However, on closer inspection, this is really Ubisoft’s way of saying they’re hip without actually being hip. Green, sure, but nearly so much concerned about the green of trees as the green of money. After all, if they really cared about the environment, wouldn’t they do away with arbitrary and completely superfluous packaging almost entirely? If platforms such as Steam or WiiWare have proven anything, it’s that electronic distribution works – that gamers not only respond positively to it, but that it cuts costs as well. It even means more face-time for smaller games by smaller companies who can’t afford to appear on every shelf in every Best Buy, but who could greatly benefit from some visibility on Steam or a likened platform.

And digital distribution is nothing new; the potential has been there for several years, leaving the only carbon footprint being the servers and the energy to power them (which exists and is expelled anyway for any game with online or community play). So saying that the old model of delivering games on an archaic medium (the DVD) via an archaic distribution method (ground transportation) and selling in an archaic fashion (brick and mortar stores) somehow equates to being green because of recycled plastic and less paper is a little like claiming that guns are a little less deadly with a smaller grain count, and doesn’t consider life without guns at all (if you’ll excuse the metaphor). The fear is that the very same model pirates have long used is actually effective. Or perhaps that gamers will be remiss to pay top dollar for completely asinine bells and whistles a la the latest “Halo” version when what really counts is the quality of the gameplay, not the packaging.

It’s the latest trend for companies proclaiming they’re “going green” to total huge sums in an attempt to look impressive. Celestial Seasonings does this by estimating how many trees are saved by not putting a label and string on their tea bags; the wholly worthless “Earth Hour” proposing that people turn out their lights for an hour is another. Sure, these summations look impressive, but not when compared to revamping the model entirely.

So while Ubisoft no doubt has spent tons of money publicly patting themselves on the back for caring about the environment, it means quite little compared with moving to digital distribution: that big elephant in the room that nobody’s talking about for fear of admitting that anything other than DRM-laden physical media could actually work.

What you’ll find instead is a collection of Web services seeking to profit from copyrighting or otherwise servicing your original work. So rather than answering questions of what you can do, one finds info on what you can’t do. This is meant not to inspire obedience to the current copyright culture, but rather instill enough concern to have one’s own work “properly protected” from “theft”, but only if you pay for such a service.

It’s no wonder IP law is up and coming; it’s all about convincing people that they need to add bureaucratic buffers to their works, when – in reality – the vast majority of works will never be stolen, and even if they are, it’s not because someone stole your cool idea to make Harry friggin’ Potter.

A recent presentation at a writer’s conference had an IP lawyer present on the nature of copyright. It was useful information, but the only part anyone heard was how much it costs. It’s $35 to copyright each work, and one writer noted: “But I might only get $25 for writing it, so why would I pay more to copyright it than what I’m getting paid for it?” A valid question for which the lawyer had no answer, just more insipid PowerPoint slides (all bearing a moronic copyright notice).

Whether any writer should knock out an article for $25 is not the question. What writers should ask themselves is: “What are the odds that this story – for which I worked to get $25 – is going to go on to be stolen, used elsewhere, and make more money than I was paid for it?” The answer, of course, is “near zero percent.”

The lawyer – much like the Google results for any IP question – kept reiterating that it’s your ability to sue for lawyer fees that makes copyrighting a work a sound idea. So this was, indirectly, a means of self-preservation for this IP lawyer, seeding in the malleable minds of the copyright poor, that they needed lawyers to protect their creative works. I don’t think that’s accurate. What you need as a writer is luck, persistence, and a taste for Ramon noodles.

This trend of convincing even the meanest of artists to spend their sparse income on copyrighting is little more than a perpetuation of the bureaucratic cycle that has chilled creativity from the top down since copyright law’s inception. Nothing more.

Link to original story

The relevant question here is whether music is still being made in Spain.

I’m certain that the answer is Yes, indeed. Sure, if one wanted, he could cull a slew of examples of bands saying they think that file-sharing is horrible, but the interviews like this that I have seen in documentaries and industry propaganda are far too generalized. They simply ask if the band members agree with not paying for music.

Well, what would you expect them to say? What they aren’t being asked is whether they realize that they get business in the form of gig attendance from people sharing their music. That never quite makes it into the conversation.

So some Terminator fans are wondering who is going to buy it and whether they can turn out anything on film that matches or even comes close to James Cameron’s Terminator 2. Others hope that the appreciated but ultimately canceled show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles will enjoy a reappearance. Of course, for Hollywood, some things are simply too logical to occur, like making a sequel to insanely loved and successful film Serenity.

However, it’s far more likely that the same thing will happen to the Terminator franchise as happens to virtual all franchises where audiences are guaranteed: it will run even further downhill in a stream of campy, half-ass projects meant only to glean as much money from the success of the first two films as possible. In short, Cameron’s amazing success on T2 will mean that subsequent films only have to be half as good to make money. It’s hard to pinpoint what made the most recent iteration – Terminator: Salvation – fall short of the mark. But even with Christian Bale, excellent effects, and an interesting story, the film indeed lacks something special – whatever ingredient the first two films were able to tap into.

