How To End Piracy

Hello World,

After a long time of working with IPTV, I have been thinking of a proper solution to resolving the apparent global crisis of many suffering at the hands of piracy...

It's my great pleasure today to offer you my core proposal for how to successfully resolve this problem so that anyone should find this to be an acceptable resolution, from all perspectives and parties.

Please consider my proposal and if you want, provide me with your opinions on this subject and what you think of my proposal in particular. Thanks for taking the time to read my proposal today!

How To End Piracy

Objective: The goal is to marginalize and erode piracy efforts by giving all parties involved, from the creators of content, content providers, advertisers, marketing departments, to pirates and users everything they want in an application utilizing the internet as a digital distribution platform. The plan should combine a comprehensive answer to a full scale implementation of a program or website among all categories of primary users , from all areas of business to the users GUI. Only if and when all parties agree, the project should be coded and prepared and deployed among all parties at the same time.

While I attempt to explain my idea, please keep in mind I am only trying to discuss a comprehensive solution that would satisfy all parties involved. I will be discussing several different proposals for what could possibly be implemented and no part of it whatsoever is set in stone or has to be. Many times I find these things can be resolved with a compromise and I am always willing to hear feedback from someone on my plan, but please keep in mind sometimes you may be asking for more than can be provided and sometimes it is simply not possible to satisfy all parties until this is investigated further with corresponding parties to discuss particulars that are feasible to make happen. Please keep an open mind when reading this proposal, as it is not my intent to harm or take away value of any interested party… I am just speaking generally and do not proclaim to be an expert of any kind on anything… I just have an idea is all and I will present it to you today.

General idea of the project

The general belief behind piracy is that it can be eliminated. This is factually incorrect. As long as there exists security measures in software, there is always a way to get around them… this is common software engineering knowledge. As long as you can successfully pass through the security mechanism or go around it another way, there will always be piracy. You can try to debate this, or you can trust someone who has seen it before many times… this is the inherent nature of security mechanisms.

With this understanding at hand, one can assume that there will always be many forms of piracy that will always hinder sales of content providers unless we create an outlet and draw somewhere where people can get the content they want for free, yet content providers can recoup or get paid for their works.

How do content providers get paid by offering all of their content for free???

Create and distribute a website or program and system that offers all of this content for free, to track, trend, and analyze metrics of digital distribution and provide revenues and critical research data through two service offerings… campaign advertising revenues and data mining with informatics trending and analysis. In short, instead of offering ala carte sales pricing, we subsidize licensing costs through revenues generated by marketing campaigns and advertising revenues. Data mining services should also be offered with research data that measures, tracks and analyzes audience reactions and user tendencies to provide content providers with the information to create better, more engaging content.


Why Should Content Publishers Give Away Content Free?

The only way to beat pirates at their own game is to beat pirates at their own game… offer all of your back catalogue of content as well as most current content in quality high definition to people on the internet for free. Many content providers do this already with corporations offering free tv shows, movies, music and apps from their respective websites like NBC does at NBC.com. In return, they inject advertisements on users and collect advertising revenues based on how many views and clicks they receive per ad. This also gives content providers the opportunity to sell ad time to advertisers instead of the cable company doing this directly and collecting revenues from a transaction. The content provider and advertiser get to work directly together to negotiate the number and length of any marketing campaign a provider is willing to consider, effectively cutting out the middle man, saving costs and creating better, less expensive marketing campaigns by focusing these efforts through a comprehensive digital distribution platform.

The idea is simple… if people don’t want to go to pirate sites anymore to obtain their content because the company broadcasting is already giving it out for free in high definition from their own site, content providers get to make all of their revenues through advertising campaigns instead of nothing. Essentially, the content provider is recouping revenues they would not have had due to piracy efforts otherwise. It is better to have control of this gateway and inject ads to subsidize lost revenues than to have no revenues at all. Also by making it free, you open up your access to all internet viewers… you are not just limited to set markets or set broadcast schedules or paying subscribers, but everyone then can get a chance to watch your content on their schedule when they have the time to enjoy it. Not everyone gets to watch their favorite show all the time because it airs when people are not able to watch it typically, limiting the scope of your audience. If the episode is available on demand, then they can watch the content on their schedule. This allows for a larger audience to be reached.

