Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - June 24th, ’23

[JackSpratts]

Since 2002































June 24th, 2023




YouTube Copyright Lawsuit Over Anti-Piracy Tools Dropped On Eve Of Trial

The now-dismissed case claimed that YouTube offers features like Content ID to record labels but refused to allow "ordinary" copyright owners to use them.
Bill Donohue

A Grammy Award-winning composer has dropped her closely-watched lawsuit against YouTube over access to its anti-piracy tools like Content ID, just a day before it had been set to go to trial — and weeks after a federal judge gutted the case by refusing to let it move forward as a class action.

Maria Schneider spent years litigating her lawsuit, which claimed that YouTube had become a “hotbed of piracy” because it provided effective content tools only to “powerful copyright owners” like record labels and not to “ordinary owners” like artists and songwriters.

But on Sunday (June 11), with a jury trial scheduled to kick off on Monday morning), lawyers for both sides told a federal judge that they had agreed to end the case without a decision: “In light of the stipulation of dismissal of all claims with prejudice, the jury trial set for June 12, 2023, is vacated,” Judge James Donato wrote. “The case is closed.”

The sudden end to the case came just weeks after Judge Donato issued a crucial ruling that dramatically reduced the scope of the lawsuit: That Schneider could not team up with tens of thousands of other rightsholders who she claims suffered similar harm from YouTube’s policies.

Schneider quickly moved to appeal that ruling and postpone the trial, arguing that it would “gravely undermine” the goals of her lawsuit. But a federal appeals court denied that motion on Friday.

Faced with a jury trial they had warned would be “enormously wasteful,” Schneider’s lawyers dropped their case. Neither side immediately returned requests for more information about how the resolution of the litigation was reached, including specific details about any kind of settlement agreement.

Filed in 2020, Schneider’s lawsuit claims that YouTube (owned by Google parent Alphabet) forces songwriters and other smaller rights holders to use “vastly inferior and time-consuming manual means” of policing infringement, allowing piracy of their material to flourish on the platform.

For its part, YouTube says it’s done nothing wrong. In court documents, the company has argued that it’s spent “spent over $100 million developing industry-leading tools” to prevent piracy, but that it limits access because “in the hands of the wrong party, these tools can cause serious harm.”

The case was filed as a class action, aiming to let potentially tens of thousands of aggrieved copyright owners team up to fight what Schneider’s lawsuit called “institutionalized misbehavior.” An expert retained by her legal team said the class could include between 10,000 and 20,000 rights holders.

But in a May 22 ruling, Judge Donato refused to “certify” the case as a class action. Under federal law, class-action accusers must share very similar legal concerns — and the judge said Schneider’s fellow rights holders would have widely different cases against YouTube.

Following that ruling, Schneider quickly moved to postpone the trial. But at a hearing days after the decision, Donato said he would stick to the schedule: “I’m not going to do that. You got a trial set on June 12th. This is a 2020 case; OK. It’s showtime.”

In a June 5 emergency petition to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Schneider’s lawyers demanded the appeals court put the case on ice while she filed an appeal on the class certification issue. They argued that a “brief” pause would prevent the judge’s “last-minute, haphazard and erroneous” ruling from derailing a case with important implications.

“The named plaintiffs here joined the case to litigate class claims, and to vindicate their view that YouTube tramples on the rights of independent artists and smaller copyright holders overall, not just those of the individual plaintiffs,” her lawyers told the appeals court.

But in a ruling published on Friday evening, the Ninth Circuit rejected those arguments: “The court, in its discretion, denies the petition for permission to appeal,” the court wrote. “Petitioners’ emergency motion for a stay is denied as moot.”

Schneider and her lawyers still could have proceeded to trial against YouTube, litigating the case simply on behalf of her and another plaintiff. But they had strongly indicated in court filings that they did not want to proceed to the trial without class-action status.
https://www.billboard.com/pro/youtub...ropped-trial/#!





