Louis CK's Internet Experiment Pays Off

redletterdave writes "Comedian Louis C.K., real name Louis Szekely, took a major risk by openly selling his latest stand-up special, 'Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theater,' for only $5 on his website and refusing to put any DRM restrictions on the video, which made it easily susceptible to pirating and torrenting. Four days later, Louis CK's goodwill experiment has already paid off: The 44-year-old comic now reports making a profit of about $200,000, after banking more than $500,000 in revenue from the online-only sale. The special, which has sold 110,000 copies so far, is only available on Louis CK's website."

Comments

Pirate attitude

[bonch]

Louis CK said in an NPR interview earlier this week:

"And a friend of mine who does torrent stuff a lot says that when torrent users do buy something, they act like they're doing the greatest thing ever. ... They're saying, 'I bought something today. I paid for it. And I didn't steal it. I'm the greatest person alive.' "

I've noticed this attitude as well. It's really, really annoying.

Re:Pirate attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

No, the attitude I see more often is "This thing is so good and so reasonably priced -- I *paid* for it."

Re:Pirate attitude

[DC2088]

Agreed - if you're going to pirate for reasons of "overpriced ____" or "label ____ is getting all the money", consider artists who do this stuff ON THEIR OWN with no serious corporate ties in the production or who are part of itty-bitty labels (Protomen, Devin Townsend, recent NIN, KMFDM come to mind) if you're REALLY against the whole "corporate conglomerate of music" thing .. Or hey, get Spotify. You're paying, what, $5 a month there, AFTER your free trial? I get why piracy exists, but there are artists I will give my money to without a second thought for a number of reasons. But the wrong attitude is to then act like you're the moral superior.

Re:Pirate attitude

[mug funky]

it's a bit of a problem though... Louis' experiment was a matter of tentatively finding the threholds involved.

basically, though a lot of people are willing to pay for something out of goodwill, there'll always be arseholes that have no good will and will take anything they can because they can.

people steal from charity shops you know... even though the prices are insanely low and the store itself is not for profit, and in many cases the store is affiliated with a charity that will give the same items to poor people, some cunt will actually take stuff for free.

arseholes are why we can't have nice things.

Louis' experiment (and wikipedia's, and radiohead's, etc) is whether one can make a living in spite of the small percent of people that are just cunts for cunting's sake. it looks like there's enough decent people out there to make a living. but one can be forgiven for thinking "you know, if those people had shelled out a measly 5 bucks, i could have made so much more".

Re:Pirate attitude

[Anonymous Coward]

The evidence doesn't support my waggery? Are you not aware of Pirate Bay, the Pirate Party, etc.? This thing from Louis CK already has several thousand downloads on Demonoid, and that's just a private tracker.

Pirates want shit for free. They refuse to acknowledge this basic human trait and cover it up with a bunch of freedom fighter bullshit. It's very simple and obvious--humans like to get things for free. To make themselves not feel guilty about it, they blame everything else but themselves--software publishers, the RIAA, Microsoft, copyright law, etc. I realize that Slashdot has become a piracy advocacy site in the last 10 years, but just because your opinion is patted on the back all the time at this one website doesn't mean it's true.

If you're a pirate, just admit reality and say you want to acquire things without having to pay for them. It's so much more respectable than the usual coverup.

Re:Pirate attitude

[Baloroth]

The arseholes aren't going to pay for it either way. Charging more money and adding DRM is only going to drive the non-arseholes towards arseholish behavior. This is why Ubisoft can't make money in the PC gaming area any more: no one wants to pay for that shit. People will gladly pay, if they get their moneys worth.

Hell, the newest Humble Bundle made over a million in it's first day. No DRM, no minimum price. I paid 20 bucks (although I did send most to charity: first time I've almost felt bad sending money to charity, since I also wanted to pay the developers), well over the average required for the extra games. People will pay for things. Provided the person they are buying it from doesn't insult them, especially not while they are being paid

Re:Pirate attitude

[OakDragon]

Who is forcing you to read or watch anything? :'-( You should report their actions to the proper authorities post haste!! ~:-O

It involves Beethoven and eye drops, my dobby droog.

Re:Pirate attitude

[rkfig]

So you haven't experienced the DVDs that force you to sit through previews by disabling skip and fast forward functionality. How nice for you.

Re:Pirate attitude

[Sj0]

I think there's definitely more to it than you're portraying.

Look at me, for example: In 1999, I spoke out on my (crappy) website against game publishers not selling games and forcing me into the second hand market. At the time, I was more than happy to steal anything I wanted, because I couldn't get the right product at the right price and easy to buy and use.

