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‘Geeky young males’ and file sharing

// August 11th, 2009 // Site News

- P2P:- “The Net isn’t revolution,” I’ve just posted in a comment to the apparent sinking of The Pirate Bay ship. “It’s evolution. “Whenever a site such as TPB goes down for whatever reason, if something doesn’t already exist to take its place, something new quickly evolves. “And the auld grey heads who rule the Korporate Kopyright Klans finger their beards and become even more confused.” Mind-boggling, eye-popping profits Every honest observer of the P2P filesharing community has for years been noting files shared online appear to have absolutely no effect on corporate sales. To the contrary, they’re invaluable viral marketing tools which probably do as much to spread the word as any corporate advertisement or promotion. The Hollywood studios in particular continue to to churn out brainless, soulless, formulaic ‘product’ on a conveyor belt, reaping mind-boggling, eye-popping profits which every year break the records set the year before. And yet they claim they’re being devastated by file sharers who, it frequently turns out, are actually people working for, and with, Hollywood studios. Says Alibaba.com »»» Over the last six months, the hit graphic novel adaptation Watchmen and the popular NBC series Heroes ranked as the most often illegally downloaded movie and TV show, according to data tracked by peer-to-peer piracy research firm Big Champagne. The simple lesson? Geeky young males — like many less piracy-capable viewers — don’t necessarily like to pay for their entertainment. “I don’t want to engage in too much stereotyping, but who are the people most actively helping themselves arm over arm to all this free video content?” asks Big Champagne Chief Executive Eric Garland. “They’re going to be geek-leaning. Just think about how many Comic Con visitors are also heavy Bittorrent users.” Watchmen was downloaded nearly 17 million times from bittorrent trackers like the Pirate Bay and Mininova, according to Big Champagne. The second most pirated film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was downloaded 13 million times. Heroes episodes were downloaded a total of 54.5 million times, just ahead of the CBS ( CBS - news - people ) show Lost, with 51 million downloads. Pirates’ preference for tights and capes is nothing new. Last year’s top pirated film by a large margin was the Batman sequel The Dark Knight, which was downloaded well in excess of 7 million times, by Big Champagne’s rough count. More significant may be the enormous growth in peer-to-peer downloads. The Dark Knight’s 7 million downloads wouldn’t even place the film in this year’s top 10 pirated films. Even marginally successful films like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Transporter 3 were pirated close to 8 million times so far this year. Kids of 10, 11, 12, 13  who don’t know code from cod With all due respect to Eric, the people responsible for the online action are by no means all ‘geeky young males’. Kids of 10, 11, 12, 13  who don’t know code from cod routinely upload and download flicks and music, sharing the joy and then nagging their parents into taking them to see the big-screen productions, and buying the CDs. Korporate krap predominates, for the moment. But that’s changing, and fast, as the labels and studios go after not only these potential customers of the future, but their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. The auld grey heads The kids of the 21st digital century who surf the net talk to each other all day, every day. They’re a whole lot smarter than the kids of the 1990s, and back, and they cross pollinate each other with ideas and information in a way that’s never been possible before, growing smarter and smarter with every exchange. But the auld grey heads who rule the Korporate Kopyright Klans still believe they’re talking to a bunch of brainless teenie ninnies. And that’s the way they address them and think of them. Similarly, it’s a mistake to ignore the fact hundreds of millions of older people are also opening Internet accounts, logging on and downloading and uploading. There’s a whole wide world of people of all religions, all races, all ages, all persuasions, all beliefs, logging on all the time. People are caring and sharing and teaching each other the tricks of the net. In short, the word is out, there’s no way of putting it back, and geek-leaners represent only a small part of the equation. Think about it. (Cheers, catflap) Jon Newton - p2pnet - . More First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi apparent sinking - The Pirate Bay offline: ‘Something is broken’, August 11, 2009 Alibaba.com - The Year’s Most Pirated Videos, August 10, 2009 - - | | rss feed: http://-/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://-/index-wml.php -? -