Studios Say They Hate Piracy – but It Offers a Treasure Trove of Data
Lucas Manfredi

Media piracy is on the rise lately, as consumers facing a crackdown on password sharing and rising subscription costs turn to the illegal downloads known as torrents or unlicensed websites. That’s one more headache for streamers which are looking to bolster their profitability and retain subscribers.

Yet there’s an upside to piracy that few in the industry care to openly discuss: The information gleaned from illicit streaming and downloads can give a glimpse into consumer tastes, and potentially guide streamers to new audiences or programming. And since streamers tend to keep their own viewing figures closely guarded, piracy data can be one of the few ways to get a broad view of what people want to watch.

Each streamer’s internal subscriber data are “siloed to the people who have paid or are free trialing,” Andrew Chatterly, CEO of anti-piracy and market analytics tech firm Muso, told TheWrap. But piracy data offers a view of the entire world and their competitors in an “unsiloed, egalitarian playing field.”

Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown, which only began in earnest in the U.S. in recent weeks, has put piracy back in the spotlight. The streamer has estimated that 100 million households globally are sharing passwords, including 30 million in the U.S. and Canada. Some have started to pay up as Netflix tightened usage controls, but customers who are not willing to cough up cash for their own subscriptions may just revert to the readily available, free option of torrents and illegal streaming sites.

The U.S. content and distribution sectors lose between $29 billion and $71 billion to piracy a year, a 2019 study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center found. The report adds that piracy also results in losses to the U.S. economy of between 230,000 and 560,000 jobs and between $47.5 billion and $115.3 billion in reduced gross domestic product (GDP) each year.

At least 3,500 storefront websites, social media pages, and stores within online marketplaces sell pirate subscription IPTV services to the U.S. market, which generate subscription revenues of $1 billion annually in the U.S. alone, according to a 2020 report by the Digital Citizens Alliance. (that’s right — some pirate services charge subscribers).

Muso measures daily consumption of roughly 500,000 film and TV titles across unlicensed streaming websites and torrents. It offers an anti-piracy dashboard to help regulators and law enforcement crack down on illegal site operators while also helping major media companies better inform their own content strategies by showing “true demand” for titles.

Getting a data edge

The two primary reasons people turn to piracy are because they can’t afford streaming subscriptions or because a particular service may not be available yet in their country, Chatterly said.

The proliferation of streaming services “has probably meant that it’s largely unaffordable for everybody to have everything,” which is a factor “driving piracy,” he added. “So in understanding what the audience actually wants to watch, they can better understand what to program.”

Roughly a quarter of consumers agree that pirating content is acceptable, according to a survey of consumer attitudes conducted by Parks Associates.

“Consumers are beginning to become more accepting of pirate and account-sharing activities, rationalizing these behaviors by strongly agreeing that entertainment should be publicly and freely available,” the firm notes. “They know someone else is paying for it, or because they believe that, even if others are pirating, companies are still making enough money that the loss is negligible.”

Piracy monitoring can do more than just prevent losses — it can also guide distribution decisions and test demand for content and new business models, Parks Associates said. One instance where Muso’s data may prove helpful is for acquiring rights to popular TV and film properties in countries or regions where they are not legally accessible, Chatterley noted.

A ready example: The show with the most illegal downloads or streams this year through late May was HBO’s “The Last of Us.” But seven out of the top 10 most-pirated titles were Japanese anime or South Korean K-drama. The most popular title in that category was “My Hero Academia” Season 6, with 22.8% of the global audience demand coming from the United States.

That title is available on Crunchyroll, a Sony-run streaming service specializing in anime which recently reached 10 million subscribers but remains much smaller than mainstream services.

Streamers have been bulking up their anime and K-drama offerings, but the piracy data suggests they could be more aggressive in meeting audience demand. That’s just one example of how companies could use insights from piracy behavior — and it illustrates that illegal downloading may be a response to the relative scarcity of specific content on mainstream streaming services, not just to price. The removal of popular shows from streaming services might also prompt viewers to try to download them instead.

