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Posts from the ‘entertainment law’ Category

Dear NBC: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

Who knew there were Google image results for "NBC Fail"?

Who knew there were Google image results for "NBC Fail"?

Seriously NBC? There’s so much non-trivial stuff going on in the world and you’re going to make me comment on this? Fine. Let’s explore the myriad of ways you don’t understand how ratings work.

The Coles notes: Both the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins have hosted free public “viewing parties” for Stanley Cup games being held out of town (or in the Pen’s case, sometimes for games in-town). This way people can still gather to cheer on their local team when there’s no chance of attending in person. However NBC is putting the kibosh to that, by not allowing either team the rights to rebroadcast their video feed for these public events. This is ostensibly to protect the “value” of their broadcast. Suffice it to say most people think this is idiotic.

NBC – since you’re only a broadcast partner, your broadcast has “value” in only two areas:

  • The perceived value to advertisers
  • The actual value to advertisers

Ratings are only important for the former. You want the highest ratings numbers, not because it conveys a tangible benefit to you, but it makes the perceived value of you advertising slots higher. True, sometimes there are minimum targets or advertisers get their money back, or bonus’ if you reach a threshold… but for the most part there is no difference to you (positive or negative) for minor variances. If we presume that the maximum number of people who would watch a game simultaneously in Detroit and Pittsburgh could maybe top out at 30,000 (filling the Joe, and another 5-8 thousand outside in Pittsburgh – tops – that’s less than 0.03 of a ratings point (currently a single ratings point is around 1.1M viewers). This is not a statistically significant variance to influence the perceived value of your advertising.

One might argue that the real issue is “share” (the total of all TV watchers at a given time tuned to a specific program), especially when broken down by region… but this ignores the second part of the “value” to the network which is actual value to the advertisers. That is to say, the number of eyebals that actually recieve an advertiser’s message.

Although they certainly aren’t sharing this information with us, I have no doubt that the execs at NBC have filing cabinets full of ratios, studies, and formula to estimate how many viewers in a ratings point (or share) are actually exposed to an advertisers message. This lets them court advertisers with comparatives. “Well sure, America’s Got Talent doesn’t have the ratings of Idol… but as you can see our audience averages .5 fridges per household more than Fox’s, so our audience is 68% more likely to not miss your 30 second spot because of a beer run… that makes us a much better value per dollar”. It’s one of the reasons that so many broadcasters are getting back into live sports – viewers are far less likely to PVR/Tivo/VCR/Bittorrent live sports events and watch them later, fast-forwarding through the ads. In horrible ad-speak this is called “appointment viewing”.

In this light, these live parties should be encouraged – as they are demonstrable “appointment viewing”. Ad execs should be doing cartwheels and writing press releases about how they’re delivering an absolutely captive audience to their advertisers. An audience that can’t even change the channel. Those 30,000 aren’t just “potential” exposures to advertising (like most ratings and share are)… they’re “actual” exposures to advertising… and should be considerably more valuable to advertisters.

So congratulations NBC, you’ve taken a “no lose” value proposition (one that – for no effort on your part – is either neutral, or beneficial, to the value of your programming) – and managed to turn it into international ill will and consumer outrage.

And that’s terrible.

[Update – the Detroit Free Press article linked above is now suggesting that the blackout could actually be at the request of the NHL… and if that’s true, that’s absolutely mind-boggling. That’s, like eighty pies worth of mind-boggling.]

Please stop e-mailing me about Archie #600

No. <br />

No.

Dear Internet,

I know you mean well, but you can really stop pummeling me with coverage about “Archie #600”. Even if the developments therein weren’t being covered by every single newspaper in the city… let alone all media , now known or hereinafter devised – I’ve been “Hangin’ with the Riverdale” crew for over twenty years now. I have three different re-prints and collections containing Pep Comics #22, I own the crossover with the Punisher, heck I own Dan DeCarlo’s spicy pin-up collection (not the really spicy one… just the “kind of unnervingly saucy” one). I remember January McAndrews, Jughead’s Diner, and the amazing year-long advertisement that was “Archie’s R/C Racers“. I can generally narrow re-prints down to decade based on the backup features (Katy Keene, Frankie and Me, Lil Jinx, Josie and the Pussycats). I know the name of Sabrina’s uncle. I can’t find a good link to Sabrina’s uncle… but I guess he was on the 90s live-action sit-com as well as the 00’s manga reimaginings… so that’s not as obscure as I’d hoped. Listen Internet I don’t need any lip from you… do you remember when “The New Archies” turned Dilton Doiley into an African-American kid named Eugene and gave him a superfluous sister? No? I do.

