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Still won't simply sell you the files? I give many fewer fucks about the "extras" than I give about having the damn files and being able to play them however and whenever I want to. (And if you can't do that, then you haven't bought anything.)

It's amazing that the industry is still so anti-revenue in 2015. They bitch about piracy and yet still, to date, comedians are the only people who actually do anything about it.

I guess the BBC doesn't have stockholders so their management doesn't really have to worry about anyone finding out that they're not really trying to make revenue, so half-assing it is probably ok. I just hope that the American media companies doesn't see this kind of thing and take it seriously. OTOH, maybe it would be good if they did, and if the stockholders caught them doing it, and then they finally got fired and were forced by their boards to start selling products to paying customers.

I'd say that's comparable level of ownership to owning the DVD's, which is about as much as one can own something like a video.

What the fuck?!

Look here for a real example of "about as much as one can own something like a video." You can literally buy files here, and you aren't breaking any laws, or contract terms, if create or use your own player, or any player of your choice.

It's sickening that anyone would think the iTunes store (or DVDs) are "about as much" as the real thing.

You know that all downloadable media also has DRM, right?

Your faith is heartening. Tell those silly evidencists where to put their silly facts! We need more faith-based tech reporting, and less pro-evidencism bias!

physical media inherently requires that the media be broadly compatible with a wide range of products by multiple companies, because the mere existence of the physical media necessitates that compatibility.

Ah, so you've never bought a Sony product (audio recorder or camera). I didn't realize there were people like you out there, and it gives me hope. Keep up the good pattern, for it has given you an idealism that I, for one, find very fresh and exciting. ;-)

On to your real point...

Actually, by digital content, I meant "non-gratis digital downloads and streaming", though I'll readily admit that DRM does make the problem worse. .. With digital downloads, all of those barriers that previously kept content providers honest no longer matter. Up until the point at which consumer backlash kicks in, there's nothing preventing having a hundred different competing devices, none of which can read content created for any of the others.

DRM doesn't make the problem worse ; it makes the problem, as it's the main proprietary component which makes interoperability difficult (and illegal, thanks to DMCA). Without the DRM, you could replace those hundred competing devices or software components, with one which you have forced to work with all the hundred different "standards." Or you'd have filters/converters that, say, take Netflix content and converts it to something your Amazon-spec player can handle (or vice-versa). Even your narrowly-defined "digital content" definition ultimately has its problems really because of DRM and the proprietary format (the two are closely realted). It's not because it's digital or because it was a non-gratis digital download.

Please, have a look at this example: https://buy.louisck.net/purchase/live-at-the-beacon-theater. What you'll see is something that fits your definition of non-gratis digital download in every way. I'll admit you can't use it as a frisbee, but really, it doesn't threaten to increase the proliferation of players. It's not going to result in another wall-wart or yet another weird app that you have to install. Whatever player already you have, will very likely work with what he's selling. A thousand other content creators, none of them working together or united by a single store which forces a technical constraint upon them, could do that and it would all just work. Digital content is not a problem; it's a good thing and solves more problems than it creates. Just keep away from the proprietary stuff.

the first 250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.

The second 250k where extra bonus cash for his staff:

The second 250k is going back to my staff and the people who work for me on the special and on my show. I'm giving them a big fat bonus.

So he actually made 750k. That's a huge chunk of profit after investing 250k in my book.

Would it have killed the submitter to include about three to five words informing us who the frack "Louis CK" is? Yes, it's just a Google away, but it would have been nice to mention it in the submission. (Or the editors could have added it.)

He's a comedian who released his latest produced video directly to the consumer and DRM-free. He made it extremely easy and friendly to access and made a shitload of money in a very short amount of time.

https://buy.louisck.net/

If blu-ray disks were $5 each I would have hundreds of them.

As it is, I have none.

I will add the supporting evidence Louis C. K.

