Why the Net really doesn't need SOPA / PIPA Legislation

As some of you may know, there are bills wending their way (successfully, it appears) through the United States legislative process that will force search engines and ISPs to become tools of censorship. Basically, the record companies, film studios, and pharmaceutical companies are worried about their intellectual property.

I am too. I lived off've the avails of music publishing for quite some time, and I think the rights of the artists who create music, film, and yes, even drugs are immutable.

The rights of the companies that distribute them? Not so much.

Nine Inch Nails gave their last album, the Slip, away for free, and also had the opportunity for fans to pay for it. Guess what? They made a mint from the sales, and it charted at #13 on Billboard. Trent Reznor has also given away music from other projects he has been involved in, including the two soundtracks for The Social Network and Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Recently, comedian Louis C.K. tried an experiment wherein he sold a show, circumventing big media, for $5 - direct to his fans. Guess what? He made money at it!

In what is probably the worst, and best marketing email I've ever received, he explains the hows and whys (below).

my point ultimately is that film studios and record companies are dinosaurs in their death throes - and they fail to understand the new sales paradigm that is now in place. Things will change, over time, but in the meanwhile, the geriatrics in the United States legal system are trying to ensconce the anachronistic way of doing business into law. And in the process, breaking the Internet, according to MAAWG.org and 80 people who actually helped to create the technologies that underpin this fun thing we all enjoy.

Here's Louis C.K.'s email, which I think is absolutely brilliant, and proves my point.

Hi.  This is LOuie.  It seriously is me. Im even going to leave the O stuipdly capatalized because who would pay an intern to do that?? Okay so you bought the thing with my fat face on it and you clicked the button that said i could email you. And i know that now you are thinking "aw shit. Why'd i let this guy into my life this way?". Well dont worry. Because i really swear it that i wont bug you. I will not abuse this privalage of having your email. You wont hear from me again... Probably, unless i have something new to offer you. The reason i'm writing now, in the back of a car taking me to the Tonight Show set, is to let you know that as of now there is some new and cool stuff on my site, related to Live at the Beacon Theater. Theres a thing where you can download and print a dvd box cover and label so you can burn and make your own dvd of the video. And theres a new option where you can gift the special to as many people as you want (for 5 bucks each) and they'll get a nice gifty email from you with a link to the video.

Also, some of you may know, i recently made a statement (that sounds so dumb. Like i'm the president or something) about how the video has been doing online. Im pasting it in here below in case you missed it.

Lastly I'm planning to put some more outtakes of the show on youtube and i think i will put one on the site that is only available for free to you folks on this list, who bought the thing and opted in. But dont hold me to that because really i just thought of it and typed it.

Okay well please have a happy rest of the year and more happy years after that. And please even have been happy in your past. What?

Thanks again for giving me 5 dollars. I bought 3 cokes with it.

Regards. Sincerely, Actually,

Louis

===========================
People of Earth (minus the ones who don't give a shit about this): it's been amazing to conduct this experiment with you. The experiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner?

It's been 4 days. A lot of people are asking me how it's going. I've been hesitant to share the actual figures, because there's power in exclusive ownership of information. What I didn't expect when I started this was that people would not only take part in this experiment, they would be invested in it and it would be important to them. It's been amazing to see people in large numbers advocating this idea. So I think it's only fair that you get to know the results. Also, it's just really cool and fun and I'm dying to tell everybody. I told my Mom, I told three friends, and that wasn't nearly enough. So here it is.

First of all, this was a premium video production, shot with six cameras over two performances at the Beacon Theater, which is a high-priced elite Manhattan venue. I directed this video myself and the production of the video cost around $170,000. (This was largely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at both shows). The material in the video was developed over months on the road and has never been seen on my show (LOUIE) or on any other special. The risks were thus: every new generation of material I create is my income, it's like a farmer's annual crop. The time and effort on my part was far more than if I'd done it with a big company. If I'd done it with a big company, I would have a guarantee of a sizable fee, as opposed to this way, where I'm actually investing my own money.

The development of the website, which needed to be a very robust, reliable and carefully constructed website, was around $32,000. We worked for a number of weeks poring over the site to make sure every detail would give buyers a simple, optimal and humane experience for buying the video. I edited the video around the clock for the weeks between the show and the launch.

