me*dia*or

Well, it’s not been a good day; my less-than-six-month-old PowerBook appears to have eaten its hard drive.

The good news is that between moving everything up to Google Docs/Gmail/Google Calendar and doing hourly Time Machine back ups very little has been lost (though, I hadn’t done a Time Machine back up since Friday night). Knock Wood.

I’m using Marci’s MacBook until my appointment tomorrow with the ill-advisedly named “Geniuses” at the Apple Store. This requires me to get her machine to operate the way I like my machine to operate, which essentially means installing Quicksilver and getting my Triggers going.

Perhaps in a feeble attempt to overcome feeling helpless about my hard drive dying I decided to solve a problem I’ve had with Quicksilver that’s been bugging me for some time: my inability to figure out how to hide apps using a trigger.

Opening an app with a trigger is as easy as can be:

1. Pull up QS
2. hit command “;” to get to the preferences
3. go to Triggers
4. hit the “+” key
5. access the app you want to open in the top panel
6. tab to the second, “Action,” panel and (if it doesn’t already display it) hit “O” to coax the “Open” command to appear in the Action panel
7. Hit Save and then click on the Trigger section and put whatever keystroke you want as the trigger (if, like I do, you want to use the Function keys (F1, etc.), you’ll need go to the “Keyboard and Mouse” System Preference panel and check the box that says, “Use all F1, F2 keys as standard function keys”)

You can now use the function keys to pull up pretty much whatever you want; for me F1 pulls up Safari, F2: Firefox, F3: Tweetie, etc.

The problem I wanted to solve is that I’d like to be able to quickly hit a modified function key to hide these apps. For instance, I wanted to be able to hit [Command F1] to hide Safari after I’d used “F1″ to pull it up.

You’d think that’d be easy, and there may be an easier way than what I’ve come up with, but a little apple scripting goes a long way here.

To hide any app do the following:

1. Pull up QS as described above in steps 1 thru 4
2. Now in the top panel (”Select an item”) of QS type a period: “.” - this tells QS that you want to enter text
3. Use the following script and substitute whatever app you want to hide for where I have “Safari”:

tell application “System Events” to tell process “Safari” to set visible to false

4. You’ll note that as soon as QS realizes you’re putting a script into its first panel (via the words “tell application”) the second (”Action”) panel changes to “Run as AppleScript
5. Hit Save
6. As above, in Step 7, click on the keystroke area and enter in whatever key or key combination you want to use to, in this case, hide “Safari.” As I’ve said, I use a modifier of the key I use to open, so F1 opens safari and [command + F1] hides it

This may seem like a lot of trouble, but I promise you, those actions of moving your hands from your keyboard to your mouse and back again add up.

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We love our audio, there’s no doubt about that. Whether it’s music or a DVD we pop into our system, we love adding external speakers to heighten the experience. Now unless we’ve been able to find a portable sound system for our mobile devices, finding good portable speakers can be tough. There’s a lot of brands out there, but how do we know it’s going to give us what we’re looking for? It was not that look ago that we reviewed a product on here called Kerchoonz that basically turned surfaces into speakers for your sound. Now another product has entered the market that is much more aesthetically pleasing than the design of the Kerchoonz, and that’s the new Tunebug.

The new Tunebug uses Surface Sound Technology to give your audio that heightened sound you’re looking for by turning any surface into a speaker, but hollow surfaces work better. Retailing for $70, the Tunebug features a small triangular body of polished metal with an illuminated power button in the center. It comes with a standard 3.5mm input, but the real magic is the NXT-powered Surface Sound Speaker.

For use on your laptop, desktop, mp3 player, or mobile device it works to turn your environment into the speaker that you don’t have to carry with you. How’s that for a flat panel speaker?

• Durable MP3 Player for Kids
• Kerchoonz Turns Surfaces into Speakers
• Android Debuts on AT&T with Motorola Backflip
• Linkedin iPhone Update Offers More Functionality
• Blackberry Makes A Dick Tracy Watch?

The Pirate Bay was first ‘censored’ in Italy in the summer of 2008, when ISPs were ordered to prevent millions of Italians from accessing the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.

The Pirate Bay chose to appeal the decision and eventually won the court case. The Court of Bergamo ruled that no foreign website can be censored for alleged copyright infringement and the block was lifted temporarily as the case was appealed once again.