Fast forward 10 years, and I've spent hundreds of dollars at GOG.COM, where they have the right product at the right price and easy to buy and use. I've bought well over 100 games, more than I could possibly play in a very long time, specifically because I so strongly believe that a company fulfilling their end of the bargain deserves to be rewarded.

Those dollars and cents on GOGs balance sheet, is that freedom fighter bullshit?

Re:Pirate attitude

[mug funky]

this is my point exactly - pricks will not buy at any price. not because "bawww i'm so poor"... they're on the internet. their basic needs are clearly met (food, shelter, safety), so they can't bleat about being poor. it's a matter of get it or go without. if they go without, they should spend the time they would have spent watching doing something productive.

the good thing about offering it for a very small price is precisely calling the bluff - knowing that people will steal no matter what, but doing the maths on whether you can break even or make a modest profit in spite of that.

Louie's overheads are low - he paid for shooting it, and web hosting, and all the rest he does himself. there's no distributor, he didn't use a post house, all mastering was done in files rather than tapes. you save tens of thousands by doing it yourself.

a feature film might be able to do this, but it'd need enough marketing to get the film out there, and it'd need a low budget. something like Avatar couldn't survive this way (even if it was a good movie instead of a smurf handjob fest).

Re:Pirate attitude

[Endo13]

The "moral superior" attitude comes from paying someone who actually deserves it, as opposed to paying the MAFIAA who create nothing themselves and charge 5 times what something is actually worth, while passing on next to nothing to the people who actually did the work.

I'll gladly pay an artist if his work deserves it, but I'll be damned if I help enable the abusive greedy behavior of the content cartels. They can go fuck themselves.

Re:Pirate attitude

[Lumpy]

Paying a REASONABLE price is always preferable to people. and that is the point. a 1 hour TV show is NOT WORTH more than 0.99 to most people. A longer special like the example is worth more.

The problem is that CBS,NBC,ABC,Viacom,etc all think that tv show is worth $$BILLIONS$$ZOMG! and it is in reality not. If I cant view it for free on my TV then THAT is the value of it to me. You had better price it so close to that value that I dont care about the cost 1/2 hour sitcom single viewing? $0.50 is the top reasonable price without commercials. and THAT is far more they are getting per set of eyeballs than any advertising is making them.

They want the cake, the frosting, and then to charge us to eat it and then crap it out later.

and that is why people say "screw it" and torrent them instead.

Re:Pirate attitude

[geekprime]

worrying too much about arseholes are why we can't have nice things.

There, fixed that for you.

The bottom line is that nothing you can do will stop the people that are going to pirate it no matter what. NOTHING short of not releasing it will prevent them from getting a copy for free and thinking they are the hot shit because of it.

Lets say that there are 1000 of those people in the world that want your product, is it worth pissing off the 100,000 people that legitimately buy your "product" with annoying DRM to slightly annoy just one of those 1000 jackasses while he breaks whatever actually useless DRM scheme you PAID EXTRA to use on your product? To say nothing of the fact that you are pumping up that one jackholes ego by giving him some drm to crack!

Well that's all of my.02, I'm off to go buy a comedy album, even though I've never seen this guy. Maybe I'll check out youtube first.

Ya, I think the lesson is clear to anyone that isn't an idiot, or working for a DRM creation company.

Re:Pirate attitude

[jfengel]

Marketing is a big part of it. As with Radiohead, they proved only that if the marketing money is already spent, you can coast.

He can figure web hosting and the cost of the venue and filming into his accounts, but he didn't take into account the money that was spent making him famous: spots on Letterman, Showtime specials, etc.

Unknown people try this experiment every single day on Myspace and Jango and such, and if they're lucky a musician will make enough money to pay for the studio time. They're not famous to start with and can't pay for TV time to make themselves famous.

If Louis CK were still some small-time hack making his way on the comedy circuit, there's no chance he'd have made back even the $200k he spent on this project. And as you observe, that's for the cheapest kind of movie you can imagine: some shmo talking in front of a camera, with no costumes, no effects, no locations, no score, no actors, etc.

Re:Pirate attitude

[geekoid]

Why?

DO you think there would be 5 dollar downloads if no one ahd been bucking the system for 15+ years? No, it would all be locked up by big companies who may, or may not release it.

Of course, in today's world you're statement is incredibly stupid. Companies can change the terms of an agreement any time they like now.

I can tell you why I pirate when I do

1) I can't return many items if they don't work as advertised.
2) I can't read the EULA until I am installing it; which is too late to get my money back
3) Someone recommends a tv series. For example: Archer* It was recommended. I down loaded season one. I now own the disks. Sometime a show will suck, and I'll delete it.
4) Downloading cost them exactly nothing. SO there is NOT a loss.