Content in its rawest form is essentially a well thought out marketing campaign, as well as art. As such, content can be staged in a live lineup via broadcast and as an on demand medium, as a build up to newer content. Content publishers can and should have the full ability to dictate the what, when, where and why’s of their content, including advertisers they wish to broker deals with, the creation and control of their own marketing campaigns, the arrangement and mastering of their live broadcasts and on demand content, and they shouldn’t have to go through lots of hoops or do a lot of work to do it. They don’t want or need to be at the mercy of decisions from another party to move… they want and should have full control over many aspects of their media content, but most certainly in areas of revenue generation, live running timelines for adding and removing broadcasted content on the fly, as well as a sleek and intuitive playlist interface for viewing and publishing on demand content and content management. In other words, give the content provider full and easy access to their own live time line for broadcasting content as well as on demand listings of content that gives users the ability to enjoy IPTV how they would like to.

Not only can all content providers create their own individual content portals to facilitate these things or maybe we can even create widgets for this, but the website or program should be developed with the capabilities to provide full html and flash-based advertising campaigns, with a back end content management interface to allow people to inject video and image advertisements as well as arrange and publish them on the fly while a broadcast time line is actively running for your viewing pleasure. There would also be a complex data mining and analysis backend program that would quantify informatics metrics in real time to provide content providers with exclusive feedback and trending analysis of their viewer reactions to help the content provider make content that is more engaging and enticing to their audience. It would also help them profile users to understand who makes up their viewer base better and what goals they should reach for to better relate to their audiences.

This website or program would essentially be an independent broadcasters digital distribution and publication outlet, revenue provider and research team all available in one program. In terms of costs and charges for service fees, nothing is set in stone but I am thinking the app itself is 100% free to view and publish content by anyone, while the backend program and trending analysis is a premium service we can cover with fees for research services for content providers. Paying content providers for these services would pay a yearly fee to cover expenses of informatics programmers and hosting services for the data mining servers. Content providers can house their own servers and equipment optionally for advertising campaigns and content distribution if they would like. Services can also be offered to subsidize missing gaps where companies have not covered certain services necessary to facilitate this.

Ultimately, content providers and distributors of copyrighted content would be able to offer their content for a never ending period of time without being marginalized by other industry efforts or monopolies on proprietary outlets for content distribution. This allows a content provider to collect on the content they own as long as they host the file for viewing, breaking traditional sales periods and outlets while creating a truly continuous revenue stream utilitizing digital distribution.  All older libraries of content that providers are no longer collecting on can be brought back into the light for viewing and revenues collected on where in traditional distribution and broadcasting industries limit the ability of a content provider to do so do to monetary constraints and limited broadcasting time availability. This also levels the playing field for all content providers and limits them to their ability to communicate to viewers through intuitive internet marketing and quality of their productions, which advertisement costs are also a lot less than traditional billboard and magazine ad campaigns.

Why should pirates take away your ability to recoup revenues continuously for your products? Putting all of your content online beats them to the punch and allows you to take away control and power from their pirating efforts. The more of your content you offer up online, the more revenues you can recoup from your products, by controlling advert revenues and how often you are willing to inject advertisements in the viewing of your content. Break away from the traditional tough gimmick of “ala carte sales” and get into the mindset of “continuous revenues” as any great artist or producer should.


Why Should People Use This Application/Site When They Advertise On It?

If users stop streaming content from pirated sites and instead use this application or site to watch the content they want, content providers, producers and artists get paid directly through advertising revenues instead of illegal distributors. While advertising has traditionally been a big downside for viewers, if they were given decent bandwidth to stream the files and they were in quality resolution, I am willing to bet that users will prefer that type of service over the issues of bandwidth bottlenecking, low quality resolution and the fact they are distributing copyrighted materials that they do not even own.

I also would like to implement a full playlist editor with intuitive controls for staging media for continuous playback as well as loading of programmed time lines from content providers. There will be a playback queue that will function as a running timeline for content essentially.  It should also directly integrate with Facebook and Twitter for sharing content with others. Content should include full artwork and media descriptions of content offered as well.

The price of free should trump every other consideration for using pirating sites, plus bandwidth and quality, creating the pull of users away from pirating sites to the genuine owners of the content, which is key to eroding piracy successfully.