My point?

If two decades of a weird hybrid of fandom and “scholarship” have taught me *anything* it’s imaginary stories about “how the love triangle between Archie, Betty, and Veroinca is going to work out” are always…. always really disappointing.

Except when 40-something Jughead does bad late 80s “rap”:

Update: Robot 6 points out that the Archie characters have their own blogs where they post about plot developments… and that Betty’s weekly post is just about the saddest thing on the Internet.

Just in case you’ve been in a cave

What, too subtle?

What, too subtle?

The big IP story in Canada this week has been the Conference Board of Canada publishing a report on the “Digital Economy” which read a lot like propaganda (from the US lobbyist “International Intellectual Property Alliance”, specifically). A little legwork by Michael Geist turned up the fact that it not only looked identical to US lobbyist propaganda, but ill-informed US lobbyist propaganda at that. It also turns out it’s ill-informed US lobbyist propaganda that the Canadian government paid top-dollar for. Lo and behold, it was indeed plagiarized ill-informed, US lobbyist propaganda.

Really this whole thing has been the Michael Geist show… so skip the middle man and enjoy the glorious shadenfreude directly. I don’t always agree with Mr. Geist, but I’ll toast a glass to his efforts tonight.

Snake ‘n Bacon. Snake ‘n Bacon! SNAKE ‘N BACON!

One's tasty crumbled in a salad. The other's a snake. <br /> © Michael Kuppenberg

One's tasty crumbled in a salad. The other's a snake.
© Michael Kuppenberg

Attention U.S. based followers of this blog. Immediately stop what you’re doing and go on over to the AdultSwim website where you can now view the pilot for Snake ‘n Bacon adapted from the many works featuring Michael Kupperman’s celebrity duo.

“But Brad” you ask, “as a Canadian who is blocked from receiving AdultSwim programming, or even the very website you’ve linked to, how can you recommend said pilot sight unseen?” This is a reasonable question. Feel free to assume I am either extremely irresponsible with my reccomendations… or I have… “sources”.

Seriously, while I was a little unsure off the top (I’m one of those purists who doesn’t normally care for Williams Street’s house style when it comes to live-action) the pilot soon barrels headlong into familiar “Tales Designed to Thrizzle” territory with some great sequences and some old Kuppenberg friends come to life. It’s worth the (non existant) price of admission for the stylistic approach to the “Fruit of the Month Club… man” alone.

Unlike most animation adaptations, some aspects of Kupperberg’s style are even vastly improved by the transition to animation, and addition of voicework. While that’s normally a stumbling block for many animation adaptations – segments like “The Head”, or “Bullfrog” are significantly more vibrant with the spot-on vocalizations. Plus, Kupperman appears to have drawn all the animation segments himself – so it never feels like it’s not his work or “off reference”.

Why are you even still reading this? It’s short, great fun, and I can almost guarantee there’s one segment in it you’ll laugh at. You should be over there, clicking “rate this 10” and pressuring AdultSwim to turn this into a series that’s available on DVD so I can legally purchase it.

Come ON it’s got Snake AND Bacon in it. That’s like the “Oceans 11” of zoology and pork!

Enter, Julius Genachowski

julius genachowski

As has been presumed since January, Julius Genachowski, has been nominated to head the Federal Communications Commission in the US.

While Genachowski is considered by many a strong advocate of Network Neutrality (being the first FCC head to come from a former life in Sillicon Valey, as opposed to the usual broadcast executive route to the job) – some are asking questions why neutrality pledges haven’t been a bigger part of his appointment.

My pragmatic opinion is just the reality that there are a number of interests that the Obama administration must court, and if your biggest complaint to date about Genachowski is that he’s someone who clearly understands the issues, the importance of the issues, and has vocally supported the cause in the past… but is less vocal now that he’s been appointed to a high-level government position… that’s still a pretty good day in Washington.

