Who Profits From Online Piracy?
on November 17th, 2010I’ve written about my adventures with online piracy here, and in 2007, wrote this article on government’s impending crackdown on advertisers who support pirates. Call me Cassandra.
BTW, I will follow up on my research into the antics of html comics pirate Gregory Steven Hart, who has some interesting corporate connections. Corporate connections which owe AT&T millions of bucks, and are currently embroiled in a $20 million lawsuit (read comments thread here). Stay tuned!
(For added giggles, go here.)
I tracked the piracy of my work and my sales figures for years. At no time did I see any increase in my sales. If anything, increased piracy was in direct correlation to a decrease in my sales. Only after I set up the online comic and posted regularly for a year did I see my sales and income increase. (EDIT: Traffic began to increase in late 2009, and we saw a bump in sales in August 2010. There was a significant increase in sales in our third year, 2011. I’ll post detailed info as time permits.)
Online pundits enthusiastically cheer isolated incidents of sales blips after pirated works manage to move stock which, by any objective standard, would be considered low. The sales blip isn’t about piracy as awesome, it’s about a clever way to frame a modest sales figure into a media event.
In other words, it’s not a sustainable business model. An isolated incident is exploited for pirate propaganda purposes, when the market as a whole shows ever-decreasing sales. Any evidence to the contrary is just propaganda from the evil RIAA!
When sales go up, it must be about piracy! Piracy is great! When sales go down, blame it on the economy. Piracy is great!
While it is nice that a few artists are able to turn piracy into a positive, my experience with convicted criminal pirate Gregory Steven Hart was a threatening letter in response to a polite takedown notice.
A threatening letter from a guy who spent a considerable amount of time in the hoosegow. And who has a history of violence. Cheery. Followed by clueless fans upset that they could no longer get free comics. Why don’t those mean creators just go into business with him?
Because he’s a dangerous felon?
I’m just delicate.
For a considered perspective on piracy from a real journalist and filmmaker who has spent years studying the phenomenon, check out the blog of Ellen Seidler.
She began her broadcast career at ABC News in New York as an assignment editor, and then joined KRON-TV in San Francisco as a photojournalist and editor. Seidler is currently a professor of Media & Communication Arts at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, California. She has also been a lecturer in Digital Media at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and taught video production workshops for the Knight Digital Media Center at Berkeley.
Ellen has also produced/directed/ and worked as a cinematographer on a variety of independent film and documentary projects. Her directing credits include the award-winning documentary “Fighting for Our Lives-Facing AIDS in San Francisco” (narrated by Linda Hunt and appearing on PBS) and the experimental short “Et L’Amour” which screened in LGBT film festivals throughout the world. She has been a contributing writer for Logo’s AfterEllen.com and is the creator and editor for the the non-profit website, Breastcancernetwork.org.
Ms Seidler spent months tracking the pirated copies of her independent film And Then Came Lola.
Her blog isn’t manipulation of a sales blip to appease people who illegally download art into feeling like they are committing an act of goodness. This is careful study by a woman who has put a great deal of time and effort into a beautifully crafted film, only to see her efforts eaten away in baby duck bites.
She posts numerous examples, including her battles with the indifferent Google, which makes billions of dollars annually from online ads, many of which finance piracy. Google’s continued failure to stop supporting these ads is chronicled in all its frustrating glory.
Required reading.
Those who buy into the fight against Sen. Leahy’s bill combating IP piracy mostly claim “It’s aimed to kill YouTube! We must have our YouTube!” Yet when I went and looked at the wording, it seemed to me that it was worded to explicitly exclude YouTube – which was never intended to primarily be engaged in copyright infringement, and which has a standard practice of taking down any videos that are challenged on those grounds.
It’s very irritating that people dig in on the basis of what might happen to their “beloved sites” according to those who are interested in continuing piracy. They don’t take the trouble to really get both sides of the issue. Nor do they investigate the credentials of those who are fanning the scare tactics (in the case of “Demand Progress”, two very young, very ideologic gentlemen who have very narrow interests and experiences). It doesn’t matter that major creative organizations, with members who put their names on the line, are trying to combat piracy. For the deluded, those who are trying to fight piracy are merely the tools of Big Corporations Who Control the World.
