[LINK] Digital rights DIY

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Here's one experimental way forward re digital rights. This artist has
grossed a million dollars. And no headaches, simply goodwill all round.

His answer? Do-it-yourself, and trust human honesty. And, it's working.


"The Media Equation: A Comic Distributes Himself"

By DAVID CARR www.nytimes.com Published: December 18, 2011 

Louis C. K. is something of a pirate in the entertainment world, a man 
who has ignored propriety on his way to building a huge comic franchise. 
So it’s odd to see him put one of his shows for sale on the Web and 
politely ask fans not to rip him off.

The weirder thing? It seems to be working. 

A scabrous and successful champion of the everyman, Louis C. K. decided 
last week to go direct with his fans: no cable special, no middleman, 
just a simple download for $5 on his Web site to see his comedy 
show “Louis C. K.: Live at the Beacon Theater.” 

The show could be viewed as the consumer wished, with no rights 
protection or expensive subscription. A buy-it-and-watch-it proposition, 
no cable company involved. He was also, of course, enabling people to 
watch it free — without digital rights management, it was there for the 
pirating — and some went right to the torrent sites and did so. 

But many, many other people paid the fiver and got a package of two 
streams and three downloads, which could be burned to a DVD or streamed 
on a smartphone and wherever else they felt like watching it. 

 https://buy.louisck.net

Louis C. K. is a freak about doing it himself. He writes, directs, 
produces and acts in his own series, “Louie,” then edits it himself with 
Final Cut Pro on his Mac. 

And now the king of D.I.Y. has one more credential: distributor. 

"I went at this like a consumer, just looking at human impulses." 

“I buy lots of things online and I had a focus group of one. I thought 
about it, and five bucks seemed almost free and I figured if I took out 
the hassle, most of the speed bumps, it would almost be like hitting a 
link and streaming it. It’s been pretty damn great so far.” 

While I was talking with him on the phone Thursday night, he checked his 
Web site and about 175,000 people had bought his special through PayPal. 
He expected 200,000 total downloads by the weekend, which meant he would 
have grossed $1 million. After covering costs of about $250,000 for the 
live production and the Web site, that’s a $750,000 profit. And he owns 
the rights, and the long tail of buyers, in perpetuity. 

The transparency of the enterprise, including its cost in relation to how 
many people bought in, was the subject of media coverage all last week. 

“It feels weird having numbers out there, because that’s my personal 
income,” he said. “But I talked to my mom, who is a pretty judicious, 
careful person, and she said, ‘Tell them everything. Just let it all get 
out there.’ So that’s what I have been doing, at least so far.” 

Louis C. K. has been doing comedy since 1984, when he took a break from 
working on cars to try stand-up. He didn’t go to college, is not deep 
into technology, and doesn’t think of himself as any sort of pioneer. But 
he has a fundamental understanding of the Web and what it could mean for 
content providers and consumers. 

“O.K., so NBC is this huge company and they have all these studios and 
these satellites to beam stuff out,” he said, “but on the Web, both 
NBC.com and LouisCK.com have the same amount of bandwidth. We are equals 
and there are things you can do with that. This has been a fun little 
experiment.” 

It may be little, but it has significant implications, pointing a way 
forward for performers, and the consumers who want to pay for their work. 

Television faces threats from many sides, including from people who are 
cutting their cable cord and watching programming over the Web, as well 
as any number of Web-based programmers like YouTube, Netflix and Amazon. 

But network and cable television’s big hedge against insurgent 
technologies has always been its stranglehold on programming and talent. 
If I wanted to see how “Homeland” ended and was not willing to steal it, 
I’m would have had to pay Verizon Fios for my cable feed, which in turn 
pays Showtime. 

In fact, I wouldn’t know anything about Louis C. K. if it weren’t for 
cable. I DVR’d his freakishly hilarious series “Louie” on FX, which is 
owned by News Corporation, and I saw his last two comedy specials on 
cable. The people who helped build the brand of Louis C. K. might wonder 
about his decision to go native (digitally), but hey, it’s the Internet: 
it’s every man, woman, producer, consumer, company and cable outfit for 
itself! 

“I am not sticking it to the Man,” he said. “There is no the Man in this 
story and if there were, he would be like a kindly old father. HBO gave 
me a half-hour comedy show, a series that I had complete control over, 
and then a full-hour comedy special. They have been nothing but great to 
me.” 

“But they don’t really want what I have any more,” he said. “Comedy 
specials are just like grist to the mill to them, so I thought it was 
time to try something else.” (He added that “Louie” would be on FX as 
long as the channel wanted it. “I am completely loyal to them,” he said.) 

Going through a middleman to put out a televised version of his latest 
stage show clearly rankled Louis C. K., who is used to getting in front 
of an audience and daring them not to laugh. Besides, some of the 
economics of dealing with cable bugged him. He was paid a fee upfront and 
the cable outfits shouldered the costs, but he had no participation in 
the backend — DVDs, on-demand and reruns. 

“I’ve never seen a check from a comedy special,” he told Terry Gross on 
NPR’s “Fresh Air.” 

Louis C. K. portrays himself as a working stiff, a 44-year-old divorced 
father who is capable of telling sort of mean jokes about his own 
children. But he’s displayed a great deal of digital savvy, carefully 
building a simple user-friendly site to facilitate the transaction. His 
default setting for whether a customer wanted additional product 
information from Louis C. K. was “No. Leave me alone forever, you fat 
idiot.” 

The download of the Mp4 to my laptop took under four minutes and I still 
had two streams and two downloads left. (I watched one of the streams on 
my iPad at bedtime.) When he began the experiment, he did a Q. and A. on 
the Web site Reddit, a great place to address those inclined toward 
piracy. 

“I think it is really interesting that I brought the price so close to 
stealing and made the movie so easy to get and made it so clear that it’s 
a human offering that it sparked a debate about pirating,” he wrote. “To 
steal from someone and not feel bad, you either have to be a sociopath or 
view the act differently.” 

By putting a face on the content, Louis C. K. changed the subject from 
whether it is O.K. to game a big corporation to whether it’s morally 
appropriate to simply take the work of an artist that other people have 
paid for. 

On Wednesday on his site, he declared the experiment a success. 

“I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it 
again,” he wrote. “If the trend continues with sales on this video, my 
goal is that I can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it 
videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I’ll do it here and I’ll continue to 
follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not over 
marketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in 
the transaction.” 

Louis C. K.’s ability to hack his own route to his public brings joy to 
the Web-inclined — “Louis C. K. wins everything ever,” said the wags at 
Vulture, New York magazine’s Web site — but will seem less charming to 
the cable outlets who teamed up with him and helped build him into a 
juggernaut. But his exalted status as someone worth paying for on the Web 
not only derives from his exposure on cable, but also from the fact that 
he is one of the funniest humans on earth. 

“This is not about cable, it’s about concerts,” he told me. “I have been 
out on the road for a long time selling tickets, and me and the people I 
work with aren’t that surprised, to be honest. We knew people would buy 
it. People have been paying for what I do for a long time now.”

(Readers shared their thoughts on this article. Read All 30 Comments)
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Cheers,
Stephen