[Edit – in a weird “snake eating it’s own tail” loop, Laura at Derivative Work (who referenced this post) has done a great overview of Mr. Genachowski’s background and previous work with her usual impeccable detail and thorough research. Highly recommended as a primer on the new FCC head. ]

CRTC ‘Net Neutrality Hearings – All the Marbles

There are two major CRTC hearings in the works right now that the copyright/internet savvy should be looking to – and Denis McGrath does a nice job of explaining how they interrelate. The one going on right now, among other things, is looking at the viability of some type of governmental support for creating new media content (the same way it mandates support for radio, publishing, and other creative sectors). Users, generally speaking, are hostile to this thought – because they corrolate it with taxes on blank-media or higher internet fees (either of which could indeed be one possible outcome – but is kind of narrow-sited… CanCon regulations for radio and television don’t necessarily make *them* more expensive, those come out of the post-consumer/advertiser net profits of broadcasters, and can’t necessarily be passed on to end users).

The tricky issue (as Denis adroitly points out) is that these two groups (the ISP’s, vs the creative sector) are also going to butt heads in a few weeks time over net neutrality in Canada (the promised followup to the Bell BitTorrent throttling case, (you might recall at that time, I said not to riot in the streets… that the battle for “all the marbles” had not yet been fought).

As far as I’m concerned this is the battle for an epic amount of marbles.

As we know from similar cases in the USA, ISP’s and telco’s really want to be able to determine what goes through their networks and how. The moment, this precedent gets set – the door is open to a radically different internet, where the services of your ISP (including their own telecom, television, movie, video-on-demand, even websites) can be treated fundamentally different than everything else on the internet. How the ISP’s want to use their network is primary over how the users want to use the network. You are no longer paying for a service, you’re paying for whatever content the ISP’s chose to provide, on whatever terms they deem “necessary”.

It’s been pointed out elsewhere in the CRTC filings that Bell launched a new video-on-demand service around the same time they started throttling BitTorrent traffic. Is that because the volume of the traffic legitimately was overwhelming (interesting, since streaming video has, by some accounts, been the largest single source of total traffic over much of the internet since 2007)? Or was it because it was a competitor to Bell? Should YouTube be throttled? Should Bell implement similar policies against Skype, is it because of volume? Or is it because of competition to Bell’s traditional landline offerings? I’m not saying any of these are true (or even likely), but the point is that once that door is open you (the end user) will never know.

In all the clutter of the current CRTC new media hearings, the preliminary filing by the CFTPA (Canada’s producer’s association) has been mostly overlooked although Michael Geist got part of it:

while P2P applications are undeniably used for the distribution of unauthorized content (as are email, newsgroups and the web), they also are increasingly serving as the foundation for new business models that will enable independent producers to make full use of broadband as a delivery vehicle for Canadian audio-visual programming. Consequently, the CFTPA is concerned that discriminatory traffic throttling may inhibit the development of new applications that would facilitate the ability of independent producers and other content providers to better monetize their content.

Roll that around on your tongue for a minute. That’s Canada’s content producers association saying that while P2P piracy is bad, it’s not nearly as bad as what the control creators would give up if ISP’s are allowed to treat traffic in anything less than an absolutely neutral manner.

The Geist article above goes on to echo this sentiment from a litany of artist organizations (and, interestingly enough, the CBC… one of the few national broadcasters without a related national ISP unlike Bell and Rogers affiliated broadcasters).

But don’t overlook the whole second half of the CFTPA filing either. This is the half which goes on to ask some difficult questions of ISP’s – such as why (if network volume is such an issue) they continue to offer faster, and faster, connections – while actually delivering less and less in the way of actual service. Why the ISP’s advertise speed rates they can’t possibly achieve given their actual infrastructure. Why Canada is rapidly falling in the rankings of Broadband and wireless penitration, adoption, and cost against almost every other OECD country (out of the 30 OECD countries, Canada’s price per megabit of Internet service ranks a near dead-last 27th).

And again, these are the producers – the ones you would suspect would be the first in line to throw a big “down with BitTorrent” party. Heck, the filing goes out of it’s way to point out a number of Canadian shows who benefited from legal BitTorrent distribution – (and I’m not just pleased to see that because they referenced my own Dead End Days and Cerealized).