While no company – even one going through chapter 11 – is every going to risk a certain $200 million, I propose another path for the Terminator saga. Like a future ruled by Skynet and the machines, this path is also only a possibility, and not even one that we’re likely to see anytime soon.

How about if instead of selling off a storyline that has become an iconic imagine of our tech-obsessed world to the highest bidder, they give it to the fans. That means lifting all restrictions of copyright on future products. If anyone wants to write a story, make a movie, create an action figure, or code a game based on the Terminator series, then let them without any injunctions. But add one stipulation: that the company that owns the franchise can monetize those creations.

Imagine it: instead of a $250 million dollar piece of garbage being the next film to bear the Terminator name, it’s a series of fan-made shorts airing in theaters. Maybe live-action, maybe CGI, maybe animated. I have zero doubts that whatever fans produced would be far superior to what Hollywood would (not could) make in terms of story, content, and that all-too-allusive heart. Sure, major studies can pull big names, so blockbusters can (but often don’t) have solid acting and amazing effects.

But consider the difference between fan-made The Hunt for Gollum and billion-dollar Lord of the Rings by Peter Jackson, et al. Indeed, Jackson’s work is finer in terms of effects and the overall hotty factor of his elves, but these differences are in no way proportional to the difference in cost. In other words, the maker of The Hunt for Gollum came eerily close to Lord of the Rings without being in the same solar system so far as costs go. The same would indeed happen with Terminator.

Of course it would prove a huge gamble, but since so few fan-made projects have enjoyed big-budget advertising and buzz-making, it’s hard to tell how much money they would make. Then again, there simply wouldn’t be that much money you would have to make. When some 60% of films don’t make it into the black at theaterical release, you have to wonder how much money is too much when it comes to the production. You may create an amazing film in terms of set, effects, and cast, but if it cost you $300 million and the film itself lacks any real heart, then you’ve got a long way to go to realize gain. Distribute a shoestring budget production for fans by fans, and you’re only risking the cost of advertising.

Like I said, this is about as likely to happen as is the Skynet holocaust, but what a beautiful possibility.

It seems that Bleem! allowed users to user Playstation games on either the Sega Dreamcast or the PC. It had the same physical and digital copy protective measures as the Playstation. That is, it required the disks, and wouldn’t play backups or run without the proper disk in the drive. Certainly there were workarounds that could be exploited, but the same was true for the Playstation itself.

In case it’s news to you, console companies take a loss on each console sold. They hope to recoup that with game sales – where the real money is. This is why Dreamcast bit the dust: once everyone figured out how to bypass the simple copy-protection, no one bought the games, even though the consoles sold fine.

So, with that in mind, it might seen completely rational for Sony to do nothing at all to stop Bleem!. I mean, here’s a company ensuring that even those without the Playstation would still have cause to buy Playstation games. This would be like a burger joint selling nothing but their high profit margin items, like that 30 cent piece of cheese that costs them a penny.

Instead, Sony did what any copyright rich company would do: they litigated to the point of lunacy, losing in every possible way they could lose. However, the court costs were too much for little Bleem! and the company went bankrupt. I can hear notoriously Luddite Sony CEO Howard Stringer yelling: “That will teach you do try and sell our games!”

Covered by Slashdot, it seems the makers of the hit game World of Goo for Wii and PC have celebrated the close of their very successful year in an interesting way. They decided to make the game – which retails at $20 – available for whatever the buyer is willing to pay.

This is a great idea: make what money you can from initial launch at premium price, and then accept the fact that the game will lose value as both novelty and technology motor on. Then, in lieu of griping and moaning over the resell market and trying to circumvent the first-sale doctrine with install limitations and the like, you allow users to pay what they wish. This will likely be lower than you’d like in price per unit, but you’ll likely sell more than you’d hope for, as well. With intellectual property, this pans out just fine, particularly for digital delivery data like World of Goo, where you simply don’t have the same high overhead as you would for, say, the Thighmaster or the Sham-Wow.

The result: While the average sale price was about $2, more than 57,000 people purchased it. Quite certainly, these were customers who simply wouldn’t have bought the game otherwise or who – according to a 2D Boy poll – bought it again for another platform.

The developers were more than happy, and extended the special. Hopefully, this is an idea that others will follow. Surely, there are games out there that simply do not warrant the MSRP price tag, but that would garner slews of customers if they could pay what they wished. Such schemes have worked very well in the publishing industry, as well, though the industry at large is still very weary of taking that step – somehow convinced that ebooks should sell for the same as the physical book minus a buck or two.

Wizards was awarded $125,000, which – par for course – was exorbitant considering that Scribd made no money from the ebook.

What’s worth noting here is that companies making ebooks should use the built-in abilities to market ebooks better than regular books to advertisers. Then, the economic backlash of the book being shared is largely or completely mitigated.

For example, there are various educational reports on all manner of subjects – from using Google AdSense to writing a killer blog. They make their money off affiliate marketing embedded in the links in the PDF, not off the sale of the report. Sure, these reports bear a price tag, but they are rife on p2p sites, and have long thrived without backlash.