A few weeks ago the Supreme Court reviewed the case and ruled that ISPs can be forced to block BitTorrent sites, even if they are not hosted in Italy or operated by Italian citizens. According to the decision by the Supreme Court, sites offering torrent files that link to copyrighted material are engaging in criminal activity.

This week the case once again appeared before the Court of Bergamo where it was decided that all Italian ISPs will have to deny their customers access to The Pirate Bay.

Pirate Bay lawyers Giovanni Battista Gallus, Giuseppe Campanelli and Francesco Micozzi told TorrentFreak that the Court followed the same reasoning as the Supreme Court, and deemed it unnecessary to bring the case before the European Court of Justice.

According to the two lawyers The Pirate Bay is still considering whether to appeal this decision or not, but that will not prevent or delay the block. “We don’t know when Italian ISPs will begin to re-apply the Pirate Bay filters, but we think that this will happen very soon,” Micozzi commented.

Aside from appealing to the Supreme Court, the Pirate Bay’s legal team is also considering bringing the case before the European Court of Justice.

It is doubtful that the verdict will have a strong impact on the piracy rate in Italy. The proposed DNS-filtering scheme can be easily bypassed by Pirate Bay users and there are hundreds of alternative torrent sites that can replace The Pirate Bay.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

DigiProtect is a controversial anti-piracy company which also acts as a copyright holder in order to ease civil claims against alleged file-sharers in several countries across Europe. They track IP addresses on popular file-sharing networks, obtain the identities behind them and demand cash settlements.

A ruling by a court in Frankfurt on January 29th could now have put DigiProtect’s “Turn Piracy Into Profit” mass-warning business model into jeopardy.

An individual was sent a letter by the lawyer Udo Kornmeier on behalf of DigiProtect. The letter contained accusations of illicit file-sharing including a customary cash payment demand of around 651 euros to cover legal costs based on an infringement claim of 10,000 euros. It was accompanied by a demand to pay a further 150 euros in order to acquire a license from the copyright holder for the material downloaded.

While the file-sharer didn’t contest the 150 euro license fee, he refused to pay the 651 euros legal bill. DigiProtect’s lawyers countered with an offer for him to pay 450 euros plus the 150 euros license fee. Again the file-sharer rejected the offer.

DigiProtect then went on to sue the man for 651.80 euros and the case went to court.

In court the judge asked DigiProtect and its lawyers to open up their books to show what legal costs were actually incurred (and paid) to perform legal actions against the file-sharer and send him the letters. Both DigiProtect and their lawyer refused to submit the information.

During the hearing the judge discovered that the relationship between DigiProtect and its lawyers was covered by an agreement similar to the one it had previously with lawyers Davenport Lyons for their UK operations. The details of that arrangement were leaked out last year by a disgruntled insider and revealed some embarrassing truths about the operation.

DigiProtect and its German lawyer refused to allow the agreement between them to be shown in court which meant that the true costs of pursuing the file-sharer remained unproven.

The judge said that even if DigiProtect had paid 651.80 euros to its lawyers to pursue the file-sharer, these cannot be considered as involuntary damages since DigiProtect paid this fee to its lawyer voluntarily. Therefore the only involuntary damages in this case was the 150 euros rights holder licensing fee.

Due to this lack of transparency, the judge decided that the file-sharer did not have to pay DigiProtect the claimed 651.80 euros legal action costs, only the 150 euros licensing fee.

Clearly, if the lawyers can’t get their sizable share of the spoils in this “Turn Piracy Into Profit” operation, the whole business plan falls down. There was certainly no profit to be made from this file-sharer – time will tell if this effect ripples on to other cases.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

I was honored and excited to present on the topic of Managing, Measuring, and Marketing with Data for the MidemNet Academy last week in Cannes, France. I crafted the presentation to be more of an educational tool, which shares data from our Topspin direct to fan marketing campaigns and related best practices. There are links in the presentation to other resources and third party sites that are pertinent to the topic of marketing artists with data. Many thanks to Adam Bates and Vivek Agrawal on the Topspin team who mined all the data in this presentation.

The full presentation in its slide form is below. It reads better in full-screen and even more so if you download it in Powerpoint or PDF.

The point I highlight in the presentation is to approach your first direct to fan campaign as more of an investment in data gathering to understand your fanbase and less of a silver bullet for overnight marketing and distribution success. With each subsequent campaign you’ll gain more intelligence on the unique dynamic you have with your fans. This will lead you to formulate more compelling offers for your fans and drive higher conversion rates over time as you become savvier in your segmentation and target marketing.

