OTTAWA – There are positives to take away from illegal downloading, argued two members of a panel at the Canadian Media Production Association’s annual conference in Ottawa. They said that the file sharing so many in the industry rail against, loudly and often, can seed new markets, raise brand awareness and ultimately bring in new money.
The panel’s moderator Gavin McGarry, president of Jumpwire Media, suggested during his opening remarks that file sharing is starting to show its worth for not only upstart companies but also well established content providers.
“I think people are starting to see the benefits of file sharing, how it works and how it can work for content,” he said. “We’re really coming to a place right now where piracy and file sharing is actually doing what it’s supposed to do: It’s showing new markets, it’s taking the content business to new places and it’s helping build big businesses for new and emerging companies but also for some of our big leading content providers.”
Robert Tercek, a digital media visionary who spoke earlier as well, said that sharing video and music is a good thing, but the problem is that the content owners, the music labels and the movie studios (he refers to them as the media companies), are struggling to find their way in this new digital world, he added.
“They’re hooked on the needle of selling the shiny disk,” he said. “What they ought to be doing is licensing their content on reasonable terms… and thereby acclimate the audience that they should pay, and file-share, and not illegally download content. If they make their content available this part of the issue will go away.”
Rajan Samtani, senior VP of sales and marketing at Peer Media Technologies (an anti-piracy technology firm), says part of the problem for the large studios is that they’ve invested tens of millions into movies, need to recoup that and have a lucrative, working business model to enable that. While the concept of file sharing may work for small projects, it certainly won’t work when it comes to begin earning a return on investment.
“Once you’re actually at a place where you need to recoup the money that you put in… this stuff can be pretty devastating,” he said. “I’ve heard stories from folks that try to put out a smaller movie and they can’t get DVD licensing in certain countries. Because piracy is just so rampant… you can’t get a single penny for DVD rights in Spain as an example.”
Peer Media tracks un-monetized consumption of content for the major movie studios and other industry players and then tries to eliminate the links to those illegal file sharing sites.
McGarry wondered again aloud if file sharing opens up new markets and Robert Levine, former executive editor of Billboard Magazine and author of Free Ride, was blunt in his answer.
“What you’re saying is just not supported by statistics. And you’re talking about this as a problem with people not being able to get stuff. Statistically speaking, hogwash,” he said, noting the issue is about getting people to pay for access, not installing road blocks so they can’t get access at all. “I prefer to call it a toll booth. I’m not creating blocks between my content and you, I’m putting in a toll booth between my content and you,” he said.
Both McGarry and Tercek said the idea of promoting content through the give away of free access happens in the book industry. Book publishers will actually buy many copies of a book to vault it onto the New York Times best seller list, which in turn stimulates more sales of the book.