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn't many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I'm really glad I put this out here this way and I'll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I'll do it here and I'll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction. (Of course i reserve the right to go back on all of this and sign a massive deal with a company that pays me fat coin and charges you straight up the ass.). (This is you: yes Louie. And we'll all enjoy torrenting that content. You fat sweaty dolt).

I probably sound kind of crazy right now. It's been a really fun and intense few days. This video was paid for by people who bought tickets, and then bought by people who wanted to see that same show. I got to do exactly the show I wanted, and exactly the show you wanted.

I also got an education. And everything i learned are things i was happy to learn. I learned that people are interested in what happens and shit (i didn't go to college)

I learned that money can be a lot of things. It can be something that is hoarded, fought over, protected, stolen and withheld. Or it can be like an energy, fueled by the desire, will, creative interest, need to laugh, of large groups of people. And it can be shuffled and pushed around and pooled together to fuel a common interest, jokes about garbage, penises and parenthood.

I want to thank Blair Breard who produced this video and produces my series LOUIE, and I want to thank Caspar and Giles at Version Industries, who created the website.

I hope with all of my heart that I stay funny. Otherwise this all goes to hell. Please have a safe and happy holiday, and thank you again for all this crazy shit.

Sincerely, Louis C.K.

J.D. Falk - Bad Pictures of Good Food

Death Didn’t Win

During the last months he spend with us, my friend and colleague J.D. Falk reacted to the death of a fellow cancer patient, Canadian New Democratic Leader party leader Jack Layton, with the same aplomb and approach he had his entire life.

Specifically, a columnist had noted, quite rightly, that Layton had not ‘lost a fight’ to cancer, and called for a better nomenclature related to the disease.

Jack Layton didn’t lose a fight: He died of cancer

Did Jack Layton die from cancer because he didn’t fight the disease hard enough?

Of course not.

It’s a common cliché, one many of us use when talking about a disease that is often feared and rarely understood.

But to those touched directly by cancer, equating the illness with a war against the enemy, fighting an adversary, or suffering in order to survive can diminish understanding of the challenges and complexities faced by patients and their families.

“The idea that he was waging a battle which he lost demeans him,” said Robert Buckman, a medical oncologist at Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto. “I absolutely feel that he did not lose to an adversary.”

J.D. wrote a note to us all on Facebook, announcing the terrible news that his treatments didn’t go as well as we had all hoped, and with his usual unflappable optimism and positive attitude he was far sicker than anticipated. But rather than wallow in self-pity, he also took his typically contrarian stance with the article above, agreeing with part, but providing additional insight

A few days ago I posted an article about Jack Layton, and how the "fight" against cancer is an unhelpful misnomer. There is some fight in the process, though. It's not a fight /against cancer/, but against all the things cancer evokes in us and in people around us: fear, negativity, worst-case-only statistics, the desire to just give up and die. Fear is natural, statistics underlie important research, but neither serves us well as a permanent lens on life.

 In the case of both these men, and in fact all of us when we die, death doesn’t win the fight of finality.

The departed leave a deep legacy with those that have known them: Our fond (and sometimes not-so-fond) memories of the person serve as a way to bridge the gap between life and death. The person who has passed is of course physically gone, but their memory endures, and provides us with comfort.

Time may try to rob me, all of us, of J.D., but nothing will ever diminish what remains in my mind; his gentle ‘hee hee’ when we exchanged a joke, our mutual passion for travel (we shared a pork sandwich on the side of the road in Bali, Indonesia that became legendary between us as the best lunch EVUR), and an agreed-upon dedication to the betterment of our society through our countless hours of work to that end. We both had a synergistic passion for music, and would gift one-another things to check out.

The things I shared with JD: Food (of which he took bad pictures), sushi, more food, more sushi, coffee (we once shared a cup of $30 coffee! OK, it was pooped out by Civet cats, but who the hell drinks $30 coffee?!? (it wasn't that good, BTW)), writing, … it is a list that somehow seems meaningless to enumerate, because it fails to express what one person means to another. Relationships are far more complex than a list of shared likes or dislikes. And so I’ll stop listing, because it is truly the shared experiences. Not the coffee itself, or our shared taste for it, but the experience drinking that coffee is what was and is most precious.