At Topspin we approach our data gathering efforts from a funnel perspective where we baseline and improve each of the following variables in a direct marketing campaign:

The original vision for our Topspin product is based on this approach. The idea is to get your artist into as many eyes and ears on the web as possible and get prospective fans to play or share your media. This level of engagement converts those impressions into permission marketing relationships, which ultimately translates into recurring revenue from your fans.

As you think holistically about the funnel, conduct your direct to fan marketing campaign systematically through a series of scientific experiments to increase each of the variables above in every subsequent campaign:

1. State your hypotheses or goals
2. Craft your offers to meet those goals
3. Collect data
4. Measure your performance
5. Optimize your campaign
6. Repeat successes, iterate improvements, and constantly experiment

This process should be circular in that you’re frequently re-starting the cycle for constant hypothesizing, measuring, and optimizing based on your previous campaign data.

The goals you set will depend on whether you’re prioritizing on fan acquisition for emerging artists or monetization for established acts. It’s helpful to define these goals from the beginning in a clear, quantifiable way so you have something to benchmark against.

When crafting offers marketers should consider their artist as a brand with many products to serve a variety of customers. These range from new prospective fans who want to hear the music for free before pulling out their credit cards to hardcore fans who place a premium on collectibles from their favorite artist. The best practice we’ve realized is to authentically connect with your fans and give them a range of tiered offers that will generate more revenue and margin for the artist than just selling the same product that’s available in all other channels.

Here’s some interesting purchase data that show how fans consume offers from Topspin artists and how it breaks down in revenue:

It’s clear that including physical goods in your offers will increase your overall revenue. Our average revenue per transaction at Topspin is over $20, and it’s $50 for some branded artists who follow best practices. This is significantly higher than other digital channels where fans are buying a track or two at a time. Here’s more Topspin data to reinforce the point of higher priced goods driving more revenue for artists:

As you can see, slightly more than half of the transactions at Topspin are under $10, but they only account for 17% of the revenue. In fact, offers priced $25 and over, which include physical items represent the majority of revenue. The hope is that you take these data insights and plot your own demand curve to serve your spectrum of fans.

Once you’ve crafted offers to meet your goals, you need to collect data, and there’s no better tool available than Google Analytics. It’s free, simple to use, a universal standard, and offers third party integration. Our Topspin purchase flow has integrated with Google Analytics so you can see those transactions as ecommerce metrics reported in your artist’s Google Analytics account.

Google Analytics lets you identify sources of traffic to your website and offer page. More importantly you can assess how this traffic converts to new emails and active paying fans. Here’s a Topspin Knowledge Base article on tracking website conversion by source traffic. Google’s Analytics is a powerful platform for measuring the effectiveness of all your online marketing activity. We recommend using Google’s URL Builder to create unique order page URLs for more granular tracking in your campaign. Here’s a more comprehensive and detailed Topspin Knowledge Base article on Tracking Sales and Conversion by Marketing Activity. You can use your own stats on traffic and conversion to project demand for your direct to fan campaigns. If you do not have a handle on your own traffic or conversion rates, here are Topspin averages across across a variety of channels for you to jump start your own projections:

According to the above data, email has the best conversion followed by direct traffic, and search. Given the lower rates of conversion across third party sites, it’s important to drive your fans directly to your offer page at every opportunity. In order to demonstrate this point, we depicted the difference in conversion of an artist broadcasting their video on YouTube vs. their own direct to fan video player on Topspin where they control the redirect which goes straight to the fan offer page:

Both video players performed equally well on click-throughs at a 10% rate, but since the YouTube player redirected fans to the YouTube video page, there was a 100x difference in purchasing conversion since fans had to click one more time on the YouTube video page to get to the artist’s offer page. By using your own video player and directing fans straight to the offer page, you can be assured of higher purchasing rates. Of course, you should definitely have your videos on YouTube as it’s a destination site for music discovery, but when it comes to your own website or social networks, you should broadcast and encourage sharing on your own players since they lead fans directly to the destination of your choice, specifically your offer page.