Why? Because the bulk of their moneymaking model is about getting eyes on the product, not on the money generated from sales.

So couldn’t PDFs of WotC content operate in the same way? Instead, they waste time and effort trying to track down and sue companies such as Scribd for a consequence they didn’t intend.That’s not to say that Scribd shouldn’t be responsible for whatever is on their servers and site; it’s just a pretty poor model when the only way you’re going to address the inevitability of piracy is to file lawsuit after lawsuit. Instead, how about coming out with more innovative ways of selling your products?

After all, it’s very arguable that whoever would download an ebook of D&D is likely not going to and never would have bought the paper product. So how do you make money off of such potential customers? Perhaps in-book adverts aren’t the only answer, but I can tell you what certainly isn’t the answer: suing everyone and making yourself look like jerks.

The site, which is more of a blog with a donation button, seeks to let the only mildly piratical among us to give money back to the industry they’ve ripped off in hopes of being able to sleep at night. Ironically, the benefactors of these donations remain unveiled for supposedly legal reasons (since admitting to taking pirate booty passively accepts digital piracy).

Donations cannot be tracked, and do nothing to mitigate potential lawsuits. Comments from site visitors notes that donating (via PayPal) is part and parcel to admitting guilt. While I seriously doubt that any company could use such information to effectively form a “hit list” of pirate targets, I wouldn’t put it past owner/operator Drew K from Australia to sell the list of donors to the highest bidder. I just don’t happen to think there’d be any bidders.

It’s amazing that we’ve been able to feel so guilty that someone’s job can be reconciling that guilt with money – certainly very little or none of which will reach the artists after passing through this company, the anonymous beneficiaries, and the legal bureaucrats in-between.

So what’s a more pragmatic answer? If you feel guilty and want to give back, why not purchase what you pirated? Then – according to the first sale doctrine – you can always resell or gift it after you’ve enjoyed it. Pirated products don’t sell well nor are they good gifts. Buy something you pirated and enjoyed, and you can give a good gift and feel better all at once. After all, you wouldn’t purchase something you pirated that sucked, would you? You would only buy something that you really enjoyed. So giving it to someone else to enjoy should free you from any residual guilt you feel from file-sharing it.

Or, you could always buy a derivative or sequel work. If you downloaded Firefly, go buy Serenity. If you downloaded both of them, buy the graphic novel (which is quite good, I might add).

But just sending this opportunist some money to feel better? Not so much.

Luckily, Drew K admits that the site hasn’t been too popular since its January 2009 launch. Doubtless, it will sink into the abyss before long. Despite big media propaganda perpetually trying to solidify the guilt we should all feel from copyright infringement, it just isn’t happening. Hmmm….I wonder why that is.

There is a facet of the copyright statute regarding performances, however, that says that no performance necessitates licensing so long as no one paid to listen, had to pay to enter the place in which the music is being played, and that the person “playing” it is gaining no money. This is why you can play your portable boom box at the park or beach and not have to have a license, despite it being a “public performance”.

ASCAP certainly knows this, but leave it to middlemen to try and create a ruling in their favor when – logistically – there’s no difference in carrying a radio playing “Like a Prayer” and carrying a cell phone that rings with the same song.

Luckily, US District Judge Denise Cote was on her a-game and saw the erroneous and ultimately redundant nature of ASCAP’s decision. I have little doubt this will arise again, and we’ll just have to hope that folks like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others stay on the forefront of this battle, lest big media make humming subject to litigation.

This has been a scare tactic for some time now, and many people buy into the supposed direct relationship between piracy and malware, viruses, and other malicious code. BSA’s motivation is clear: if people believe that file-sharing is the culprit in “making their computer run really slow” then perhaps they’ll refuse pirated products. Though their stats on the growing percentage of pirated programs speaks differently.

All BSA’s assertions do is increase the fear that lay computer users feel regarding all things on their computers. They say: “I had a nephew visit for a weekend, and now I get warnings about viruses. I think he downloaded illegal stuff.” Or: “My son ripped a friend’s CD on my computer, and now I have windows popping up telling me I need an virus scan or I’ll lose my data!”

Alas, the only people benefiting from this paranoia are the companies selling “scareware” which gets computer greenhorns to buy completely superfluous security software. Such programs often don’t work at all, are universally overpriced, or do little more than further scare the buyer into getting the entire “suite ” of products and extorting even more money.

But who’s at fault here? Are pirated apps really full of viruses, or are p2p networks teaming with malware posing as pirated apps? And more importantly, who put it there to begin with?

The fact is, the only people suffering from this fear are those who don’t know how to navigate p2p apps appropriately, and who have no understanding of what constitutes copyright infringement. No such scare tactics deter pirates in the least. All malicious code is easily avoided with experience and – God forbid – with learning some general knowledge about computer science and your operating system, whether you share files or not.

I’m not condoning piracy, but I also do not condone BSA’s fear campaign that surreptitiously sidesteps the force that created the market for scareware to begin with – companies like BSA.