Considerations

There is a lot of things to consider in this proposal in order to properly integrate this site / program with the current industry trends. No resolutions have been discussed at this point to resolve the differences necessary to implement this solution technically and legally and I don’t claim to be an expert in these affairs, but I am looking to discuss these things and how a working solution can be implemented to satisfy all parties. No processes have been developed at this point to secure other concerns outside of the scope of this proposal, but should be worked on in time to relieve everyone’s concerns. Without the appropriate parties involved currently, this proposal will take time and work to make it work fully but based on my personal experiences with the IPTV industry, this appears to be a feasible route to take in terms of battling piracy and satisfying the masses, should all concerns be worked out. No current website or software solution should be used in the creation of this system… a solution should be built from the ground up with fresh code, which is why I will pursue software companies with this idea who do not have a stake in content production, in order to ensure open and unbiased access to the system by all content producers and artists. Thanks for taking the time to consider my proposal today!

Regards,

Bill Daly

a.k.a. iRoNBiLL
xironbillx@gmail.com

Technology Debates

Today, I began an attempt to debate why HTML5 is not going to be as “big” as everyone thinks it is… boy was I asking for trouble. :D I didn’t realize how vocal about HTML5 that people can be but like every average fanboy of any piece of technology, I attempted to debate the finer points and specifics as to why HTML5 was less likely to be a success. Then began my journey of understanding… very few folks discuss things rationally, seldom backing up their claims with fact but rather opinions they believe deeply… which isn’t the same thing last time I checked. Then after a couple of well-stated rebuttals, I realized the only person I was convincing was myself.

Let me just start off by saying I’m “Pro-XHTML” and not “Pro-HTML5”… don’t leave just yet nerds! I did the research myself, got an A+ on the research paper for my Informatics mid-term and the instructor even said I hit the synopsis right on the head but you know… whatever right? Who needs facts when you have opinions that coincide with others! :D

I’m not going to even bother re-stating my case on this as it’s already been discussed among great minds like Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web Consortium foundation… look it up, research it and make up your own minds… I don’t have all day to try and educate people who don’t want to learn.

Now that craps out of the way, I wanted to outline my discoveries of technology debates in general and my overall opinion of these as I think this will save people a lot of time wasted on people who aren’t into discussing things and keeping an open mind about it.

My list of discoveries necessary for having healthy debates about technology:

1.       Avoid people who claim to “know it all”… if they did, they would be rich and not chatting with you on a forum thread.

2.        Only speak to relevant facts and figures about the technology you are discussing. Nobody cares about an opinion if it doesn’t attempt to address the questions and answers left for discussion.

3.       Have an open mind and open ears. You can’t tell anybody anything if you aren’t listening to them.

4.       If you don’t really have any technical information relevant to the discussion in particular, don’t go injecting your opinions about it to replace valid arguments with.

5.       If you really want to discuss things and have educational learning in discussions, DON’T GO TO A FORUM EXPECTING IT!! Many of the people in the forums you are at have very limited knowledge about other areas of expertise and often get into theoretical conversations about things without all the facts of a basic understanding of the facts.

In short, I’ve learned unless you are in the appropriate forum where people actually know WTF you are talking about… the people are clueless and will attempt to debate you over it, even when you are all on the same team and you are trying to have a valid debate over facts… they won’t have any for you.

Don’t go wasting your time anymore on forums, thinking people are going to help give you some valuable insight into something you already know about… your barking up the wrong tree!

What Happened To Forums?!?

Forums for a long time have been a place where people can go and have a healthy discussion or debate about whatever the subject the forums were designed for.  I recall countless hours of reading interesting discussions and debates among forum users and in the end, you would find a couple folks getting to the meat and potatoes of an argument and perhaps even a greater understanding of the subjects at hand. It seems all of that has been forgotten in the years of new blogs and blog API’s arising, allowing more people than ever to put in their 2 cents on something, regardless of their knowledge on the subject.

Now, all you’ll find are very soft-spoken forums, where little to no relevant debate is actually taking place and everyone just accepts and believes what they hear or are told. Posting an opinion now will get you scrutinized and ridiculed for “being negative” or “trolling the forums”, even if your original intentions were simply to challenge someone’s thinking in a non-detrimental way… in short, there is no more debating people’s understanding of the world around them or you are viewed as “the problem” in the forums. Sad, but true.

Forums have essentially lost their very definition to a younger generation of computer users who have taken over the internet without ever gaining a matured understanding of what it is they are doing… when you start a forum, you are creating a platform for the exchange of ideas and discussions of other individuals. In doing so, you are allowing the free exchange of ideas and discussion to flow through your forums. As a forum moderator, your role is to help continue the movement of ideas and discussions towards the facts and the facts only… not spend your time deciding who’s right and wrong and being judgmental, but allowing the forces of nature to take their course and to steer the boat back on track when it gets off the subject or question posed in the thread.