And I will continue until the consumer isn't getting screwed.

I prefer to change the terms.

*LAAAAAANA

Re:Pirate attitude

[EdIII]

even if it was a good movie instead of a smurf handjob fest

So THAT'S why they are always fucking singing!! I knew it had to be something.

Re:Pirate attitude

[Parafilmus]

So you haven't experienced the DVDs that force you to sit through previews by disabling skip and fast forward functionality. How nice for you.

The DVD isn't disabling those buttons. It's just a plastic disc with some data on it. It has no power over your player.

The culprit here is your insubordinate DVD player, which willfully disobeys your commands.

It might be possible to overwrite the player's firmware to make it more docile. If not, you should consider having it put down. If you tolerate insubordination, that will only set a bad example for the rest of your electronics. Eventually, it could lead to outright mutiny. Best to nip these things in the bud.

Re:Pirate attitude

[Thiez]

> Sociopaths are, literally, the source of all the evil in the world.

[Citation needed]. Sociopathy is now seen as a subset of antisocial personality disorder. According to wikipedia,
  "A 2002 literature review of studies on mental disorders in prisoners stated that 47% of male prisoners and 21% of female prisoners had anti-social personality disorder."
Even assuming all of the prisoners with that disorder did belong to the sociopath-subset, this still means 53% of male prisoners and 79% of female prisoners are *not* sociopaths, while (depending on their crimes) they can still be seen as a source of 'evil'.

It's very tempting to call 'bad' people names to distance yourself from them, fact remains that most of us are capable of terrible things under the right circumstances. While denying this may make you feel better about yourself, you're just sticking your head in the sand.

If you're interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_disengagement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

I'm shocked!

[Above]

When you give consumers a product that they want, at a price they find fair, in a form factor (format) that is convenient for them, in a location that is convenient for them, they are happy to pay for it!

Re:I'm shocked!

[isonline]

Oh the professional publishers do! They also realize that if they control the channels they can pay the actual author a pittance as well as make a greater profit off the higher prices paid by the non-pirates and the fees that the extort out of the people they attempt to drag into court.

Re:I'm shocked!

[mistiry]

Took me a minute to decide to comment, or mod up.

I will NOT pay $20+ for a DVD full of DRM/malware. If I purchase something, it is mine. I will not subject myself to corporate restrictions on what I can do with my own property. I have gladly paid for DRM-free songs and movies, and will continue to do so as long as my rights to my own property are not encroached upon.

I have even donated more than asked to independent artists, simply because I feel that they deserved to be compensated for producing something I enjoyed.

The typical pirate's attitude is not "yay, everything's free!".

Should $CORPORATION decide to release their movies for a reasonable price and allow me to download it immediately via BitTorrent, here's my Visa.

Re:I'm shocked!

[theweatherelectric]

When you give consumers a product that they want, at a price they find fair, in a form factor (format) that is convenient for them, in a location that is convenient for them, they are happy to pay for it!

The hard part is making that happen in the first place. From the article:

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.

Leaving aside the possibility of people acquiring the video without paying for it, he had $300,000 of costs (they don't indicate where the other $100,000 went, maybe the $202,000 figure mentioned was the up front cost and the next $98,000 was distribution). Sure, he could have perhaps found a lower cost way to distribute it but it's still $170,000 in production costs. Part of the deal with publishers of any kind is that they're taking on the risk of producing it. If it doesn't sell it's them who will be losing money, not the author or act or band, etc. In this case, Louis CK put himself in a position where he would potentially lose $170,000 at the minimum. It's only established acts who have the opportunity to take that sort of risk.

Re:I'm shocked!

[Endo13]

Someone just starting out has no reasonable expectation to make $500,000 in 4 days. Someone just starting out should be absolutely thrilled if he makes $500 in 4 days. In fact, someone just starting out should be pretty darn happy to be making any money at all in the first 4 days after release.

But that's precisely the whole problem with our IP system in the US. People think that just because they produced some content they should be entitled to loads of wealth, both immediately as well as for the rest of their life for one thing they spent probably less than 100 hours producing.

I could go on, but that's probably enough for now.

Link to the purchase page

[Crudely_Indecent]

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.

Pay on the way out...

[LazyAcer]

LCK says he doesn't get torrents, but I think he does, this is very smart. Many people who watch the torrent version will gladly hop over to his site and pay their $5 and not even bother to d/l again. Movies should be like this, what if you could pay on the way out of the theater after you've seen the movie, wouldn't that make alot more sense?

You know it'll never happen, but it's a nice idea

=D