After the data is collected, you’re in a position to measure performance across channels. The goal is to identify the major drivers of conversion and prioritize on those channels that show the most promise in acquiring active paying fans. You can compare your performance against Topspin’s revenue distribution across all our artists and fans:

It’s no surprise that email is the highest driver of revenue at Topspin followed by direct traffic and Google search. What’s enlightening is that MySpace is still holding strong as a source of revenue compared to the much publicized growth of Facebook and Twitter. It will be interesting to revisit this analysis in a few months to see if Facebook and Twitter increase in share over time.

As soon as you get a sense of your campaign performance, it’s time to optimize. Focus on SEO since it’s imperative that your artist name and offer page are at the top of the search results given the volume of traffic and revenue generated by the search engines. You want interested fans coming immediately to you without being diverted to a third party site. A great web resource for SEO tips and best practices is the SEOmoz Blog. Another good resource is Rank Checker, which tells you where your artist site or offer page ranks in search results for different key words.

Now to touch upon one of the most exciting data topics for me personally: understanding the metrics for the new music business. We’re just scratching the surface in figuring out how to measure success for marketing artists online, and here are a few one-off stats from some of our campaigns. Topspin’s goal is to establish norms around these metrics to let you assess your own performance around indicators like these.

The first is the Play to Purchase ratio. When David Byrne and Brian Eno released Everything that Happens Will Happen Today, they released a streaming player with full-length streams, which was embedded far and wide. This proved extremely effective in that 1 in 5 plays led to a purchase in the first few weeks of the campaign. I would consider this highly successful, and since their average transaction prices was over $15 , that means each play was worth about $3.

A metric from the Fanfarlo campaign that signaled strong performance was their ability to acquire fans at a rate of 49 fans per 1000 impressions of their widgets. This included both new email opt-ins and purchasers. We found this number to be extremely high compared to our paid advertising tests, where we purchased inventory across music services to acquire email addresses at less than 1 per 1000 impressions (0.7 per 1000 to be exact). Fanfarlo’s widget impressions from Topspin may have been lower in volume, but they were FREE and 70x more effective in acquiring emails and paying fans.

“Dispersion” is the artist’s ability to get picked up and embedded in other websites. David Byrne and Brian Eno’s streaming widget was embedded in about 160 blog sites, and Fanfarlo’s streaming and email for media widgets were embedded in more than 248 sites. Once again, great metrics for widgets that ultimately directed fans back to their artist order pages.

Another mind-blowing Fanfarlo data point was their Shares to Sales ratio at 1.1. It means that for every one person who shared, more than one person purchased. This most likely had to do with the exceptional quality of their music, their fanbase of tastemakers who influenced their own audiences to buy, and their offer price of $1 for their campaign during a 3 week promo. The data has shown that Fanfarlo’s campaign worked wonderfully and is a great case study on viral promotions for an emerging artist.

These are just a few of the interesting metrics we’re getting our heads around at Topspin. We’re at the beginning phase of the direct to fan era, and as I said in my talk, I feel that we’re all in this together in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. I’m hoping the data in this presentation will help you generate more insights, which can ultimately be shared back with the community at large. Feel free to join us in the Topspin Green Room to share your ideas or ask questions.

Shamal
@shamalman

Let’s check out what music file sharers have been downloading this week according to a top five compiled and posted by the guys at Kickasstorrents, a site we like a lot. The chart presented here applies for this site alone.

This week’s Kickasstorrents’ Music Top 5 is a bit pop-ish – it includes albums from Alicia Keys, Mary J Blige and Robbie Williams but also features a classic one undoubtedly addressed to more than one generation – a last year Beatles remastered greatest hits compilation.

1. Alicia Keys – The Element of Freedom;
2. Mary J Blige – Stronger With Each Tear;
3. Drake – So Far Gone;
4. Robbie Williams – Reality Killed The Video Star;
5. The Beatles – Greatest Hits (Remastered);

Neo-Nazi party given green light to target school children The Local
The neo-Nazi National Democratic Party will be allowed to distribute CDs outside schools with interviews and music by party members because authorities have no legal grounds to stop them, a report said Saturday. The Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons said the disc merely contained political opinions, daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported. The department therefore found no basis on which to ban the disc, the report quoted director Elke Monsen-Engberding as saying. The NPD is Germany’s leading far-right party. It promotes an anti-immigrant agenda and is considered by the country’s domestic intelligence agency to be a threat to the constitution.