As much as I would like to see the use of forums actually come back to fruition and have relevant dialogue again, I can’t help but notice the defensive mechanisms people are putting into play each and every day in their forum terms of service. It’s one thing to say you don’t tolerate hate speech… it’s another thing to categorically place someone in the ”hate speech” category all because you don’t know what the definition of the word is… not everyone is shouting “hate speech” when they disagree with another person in a forum… it’s okay to challenge another person’s thinking and it’s healthy to be a little offended, yet respective of one another to the point you would oblige with a response without pulling out the knives first. Anger and stress can be healthy emotions too when expressed appropriately. If we are all adults or at least mature about what we read, understand and say, then why can’t we take a little criticism as long as it’s nothing overtly personal to the receiver. God I wish people could just discuss things and not go overboard over words… words are not always weapons.

The other side of the issue really is that even the best of us can fail to respect one another. Without giving each other the benefit of the doubt, we fail to give people the opportunity to explain themselves in a way that promotes a comforting and non-agitating environment where conversation and debate can prosper in a healthy manner. I too have been known to go overboard when it comes to defending the app I work on, Navi-X.

Recently, I had a rather heated argument with Andrew of XBMC HUB in forums, then on to e-mail exchanges for the more vulgar communications. I pretty much threw down the gauntlet with Andrew and told him after we stopped being cordial that he needs to watch what he is saying cause it could end him up “in hot water or a shallow grave”… not the classiest thing I’ve ever said to say the least.

I then told him if he wanted to keep on debating with me about it, I would post his full name, address, social security number and personal finances on mIRC for sale… just test the waters buddy… again, overboard could not have been overstated in this case… while I’m pretty resourceful on the internet and could in fact do this if I so wanted to, at this point going from a petty argument to ruining someone’s finances is ridiculous, given it takes a lot of time and effort to do this kind of thing. I then told him if he just wants to end this argument now, just say so… then I got a response back that really made me unbelievably embarrassed, sad and depressed… he told me he would like to stop this please and that I was scaring his wife and family… that’s when I realized I was way out of line.

I never wanted to cause him or his family fear… growing up I hated fear… it was something I experienced a lot in my life, growing up with a family with 3 divorces, where fear was a tool used by my father on a regular basis to “keep me in check” and I used to really get picked on and bullied for being “soft” or kind to others… to say the least, this really screwed my mind up hard as a kid, teen and young adolescent. I hate fear in a way words cannot describe… I’d kill fear if it was a person.

I then proceeded to tell him how very truly sorry I was to cause him and his loved ones fear, how embarrassed I was to have gotten to this point. It was a very humbling experience to actually scare someone so great, they asked me to stop… I still feel quite ashamed about it and can never take back what I have done ever, even if they find it in their hearts to forgive me for what I’ve done. This is when I realized I took something so small as an offbeat comment from someone and blew it up to the point of life or death… I was far out of line.

I now know I need to re-analyze my priorities in life, what I believe and what I fight for. My father died 7 months ago, I’m in his home which could very well foreclose soon, I don’t have enough money to move out of the house and could end up living in a car for a while and God knows what… I need to focus on stability and who I am as a person… I am my own problem. I’ve decided I will backup from obligating myself from Navi-X for a little while until I get stability and structure in my life. I was going to college for the past year and a half after not attending it out of high school and being a “late bloomer” in the game and since my father died, I had to pull out of college and default on my student loans… so to say the least, I’ve built one heck of an uphill climb for myself and I need to focus on what matters most to me… me.

I will still be around chiming in with help, maybe doing some light work with Curt and others but this experience has definitely changed my mind drastically on where I need to focus… I hope anyone and everyone can understand where I am coming from when I say this. I let something as small as a semi-negative comment work me over and I clearly have personal problems I need to work through, but that’s okay… I know I have the problem and I have to work on it, step 1.

In short, I feel if forums returned to their old ways of discussion, I would not have gone off the deep end and brought it to a level of insanity never seen… I felt very offended, but at the same time I shouldn’t have… maybe that’s why I rely on the benefit of the doubt still, cause it’s always been my comfort zone. I hope forum moderators, bloggers and others will read this and learn from my mistakes. While I can’t change the world, I can hope that the world can change for the better still and we can all find a level of reason that has been lost for decades now. While I wait for the world to change, I can only look inward and try to better myself as a human and as Bill Daly should be.

iRoNBiLL