preview of VIPeers online with invitation codes that lasted a few days. For the first time, a hosting service makes it as easy and efficient to share using BitTorrent as it is to share using http. Work on this online service is moving forward and I hope soon the major bugs will be fixed and some cool features will be added.

I can't help but share some of the excitement as we have another VIPeers breakthrough cooking up. First episode happened online in your browser. In the second episode, pretty soon you will see what VIPeers means on the desktop.

Stay tuned, I will release some more invites on Monday or Tuesday.

Kill Freaky Creatures Without Getting Your Hands Dirty by Playing Army of the Dead

Do you enjoy shooting games? If the answer is "yes" then I invite you to try Army of the Dead, a great shooting game developed by our Pictogame team. ;-)

I brought here what Chloe had to say about it on the Pictogame's Blog:

"Guys, I've got good news for you... our latest released game, Army Of The Dead is now available! You love zombies, you love guns? You will love Army Of The Dead!

Description: In this game, you’re a member of a very special unit: kill all the freaky creatures and save your life!

Instructions: Find your enemies weak points and shoot them before they kill you. Use 'a' key to switch between your gun, shotgun and machine gun, press 'space bar' to reload. 5 levels, 7 types of enemies and 6 medals to win.

With awesome graphics and sounds, this game will make every bloody games lovers thrill... So check it out here! Don't hesitate to leave your scores or any comment there too! We're always pleased to hear from our users.

Have fun playing this devilish game!"

So kill freaky creatures without getting your hands dirty by playing Army of the Dead!

And if you've enjoyed this game, don't hesitate to rate, comment and spread the love on Pictogame but also on Kongregate and any of your social platforms, we'd really appreciate it! ;-)

Ian Rogers sees the Drop of Value of CD Sales and Says: "I don't care"

The Grammy MusicTech Summit 2008 started with a keynote speech delivered by a music passionate, Ian C Rogers (see picture below), that you can find on the Topspin blog.

Ian Rogers started by giving a quick presentation of himself to explain his fondness of music and his journey that led him to work for Topspin, a media technology company.

He continued by talking about the evolution of the music industry from physical CD to digital music. But he did not deplore the decrease of CD sales, on the contrary!

"Continuing to talk about the health of the music industry on these terms is as if we’d all been crying about the dying cassette business in 1995."

He then gave some figures to show that people's love for music is not declining and that people aren't unwilling to pay for it either. According to Ian Rogers, the music business now needs to focus more on the artists and the fans, which seems like an obvious fact although it hasn't become a reality yet.

So I invite you all to read the entire speech which is really inspiring to artists and a breath of fresh air for music fans. ;-)