Hot shows available through relatively high-priced streaming services like Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max can also see considerable piracy activity. Visits to illegal streaming and torrent sites to watch HBO’s “Succession” spiked from a week average of nearly 65,000 to 180,000 on the day of the finale up from 150,000 for the penultimate episode.

Popular movies, on the other hand, seem to get illegally streamed or downloaded even when they’re relatively easy to stream through cheaper services like Disney+ and Peacock. Disney’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” Universal’s “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” and Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” were the three most in-demand titles with piracy audiences. The “Avatar” sequel accounted for 21.6% of audience demand across the top 10 titles.

And sometimes piracy interest coincides with digital availability. “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” saw its largest one-day spike on Jan. 8 with over 1.1 million illegal downloads and streams on the day alone. That was two days after it became available for purchase or rental on video on demand. It saw some smaller spikes in March after it became available on Peacock.

Fighting piracy while studying it

Few media companies talk publicly about piracy, but many have in-house content security teams and technology in place to flag suspicious activity and address it.

Studios generally referred questions to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, an anti-piracy coalition with over 30 members, including Netflix, Disney, Hulu, Amazon, Paramount Global, Comcast Corporation, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO, Fox and Apple TV+.

Jan van Voorn, the head of ACE and the Motion Picture Association’s executive vice president and chief global content protection, told TheWrap that the organization has made “significant strides in reducing piracy” since launching six years ago. In the U.S. alone, the number of piracy sites has dropped from 1,444 to 126, he said.

Internationally, ACE has shut down major piracy operations in recent months, including France’s Extreme-Down, Shahed4U in the Middle East-North Africa region, Vietnam-based USTVGO and Germany-based Streamzz, an illegal file-hosting service used by more than 60 illegal piracy websites.

“Often, the average consumer of pirated content is unaware that they’re handing over sensitive information such as credit card numbers and bank account information to criminals,” said van Voorn. “Most commercial-scale piracy operations are not run by a lone hacker in their parents’ basement. They’re operated by global organized crime rings.”

Most consumers, he added, are less likely to turn to piracy once they understand the risks.

Illegal downloads still on the rise

Though ACE says piracy activity has declined, Parks Associates noted that both account sharing and consumption of pirated content have been on the rise, increasing 48% and 65% since 2019, respectively.

The firm estimates that piracy could cost streaming video providers serving U.S. consumers a cumulative $113 billion by the end of 2027.

“While there is some optimism that emerging countermeasures and best-practices may see piracy begin to plateau by 2027, there is no consensus among stakeholders as to when it may begin to decline,” Parks Associates contributing analyst Steve Hawley said.

It’s still too early to tell how Netflix’s password-sharing crackdown will ultimately affect piracy. New data from Antenna released on Friday found that the streamer saw nearly 100,000 daily sign-ups on May 26 and 27, just days after alerting U.S. subscribers about the new controls on sharing, suggesting that many consumers might be willing to pay if prompted to do so.

Average daily sign-ups to Netflix reached 73,000 during that period, a 102% increase from the prior 60-day average. It exceeded the spike in sign-ups the firm observed during the beginning of COVID-19 lockdowns in March and April 2020.

Antenna collects data from third-party services including online purchase receipts, bills and banking records. Its data doesn’t include subscriptions offered through bundles, which could mean that Netflix drew even more new subscribers. Netflix, which revealed in May that its cheaper ad-supported tier had grown to nearly five million monthly active users globally, declined to comment.

Chatterly acknowledged how destructive piracy has been to the entertainment industry, but warned against stigmatizing consumers of pirated content.

“The people who are uploading content, stealing content and making it available, I’d go along with calling those people ‘pirates,'” he said. “People who are consuming content on an unlicensed website are fans of content. And until we start changing the narrative towards that, we’re throwing away the value in that audience.”
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/...130000441.html





The Fight for Imax: How Studios Beg and Barter to Get ‘Mission: Impossible,’ ‘Oppenheimer’ and More Blockbusters on Premium Screens
Rebecca Rubn

There’s been a battle brewing between two of Hollywood’s blockbuster talents.