I’d be remiss to say that there is something about Jews. We have this thing about black humour, and that too is something J.D. and I shared, joking about his cancer, throughout his illness. I’m certain few could appreciate why we did so, and would have been horrified to listen in, but is was a coping mechanism we both shared, and happily so. There is no such thing as ‘too soon’ or ‘off limits’.

J.D. gave me my first speaking break in the Anti-spam Industry back in 1999 - I predicted, with Bill Gatsean-accuracy the end of spam within the year. Despite that, he let me speak again at other events he organized.

Some of the last moments we spend together were some of my best – when I recently won an award (and he had an active hand in my getting the award), J.D. was front and centre, despite his illness, a gesture for which I will be grateful to the end of my days. I found a new part of my family – J.D. was there for that, too. Those are instances in time that will never disappear, until I do.

J.D. was famously contrarian to those that knew him, particularly those that fell into an adversarial camp – he had no time for silliness, bureaucracy, or immorality, and would provide alternatives to puffery put forth by panjandrums, usually with frustratingly immutable logic, but always done in a calm, friendly manner. Here again, being one of those panjandrums, I often received a correction by my pal. A lingering memory, one I hold dear.

Death simply can’t end these memories; it failed to end J.D.’s life. J.D. and I often lived at opposite ends of the continent from one another, and these thoughts stood in his place when he was alive, as they do now with his death.

J.D.’s was a life incomplete, not because he hadn’t made a significant impact during his time with us, but because he was so energetic, and focused, he had a set of plans he hadn’t time to finish; something I envied of him. We had planned to buy a Villa in Bali. He had planned to finish two of my impenetrable documents, editing them to legibility. Oh, how I wish you were here for this one, old friend!

Death is seemingly monstrously final when it first occurs, but eventually the grief mutates into something bittersweet. It becomes a not-unpleasant place where we can go to visit our friends and loved ones, and share more time with them.

There is a wonderful story by a famous Polish-Jewish rebbe (teacher) called the Dubna Maggid, recounted to my Mother, Sister and I at my Father’s shiva by our Rabbi, I share it with all who have an aching heart over the loss of a friend, a loved-one:

A king had a large beautiful jewel, a ruby, especially precious to him because it was a gift from his deceased queen mother. Through some careless accident, the jewel was ruined by a deep scratch and the king was in despair about this. He called many experts to repair it. Some tried polishing. Some tried chemical solutions. Nothing worked.

A proclamation went out that if someone could remove that scratch the king would be indebted to him for a lifetime. Many tried and failed.

One day, a jeweler of humble demeanor came saying that he would like to try and the king, nearly giving up hope, turned it over to him.

Some weeks later the craftsman returned.

The scratch had not been removed, but the king was delighted because through his artistry the craftsman had turned the jewel into something far more precious than ever before.

On the surface of the jewel at the end of the scratch, he engraved a beautiful rose. The scratch had become the stem of the rose through that craftman's skill; a curse turned into a blessing beyond price.

The scratch on our hearts will heal in the fullness of time, and it is our job to turn that scratch into a rose, to keep J.D. alive in our memories, and to honour him by furthering the tenets he held dear: volunteerism, charity, kindness and wisdom, and applying them to make the world around us an incrementally better place, as it was when Jesse David Falk was with us. Simply put, honour his legacy by continuing it. 

I shall try.

120 Spam to An address stolen from out-law.com / Pinsent Masons

In March 2012 I began to receive spam to an address given only to out-law.com

I alerted them by way of editor matthew.magee@out-law.com, he told me they were looking into it, then went dead in response.

I upped the ante and copied in the following addresses on complaints, to no avail. chris.mullen@pinsentmasons.com, andrew.hornigold@pinsentmasons.com, kathy.jacob@pinsentmasons.com, iain.monaghan@pinsentmasons.com, michael.ryley@pinsentmasons.com, clive.seddon@pinsentmasons.com, colin.smith@pinsentmasons.com

Apparently Pinsent Masons & Out-law.com don't care enough to admit the issue and alert their subscribers.


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