Microsoft to patch 17-year-old computer bug BBC
A 17-year-old bug in Windows will be patched by Microsoft in its latest security update. The February update for Windows will close the loophole that dates from the time of the DOS operating system. First appearing in Windows NT 3.1, the vulnerability has been carried over into almost every version of Windows that has appeared since. The monthly security update will also tackle a further 25 holes in Windows, five of which are rated as “critical”. The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs.

Vodafone suspends employee over obscene Twitter Telegraph
The explicit update made disparaging reference to homosexuals and indicated that the author planned to spend their evening pursuing women.The tweet provoked dozens of complaints from other users of the micro-blogging site and was taken down within minutes of being posted this afternoon. Initial speculation suggested the @VodafoneUK account, which has more than 8,800 followers, had been hacked. But the firm later released a statement indicating the message was the work of a rogue member of staff.

Chinese Internet Video Rivals Join Forces On Copyright Issues China Tech News
According to local media reports, rival Chinese video websites Youku.com and Tudou.com have formed an alliance and jointly launched a new online video joint broadcast model, sharing the copyright of each other’s exclusive videos. The two parties said they hope to expand the cooperative range of this new model. Apart from the sharing of exclusive videos, they are looking forward to cooperating in areas surrounding copyright production. And as the beginning of their joint broadcast model, Youku.com and Tudou.com have exchanged two exclusive TV series, and they have the rights to resell and broadcast these videos.

Arctic ice melting faster than feared: study CBC
The head of the largest climate change study ever undertaken in Canada says the Arctic sea ice is thinning faster than expected. “It’s happening much faster than our most pessimistic projections,” said University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead study. A flaw lead is the term for open water between pack ice and coastal ice. The study aboard the Canadian Coast Guard research ship Amundsen began in July 2007 and involved 370 scientists from around the world.

Your Comments Are Safe With Us TechCrunch
[...] a post that was published on the Digital Inspiration blog hit Techmeme. The title of that post left little to the imagination: it read ‘TechCrunch Removes Reader Comments From All Older Blog Posts’. That allegation in itself is inaccurate, as is most of the rest of the article, so I felt compelled to respond quickly and offer our side of the story. Which, on a sidenote, we weren’t asked for by the person or people behind the blog (at least not to my knowledge). I’ll start with the part that checks out: yes, comments on older blog posts are not being displayed at the moment, although they are still stored in the database on our side. But no, we did not remove them because we were looking to decrease our page load time – although we’re constantly looking for ways to do so – and there’s no big search engine optimization conspiracy behind it either. This also has nothing to do with the fact that we actively moderate comments on posts around here – we’ve always welcomed civil discussion and that hasn’t changed. Criticism and disagreement is fine, but we want to keep the comment section a nice place to come for everyone, and those who keep that from happening – spammers, anonymous trolls directing personal attacks, etc. – will see their comments occasionally get moderated out of sight (read: deleted).

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

February, 2010

p2pnet view Music:- “EMI, the music giant controlled by Guy Hands’s Terra Firma, lost a staggering £1.8bn last year leaving it in desperate need of a £120m cash injection to stave off lender Citigroup from taking control of the business,” says the Telegraph.

Wow! That’s a lot a lot of boodle!

At today’s prices, that’s about $3,012,441,629 Canadian.

And 78 cents.

Guess we’d all better dig into our pockets, then, eh?

Two years back, “EMI, a member of the Big 4 organised music cartel, was, spending $400,000 a year on party favors (booze, drugs, women, whatever) for its talent”, p2pnet quoted Silicon Insider as saying.

Now, times are hard for EMI, the broke and busted member of the Big 4 Music Mafia.

The others are Vivendi Universal, Warner Music and Sony Music, and they’re all being sued for price-fixing.

Are things coming unglued at EMI / Terra Firma? – p2pnet wondered in 2007, going on >>>

Now, “Citigroup Inc. rejected a request from Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. to reduce EMI Group Ltd.’s debt by 40 percent in return for a 1 billion-pound ($1.7 billion) cash injection, two people familiar with the talks said,” says Bloomberg News, going on:

“Guy Hands’s private equity firm offered to provide the extra money if Citigroup agreed to reduce the record label’s 2.5 billion-pound debt by a similar amount, said the people, who declined to be named because the talks are private. Citigroup spurned the offer because it would have forced it to write off some of the debt just as EMI’s profit rises, one person said.”

And that’s left EMI “to be run by its own executives, although Hands-appointed non-executives like Lord Birt and former Northern Foods chief executive Pat O’Driscoll remain in place,” says the London Evening Standard, adding:

“Since the takeover, EMI has suffered along with its rivals from the downturn in the music industry and the growth of online piracy.