In one corner, Tom Cruise is gearing to take a victory lap from the behemoth success of “Top Gun: Maverick” with a sequel to his other big action franchise, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.” It’s expected to be one of the biggest movies of the summer when it opens on July 12. In the other corner, Christopher Nolan, one of the few directors so famous that his name alone can draw crowds, is readying to release his highly anticipated “Oppenheimer.” The big-budget drama about the creation of the atomic bomb launches just a week later on July 21.

At the center of the drama is access to Imax, and how the company’s 401 North American screens will be divided between the two box office draws.

Except, in this case, there wasn’t much to negotiate. Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible 7” is only playing on Imax screens for one week, as first reported by Puck, a newsletter that covers the media business, before it has to relinquish all of its showtimes to “Oppenheimer.” That’s despite Cruise making a few calls around town to remind everyone that not even a year ago, “Maverick” earned more than $100 million from Imax alone. By shorting the Imax run of “Dead Reckoning,” he suggests, all involved parties risk losing out on serious coinage.

But long before the oft-delayed “MI” sequel moved to mid-July, Universal had already ironed out a rare agreement for “Oppenehimer” to control Imax’s entire North American footprint for three full weeks. (Directors like Nolan, who use Imax cameras to film their movies, are typically granted a two-week exclusive window.) Greta Gerwig’s star-studded “Barbie,” which also opens on July 21, isn’t playing in Imax at all as a result.

“I feel sad in a way we can’t accommodate all of them. I know ‘Mission: Impossible’ is going to be a really big movie,” Imax CEO Rich Gelfond tells Variety. “Nolan has a special place in Imax’s heart because he uses our cameras and promotes us. It’s not a matter of us saying which we can make more money on. I would hope after ‘Oppenheimer’s’ run, we can bring back ‘Mission.'”

There may be more of these fights brewing in the future. Here’s why: Attendance hasn’t rebounded in pandemic times, but the demand to watch certain movies on the biggest and brightest screens, known in the industry as premium large formats (PLF), has grown exponentially. Lest that sound like spin from PLF operators, there are stats to back up the idea that audiences are buying what they’re selling. Moviegoing is down 33% from 2019, but the market share for Imax, one of the art’s more recognizable forms, is up 50% without adding any new screens, according to the company. On a big-budget tentpole, those enhanced viewing experiences can account for as much as 30-40% of overall box office returns even though there are only about 900 PLF screens in the country. As a result, studios have more at stake in the battle for access to the finite number of screens that can generate outsized ticket sales.

To pluck a recent example of Imax’s box office heft, take Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” The animated comic book adventure opened to a mighty $120 million from 4,313 North American locations, and averaged $19,736 per location on standard 2D screens. In contrast, it brought in an average of $25,159 per location on PLF screens; and $34,214 per location on Imax screens.

Those figures defy conventional wisdom that price deters people from going to the movies. Tickets for PLF are significantly more expensive, costing up to $28 in major cities like New York City and Los Angeles compared to $18 for regular 2D seats. And yet, those formats are usually the first to sell out for visual effects-heavy movies like “Oppenheimer” and “Mission: Impossible,” with dazzling graphics, crazy stunts and talent that says – nay, insists – it’s not just the best, but the only, way to experience their films.

So how do studios ensure their movies are playing on as many premium large format screens as possible? They fight over them, of course. For distribution chiefs, who handle the theatrical rollout of a movie, an important part of the job is haggling and calling in favors with movie theater owners to guarantee their upcoming box office draw has more prime showtimes than rival offerings.