Rather than take a flat rate of $50,000 - $100,000 for his special from the industry where they would price the disks at $10 - $20 he just produced it himself and put it up online with no DRM for $5. By circumventing the major industry players and just doing it himself he has made more than double. He has effectively done what the media industry says is impossible without them suing and forcing people to pay out the nose.

I have bought several copies for myself and gifts to support the idea of paying what the market really thinks the product is worth rather than forcing a higher market price.

God help me for not going AC with this reply, but here goes: Piracy is a direct result of the cost of digital goods.

If game companies want people to stop pirating their games, lower the price. That is the silver bullet. In general people don't pirate games because they are too lazy to go to the store (or even better, the website) and buy it. The VAST majority of piracy is due to people not seeing the cost/value ratio of that entertainment within acceptable parameters.

Obviously people don't necessary consciously think those things. But if you look at Louis C.K.'s latest gamble with his DVD. Charging a fair (or beyond fair) price makes piracy almost completely disappear. Louis made money hand over fist, and piracy was almost non-existent.

$60 dollar games cause piracy. It is that simple.

https://buy.louisck.net/
Louis C.K. made a comedy special by himself for distribution entirely online with no DRM (aside from having a reasonable download limit to prevent bandwidth abuse), and he's asking $5 for it. I first torrented it. I liked it, and I support him as a comedian; so I bought it (And at that price? How can you not?), showed it to several of my friends, and they all bought it too. You might think he's made no profit, but in 12 days, he made over 1 million dollars. And that was over a month ago. Who knows how much more he's made since then. Sounds like he's got it figured out pretty well.

The basic premis is to not treat the user as simply a revenue source to be squeezed. Rather treat them as a fan, one who is willing to pay within their budget for your product. When you try to squeeze more money out of them than they can afford they will look for a way to get your product cheaper through illegal means if necessary. Provide your product cheaply at a price point that is fair to your fan and they will gladly pay it.

Supporting evidence: Louis CK

It worked for Louis CK

Louis C.K. apparently doesn't see this as a problem, you do. His show is available on torrents and download sites, and he said he understands that risk and is just grateful to people who do end up buying the show for $5. He does have the copyright protection under law, but that's not what he is using in his business model, and he would still end up covering the costs and making all that money without copyright law.

Also you can buy movies, software, music and other bootleg products all over the world for a couple of bucks a disk or less (it can just be part of your ISP service, that's how it works in many countries - you pay your ISP and they throw in 'perks' like that).

Of-course there are torrents, etc. So the question then that you should be concerned with becomes: do I have a customer base big enough that a percentage of it will subsidise my work, past and future, by paying some amount of money to me as an 'inventor' and obviously an investor. You INVEST your time/money into something - you are NEVER guaranteed a return (unless you are a big bank and the Fed is printing for you like the trees are going out of style).

Whether you want to have a contract with a publisher firm - that's up to you signing a contract with them and that's where government DOES have a role - protecting personal freedoms, liberties, but also contracts.

And the copyrights and patents will be abolished anyway, people will suffer from government trying to save the business models of Hollywood and such in US and in Europe, but people who manufacture and produce the real goods don't care about your copyrights and patents, eventually they are the people with real money, savings and ability to use your material to make money. You want to think about that in reality, you want to appeal to that market BEFORE you use your government force to try and stop that and lose completely with those people.

Well actually who is going to stop a publisher from doing it right now? You think copyright laws can stop a publisher from doing that same trick? You are mistaken. You give your book to a publisher, they can just as well do that same thing, and you won't be able to do anything about it in current system, after all, publisher is likely bigger than you and has more lawyers.

It's your word against publisher's word that you were the one who wrote it.

OTOH if you submit your manuscript to the government copyright office, then there is a record that you were first.

However this means little with good lawyers, anything can be construed against you, and publisher may have much deeper ties to government structure than you do, and if past performances are any indication of future, then the US copyright office officials may just be found doing coke off the toaster ovens and fucking publisher employees.