“It has also been hit by feuding with a string of stars unwilling to be managed by ’suits’, with Joss Stone the latest to hit out at her own recording label.”

So, things have finally come unglued at EMI / Terra Firma.

Adds the Telegraph:

“Mr Hands will now have to persuade investors in Terra Firma to sign over another £120m which would give the group sufficient equity headroom to last until March 2011 or face losing their £2.2bn investment altogether.”

Expect to soon see a puff piece from EMI saying this is a temporary setback and really, things are just peachy.

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Telegraph – EMI runs up loss of £1.8bn, February 5, 2010
p2pnet – EMI: goodby sex ‘n’ drugs for rock’n’roll, January 14, 2008
Silicon Insider – EMI’s $400,000 Coke And Hookers Budget, January 12, 2008
broke and busted – Can Santa save EMI?, December 22, 2009
sued for price-fixing – Big Music in price fixing lawsuit. Again, January 14, 2010
p2pnet – Terra Firma, EMI: out of tune? - October 29, 2007
Bloomberg News – Hands`s Bid to Cut EMI`s Debt Said to Be Rejected by Citigroup, November 16, 2009
London Evening Standard – Citi snub for EMI plan, November 16, 2009

Ubisoft has announced its new solution to prevent pirates from playing their games. The upcoming DRM will require gamers to be online when playing the game. If no Internet connection is available it means that the game wont work, period.

As with most DRM, Ubisoft’s new anti-piracy solution needlessly hurts legitimate customers. Pirates will always find a way around the access restrictions and will be able to play the game offline without running into trouble. Because of this, Ubisoft’s plans were welcomed with skepticism among fellow game developers.

Gaming magazine Develop has asked several gaming industry figures what they think about Ubisoft’s new DRM. While some are against it and others showed support, the overall sentiment is that DRM itself is not going to stop piracy.

Gusto Games’ Luke Maskell is the most outspoken of them all. “I’m firmly against Ubisoft’s announcement, I think it’s a huge violation of privacy and is only punishing the legitimate customer; the pirates won’t have to worry about being online as they’ll find a way around pretty sharpish,” he commented.

Maskell was not the only one with reservations though. Adrian Hirst, Managing Director at Weaseltron, also stressed that the danger of DRM is that the pirated copy turns into a more desirable product than the retail version.

“Previous draconian attempts at copy protection have only served to outrage our very customers. Copy protection that makes the cracked copy of the game more appealing to the customer than the genuine one threatens to turn them away from purchasing at all,” he said.

Most of the other gaming insiders that were interviewed agreed with this assessment. DRM will only hurt the game if legitimate customers have to face more restrictions than those who choose to download a copy illegally.

“I don’t believe that online DRM on it’s own will ever stop piracy – your game will simply have that functionality stripped out by various hacking groups,” Ben Ward of Bizarre Creations said. “The only way that DRM will be accepted by consumers is if it is delivered inside a service which brings tangible, real-world benefits with it.”

Others were less outspoken against Ubisoft’s new DRM but everyone noted that it will be counter-effective if it’s too obtrusive or cumbersome. To us at TorrentFreak, these different opinions clearly suggest that for a long time the digital entertainment industry has chosen the wrong path to counter piracy.

Instead of trying to add more restrictions to the products they sell to customers, they should add in extra features for those who pay for the product. UbiSoft actually made it half way already by adding several advantages for players who play online, but they’re not quite there yet.

Logged in customers who play Ubisoft’s new games online will be able to save it remotely, so they can continue playing the game on other PCs. Continuing along these lines the company could easily include other benefits and extra features for online players. If they then drop the requirement to play online, they might actually have a superior product compared to the pirated version.

In the end it’s all about finding a way to frame or sell DRM as an advantage instead of a restriction.

The music streaming application Spotify is a great example of how ‘DRM’ can be an advantage. Spotify users can only access music when they’re logged in, which is the ultimate DRM. Still, no one has even brought this issue up because the service offers so many advantages over most other legitimate and illegitimate ways of enjoying music.

If those in the gaming and other digital entertainment industries start thinking in terms of adding benefits for paying customers instead of useless restrictions to keep pirates out, they would have a lot more satisfied customers. Perhaps even more importantly, they could sell a lot more products.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.