Imax operates differently than other PLF operators because it doesn’t take as much input from studios when scheduling showtimes. Studios, of course, set the release dates for their own movies. But when there’s a pileup of blockbusters, like the one-two-three punch of “Indiana Jones,” “Mission: Impossible” and “Oppenheimer” in late June and into July, it’s Imax who gets to dictate which of those it’ll be offering its patrons beyond opening weekend.

That’s not how it works for Dolby, ScreenX, 4DX and essentially any other premium large format. Bargaining for those screens is similar to the standard 2D operation, which is a more flexible arrangement that factors in the popularity of a movie as well as the rapport between exhibitors and studios or filmmakers.

Most movie theaters have at least one auditorium with PLF capabilities, with larger multiplexes housing two or three with those special projectors. After a film’s opening weekend, it typically cedes many, if not most, of its premium screens to whatever movie launches on the following weekend. However, if a film is an outsized success story, it stands a better chance at retaining more of those PLF auditoriums in subsequent weeks. And that’s, of course, assuming the movie has the right scale and scope to get people excited. No offense to “80 for Brady” or “Book Club: The Next Chapter,” but very little about those films require its audience to watch it in 3D. So even if “Oppenheimer” is rolling in to town, the latest “Mission: Impossible” movie will still be available in many theaters with enhanced sound and wider screens in its second, third, and even forth weekend.

This is where negotiations can effectively come into play. Studios can’t outright withhold or promise access to one blockbuster in exchange for another that may be riskier in terms of commercial appeal. But they can certainly remind the exhibitors of past successes in hopes that they will want to reward the studio or creative talent with more screens on future projects. This is where Paramount will get to leverage the enduring appeal of “Top Gun: Maverick” as “Dead Reckoning” makes its way to theaters. Ditto Disney with “Avatar: The Way of Water” as it books “Indiana Jones” and Universal with “Super Mario Bros. Movie” as “Oppenheimer” gears up to release. The problem, some insiders lament, is that exhibitors can have short memories. One executive with knowledge of these conversations says it’s a game of “what have you done for me lately?”

There’s a reason that Imax has more control, and it’s not necessarily its ubiquity in the exhibition space. The company uses a proprietary technology to create a film print that’s specifically designed to fit the aspect ratio of its screens. Alternatively, the rest of the country’s PLF operators can project the same version of a movie that they would play on 2D screens, which the studio’s provide. They don’t need to commission specific prints for their high-definition or XD auditoriums. It gives them more scheduling flexibility compared to Imax, which also can’t pivot as quickly in the event that a movie isn’t selling tickets. Since Imax isn’t planning to offer “Barbie,” it won’t have a version of the movie to play even if the company later decided it wanted to slot a few showtimes.

Complicating the matter is that Imax has a vested interest in certain movies like the Marvel installment “Eternals,” Jordan Peele’s “Us” and “Oppenheimer” that use its patented technology. That leaves the company eager to prioritize those films when it comes to deciding who gets its limited screens. Relationships that Imax has fostered with certain directors, like Nolan and Denis Villeneuve (“Dune”), sometimes appearl to trump the demand for popular franchises and long-running series that would otherwise be hugely important to theater operators, insiders say.

“In a situation where there’s an unavoidable conflict,” Gelfond says, “we’ll look at a number of factors: how the franchise has performed before, visuals, and our relationship to the filmmaker.”

Nolan, for his part, is known to breathlessly evangelize about the singular of experience of Imax, going as far as branding it “the best film format that was ever invented.” As he promoted 2012’s “The Dark Knight” he told the masses that “it’s the gold standard and what any other technology has to match up to, but none have, in my opinion.”

That kind of publicity makes it worth going all in on Nolan, even at the expense of Cruise.
https://variety.com/2023/film/news/o...ns-1235633537/





If You Don't Love the 3D Movie Experience, You're Not Alone
Linda Holmes

I saw the Pixar film Elemental this week. It's a story about Element City, where fire people, water people, cloud/air people and earth people all live alongside each other, sometimes uncomfortably. Some things about it work better than others, but it's impossible, I think, not to admire the inventive way it creates its world of flames and bubbles and flowers and puffy clouds, and the way all those things make up the characters it's about. On top of that, those characters live in a world of smoke, rivers, and all kinds of other — shall we say — earthly delights.