This filing (and dozens like it) can look past immediate self-interests to see that:

The CFTPA submits that requiring ISPs to adopt an agnostic approach to traffic
management is critical to ensuring that the Internet remains an open-access platform. Such
an approach encourages innovation in the design and development of new applications and
services and facilitates the delivery of Canadian content – including Canadian audio-visual
content – to Canadians.

In a lot of ways the CRTC hearings to date have some amount of “side-show” to them (not that they aren’t important), but this one is the main event. It will shape the way Canadians produce, distribute, and watch content for years to come – and if that’s not enough to make it worth your while to wade through the odd text-heavy report… then I don’t know what is… but don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning to find your marbles strangely absent.

  • Disclosure: I work with a member company of the CFTPA, and have also been involved with the working group behind this filing.

The Courts and Technology: Head Scratching Edition

illustation (c) Jacob Palme

It’s time for another quickie round-up of three court cases that are on my mind this week. What do they have in common? They’re all tech-related, and they’ve all got me scratching my head.

  • Ontario Judge rules that Canadians should have no expectation of privacy from law enforcement on-line. This ruling (among other things) asserts that law enforcement officers do not have to get a warrant to require an ISP to surrender logs of your on-line activities. The Ars article does a fine job of detailing the case, and also the slippery slope this entails – but as MGK points out this is almost certainly going to the Supreme Court. Christopher (who is as adept at blogging about law as he is with blogging about Rex the Wonder Dog) – lays out both pro and con arguments quite succinctly.

    Why is Brad scratching his head? There shouldn’t be an expectation of privacy on-line, I know IP addresses are inherently public… but a lot of things that we do don’t have the expectation of absolute secrecy, and I’m not comfortable with surrendering them to law enforcement without judicial oversight either.

  • The charges that have been finally brought in the Terry Childs case are as just as strange as the case itself. If you missed this bizarre story from the summer here is a very good recap. The nutshell version is that Mr. Childs was a network admin who refused to give up passwords to the network he maintained for the city of San Fransisco. So they put him in jail. There are undeniably quirks to everything involved with this case, so everyone will have their own graph point for Mr. Childs ranging somewhere on the spectrum between “eccentric” and “dangerous” – but it should still be setting a very troubling precedent for folks in the IT sector.

    Why is Brad scratching his head? As it now stands, the city has essentially put Terry behind bars for over six months, on five times the average bail for murder, and is now charging him (a certified CISCO network admin) with “having access to three modems”. Does that ring any alarm bells for anyone else?

  • As much as I try to stay away, the gong-show like atmosphere of the Pirate Bay trial keeps pulling me back in. Somewhere, out there in the multiverse, there is a nuanced – challenging – lawsuit going on. A lawsuit where informed parties are intellectually jousting on the legal ramifications of running BitTorrent “trackers” which contain no copyright infringing materials on their own, but are used extensively (and in some cases, exclusively) to facilitate copyright infringing action (consider them as to the digital age what “head shops” were to the 60s). Sadly we don’t get that trial. Instead we get a Swedish prosecution that kind of (but not quite) can use “IRL” correctly in a “RL” court proceeding, and then follow up that feat with todays show-stopper – presenting “expert witnesses” who have, at best, a “shaky” understanding of how the technology works – and use a handful of screenshots as “evidence”.

    Why is Brad scratching his head? Did Elliot Ness ever try to bring down Al Capone on the irrefutable witness of Tintin in America? Maybe this is actually a brilliant strategy in hiding.

    Hiding in disguise.

    Okay, it’s a big Swedish train-wreck… and I. cant. stop. watching.

Crazy Lawsuit Wednesdays!

DROP THAT CHALUPA!

Greetings from Hoth! The heat in my office has now been out for two days, and as a trademark Toronto SNOPOCALYPSE ™ kicks up around us things are looking decidedly grim for the rebellion.

Since my poor frozen brain is too sluggish for deep insight here’s some decidedly hot and spicy odd lawsuits from this week:

… you know what? This is just getting depressing… so we stop here. You don’t like it? SUE ME.