The point is that if it is useful to have some form of a RECORD that you were first to submit a manuscript (for example), then a private firm can occupy that niche just as much, and at least in the private sector there is possibility to have competition, which doesn't exist in government, so if there was demand for such a service, you could choose one.

Of-course today, with the way we do business, you could encrypt your book, sign it with a key, post it on an open forum like slashdot and the dates on your comment would then prove your precedence.

OTOH, what is the point for a publisher to do what you just suggested? Why would authors work with a publisher with such a track record, and when the word got out that the publisher did this (even once), it could not be hidden from the public record again, just look at the ridiculous attacks against Ron Paul based on old newsletters that James B. Powell wrote. And that's a guy who wants to end the most racist policies that US government has - War on Drugs, War on various brown people and Muslims all around the world.

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A publisher wants to keep a good name.

Authors want to work with publishers that have a good name.

Consumers want to buy books from actual authors (as the Louis C.K. experiment has shown)

Consumers also have the easiest way to do research about whatever product they want to buy ever with the Internet and search engines, etc.

And the very last point - if you provide a good product, people will buy from you even if others buy through channels that you do not control, again as Louis C.K. has shown - people download his books for free from torrents, etc., yet he had enough revenue that he donated a quarter of it already to various charities.

Stop with the government based protectionism, the consequences of it are too awful to want to keep the insignificant benefits.

There must be no government standing in the way of anybody doing so, correct. Of-course your name is on the book, and with today's distribution channels over the Internet it's not difficult to set up your own distribution channels if you already went through all of the work needed to create your product.

you are confusing the point I was making.

It's not about whether the work is copyrighted or not, the AC's implication was that he wouldn't see return on investment without copyright laws, because people would just take his work and not pay for it.

Well, the show Louis C.K. produced is on torrents and other download sites and enough people paid that he still made over a million. And all of this without using RIAA, MPAA, FBI and other entities to protect his content from being distributed through other channels.

From Louis CK's website: Live at the Beacon Theater is available with "No DRM, no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever." (source) This implies that the work is free of technological protections, but does not imply that it is free of legal protections. If you think that the performance is being sold without copyright protections, then I invite you to make a few quick bucks by selling it yourself.

When will the media companies and government realize that the proliferation of piracy is not the internet it is the outrageous prices they try to extract. The fact is that if they didn't keep trying to sell every stinking CD at $17 when we all know most aren't worth $5. Sell the product at what the market wants to pay for it, if you don't then the incentive to steal goes way up.

There have been several recent examples of artists releasing their work at reasonable prices with no DRM. Rather than being ripped off by the public at large, their fans have put down the money.

Louis CK has made over $1,000,000 off his most recent video. You can download it without DRM for $5. And yes he is Hilarious.

See this guys success and then tell me why protection is required. https://buy.louisck.net/purchase

Louis CK used the $500,000 to pay off several costs, including the $170,000 it took to produce the show, and the $32,000 he spent on building and editing his own website.

Interestingly, on his own website, he says this:

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).

Hrm.

J.K. Rowling has STILL refuses to allow the Harry Potter books to be released as e-books (until her own little Potterweb, or whatever the heck she's calling it, is ready) but that sure hasn't prevented her from being one of the most-downloaded authors online. She just doesn't get a penny from it, because she has chosen to go that way.

As compared to Louis C.K. who has taken in half a million dollars in four days by having a DRM-free download of his Beacon Theater performance available for $5.
https://buy.louisck.net/

Or, of course, Cory Doctorow, who manages to do quite well on book sales even with having his books available as free CC-licensed downloads.
http://craphound.com/

Why not do as Louis does? Cut out the useless middleman and link directly to his statement.

I found it odd that TFA didn't mention the site, or where one can go to get this fine drm-free video.

https://buy.louisck.net/

I think it's great, personally. He's getting $5 from me. It's a fair price, and he's a funny guy.