The screening I attended was in 3D. I tend to have mixed feelings about 3D, which can certainly have its impressive "ooh, neat" moments, but which I tend to find more a gimmick than a genuine advantage — despite the fact that these days, it works pretty well. Even as a person who wears glasses and is therefore not perfectly suited to putting 3D glasses over them, I had no trouble with the 3D presentation itself as far as appreciating and enjoying the different layers of visuals.

The problem is that, as you know if you've ever picked up a pair of the RealD glasses that you use for a film like this, it considerably darkens the picture simply because of the 3D technology. You can see it — they are literally dark glasses, and as sunglasses would do, they make the picture look, you know, darker.

Particularly with something like a Pixar movie for kids, and extra-particularly for one that's so dependent on a lively presentation of nature, it's impossible for me to believe I even saw the best version of Elemental. I feel certain that my appreciation of its colorful take on the world would have been, what, 30% greater?, if I had just watched it in a regular 2D presentation.

I've always been a bit of a 3D skeptic — the glasses are fiddly and just become more plastic junk, the gimmicks wear off, it gets distracting, and it introduces more opportunities for technical problems (there were some at my screening). And for a while, I felt like my side was winning the argument — you don't see as many random "but this time it's 3D!" sequels as you did for a while, what with Saw 3D and Piranha 3D and Step Up 3D and so forth.

But one of the places 3D seems to persist is in animated kids' movies, which is the last place it belongs. Why would you want to watch an explosively colorful world unfold while wearing sunglasses? The people who create Pixar films are perfectly able to make those worlds immersive and unforgettable without exploiting a technology that degrades the experience on one level in order to supposedly improve it on another.

Honestly, maybe this is tech that belongs in cheapie horror sequels, where it can be used for jump scares and tricks in a genre that relies on them, rather than in films that are designed to be visually joyful.

Besides, who wants to try to make a squirming kid wear plastic glasses for two hours?
https://www.npr.org/1182778018





Music Piracy Is Still a Problem — But It’s a Manageable One

While TV/film continues to struggle with piracy, for music it's hardly the problem it once was thanks to the industry's approach to streaming.
piracy
Glenn Peoples

Film piracy increased by 38.6% last year, according to anti-piracy tech company Muso, and by 2027 the streaming video on-demand business could lose $113 billion annually from content theft, per an April report from research firm Parks Associates. With video piracy “on the rise,” as video technology provider Synamedia recently claimed, could the threat trickle down to music?

More than two decades since a Napster-led peer-to-peer file-sharing movement gutted the music industry, piracy just isn’t a hot topic in the music business like it used to be. It’s not even a mildly common topic. When discussing threats to the business, music executives are more likely to discuss newer, less-defined issues, such as generative artificial intelligence technology that re-creates the vocals of an artist without their permission. At the 2023 Music Biz conference, the closest the discussion got to piracy was a panel on streaming fraud, the practice of artificially boosting a track’s streaming count to take a larger share of royalties. A decade ago, conferences were places for creators and rights holders to air their frustrations about infringing content found on YouTube, search engines and elsewhere.

Piracy in music is not, however, gone. According to research firm MusicWatch, 55 million people in the U.S. obtained unauthorized music through a variety of means in 2022 — TikTok, peer-to-peer platforms, stream-ripping sites, mobile apps and transferring files on flash drives, among other means. One out of 10 U.S. internet globally users accessed music through file-storage lockers like Dropbox, according to MusicWatch. Muso claims music piracy increased in 2022 and tracked more than 15 billion visits to music piracy sites last year – with 7% coming from the U.S., ranking the country third behind Iran and India. A 2021 IFPI report titled Engaging With Music showed 30% of people surveyed in 21 of the world’s leading markets had used illegal or unlicensed methods to listen to or download music that year, and 14% had accessed music on unlicensed social media platforms.

While piracy is consistent and unending, it has become far easier to stomach since global music industry revenues started to rebound in 2015. After eight straight years of growth — with more gains for the foreseeable future — nowadays most consumers use legal digital platforms that offer licensed content. Some of them may access unlicensed music, but hundreds of millions of them are paying subscribers to Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer and other on-demand platforms. Even more consumers use ad-supported streaming options such as Spotify, YouTube and Pandora.

Some of the music piracy that does exist has taken on a different form today, where illegal activity takes place on the social media apps and streaming sites that are valuable partners to record labels. While YouTube and TikTok are filled with licensed music, they also contain unlicensed music uploaded by their users. “It’s a thin line — you can’t treat TikTok like LimeWire but we know there are a lot of files there that shouldn’t be there,” says MusicWatch principal Russ Crupnick. But it helps that labels have good relationships and a direct line of communication with these platforms. Two decades ago, the record industry’s main deterrent was a public education campaign and lawsuits against file-sharing services — and their users. Since the most pernicious offenders operated outside of the U.S. and the European Union, the legal challenges played out over many years.

The intent behind piracy has changed, too. In the years following Napster’s debut, peer-to-peer file-sharing “was gluttony without action” and people didn’t listen to 80% of the music they downloaded, says Crupnick. “It was like going to the salad bar, piling up a plate and eating two olives. Today it’s different.” Now, people are more purposeful and targeted when downloading unlicensed music. With so many legal options available for licensed music, some people search online for unreleased, hard-to-find music to add to their collections — then listen to the artists’ more common catalogs at Spotify or Apple Music.

Aside from the success of streaming services, music’s saving grace against piracy was probably the end of exclusive content. While early in the streaming era, music toyed with this strategy, offering exclusive releases to different platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal as they competed for customers, by 2016 those largely ended. Video on-demand streaming, however, has not evolved beyond this — and in some ways it’s only gotten worse. Netflix transformed video streaming by licensing other companies’ content. Now, the industry norm is to create content in-house to differentiate yourself from other video streaming platforms.

According to Muso, “releases being increasingly exclusive to a large number of legal subscription platforms” are one factor behind the continued rise of film and TV piracy. That scarcity encourages consumers to either cancel a SVOD service once they view their desired content or seek out the content on illegal sites. That trend was exacerbated during the pandemic by studios’ decisions to release motion pictures online while movie theaters were closed. Expensive live sports put cost-conscious consumers in a similar situation. Some SVOD platforms carry live sports — Amazon Prime has Thursday Night NFL Football, Apple TV+ has Major League Baseball — but being both a cord cutter and a serious sports fan can be costly.

To be sure, the recorded music industry continues to fight piracy on numerous fronts. In 2019, the RIAA said it was monitoring more than 200 stream-ripping sites. The organization maintains information about piracy on its “Resources & Learning” page that defines and gives examples of music piracy. And the RIAA continues to battle piracy in the courts. In 2021, a U.S. judge ordered two Russian stream-ripping services — which had more than 300 million global users over a 12-month period from 2017 to 2018 — to pay more than $80 million in damages in a case brought by more than a dozen record labels. Last year, the RIAA announced a partnership with the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center that formalized a partnership on anti-piracy efforts. It still employs a chief content protection officer to lead those and other efforts.

Mostly, the music industry’s approach to piracy has worked. During the 2000s and 2010s, executives placed their bets on streaming platforms to raise the industry from the post-Napster rubble. Subscription services would make it so easy to access giant catalogs of music, they predicted, that piracy would be seen as an inferior experience. They were right. Streaming has succeeded in making legal options, by and large, more attractive than illegal ones. Music piracy can’t and won’t be eliminated, but it’s being managed and labels don’t have to share Hollywood’s headache.
https://www.billboard.com/pro/music-...m-manageable/#!

















Until next week,

- js.



















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