Several people I know who are internet utopianists receive huge funding from Google in the form of lecture fees and contracts. They have a financial interest in supporting free web content because even when they are not getting paid for their content, they are getting paid by Google to tell you why you should not get paid for your content. EDIT: A gentleman below (scroll down) who worked for Google swears Google pays no one lecture fees (and now I just think they’re cheap,) but has paid at least one creator under contract for a job. I don’t know any of these people I reference in a personal friends sort of way, so I can’t say – one worked for Public Knowledge, and one assumes they get a paycheck. They want your information to be free, but by golly, I’m going to bet they wouldn’t appreciate it if their labor were spread about for free.
Anyway…
Makes that Creators Bill of Rights thing a bit of a joke.
And so, these “information wants to be free” types can spread the lie that pro-copyright advocates like me are paid shills for RIAA and MPAA when I have not been paid a dime by anyone.
But these dudes have been paid tens of thousands by Google and their mouthpiece organizations like Public Knowledge.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/2010/02/01/more-on-google-lobbying-and-influence/
http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/search/apachesolr_search/google%20lobby
Who’s the corporate shill here?
Piracy does not help sales. What the copyright holder chooses to do about their online presence does. If the pirate activity continues and sales do not rise, the pirates simply claim no one wants the material.
If the pirated material sales rise, the pirates claim credit.
What works is a sustained online presence and good communication with the public. If you choose not to contest piracy and are able to manage to make that work for you, great.
But it did not work for me. I saw a marked decrease in my sales, and my web traffic was terrible.
My web traffic has gone nowhere but up in the last twelve months, and so have my sales. In the five years BEFORE I began the webcomic, it was nowhere but down.
I went from a few hundred page views a day to as many as 20,000. My average page views are now at least 9,000. Almost twice what it was earlier this summer.
Years of piracy, and my sales were flatlining. One year of a webcomic, and up they go.
(This comment was edited with links added.)
Having other popular webcomics link to this site doesn’t hurt, either. If someone went to google and typed A Distant Soil with the idea of finding pirated versions, they’d find this site instead. I read the books years ago, and unfortunately bought all four from Amazon which is why I haven’t bought them from you, but I found out about this site via a link from another webcomic, I think it was Eerie Cuties. Can’t beat good publicity I guess.
I’m glad to hear that the webcomic has helped your sales. (I read all the volumes of ADS at my local library after finishing what was in the archives and discovering they had it. I was impressed by the size and quality of the printed version, so I’m sure your new readers aren’t disappointing. And, hopefully, it will help make finishing the comic more affordable for you, which I look forward to whenever you have the time/money to manage it. :3) I’ve been tempted to buy the christmas deal myself, but I really need to be concentrating on gifts for other people, not for me. ^^;
As far as piracy goes, I have heard of it being actually helpful once: the creators of the movie ‘Ink’ were actually quite greatful to it being torrented.
But that was a movie that no one knew about before the torrenting. If it serves as a means of virul advertising, and it actually produces sales like in the case of Ink, great.
Needless to say, most movies (or comics, or whatever) don’t NEED that advertising. Not just the big ones either; if its a famous independent film/comic whatever, its not being helped by piracy. (And, for the record, I watched Ink throuhg netflix, not torrent, but read up on it later and found out about the whole torrenting popularity thing)
In other news, the one streaming comic site that did it right was OneManga. They had a policy of not hosting scanlations of work that was already liscenced in america, and when publishers expressed that they looked down on such things, period, they took things down without (as far as I could tell) any need for legal notices, but kept up summaries and title pages and discussion boards about the manga. (Yay actually just being fans!)
It takes a long time to build an online audience. Like I said, it took me a year, and I was only able to do it because I have a big inventory.
Almost all my incoming traffic comes from other webcomics. I see people searching for torrents of A Distant Soil every day. Some stay and read the book here. Some don’t.
Some well-known print comics creators absolutely bomb online, so I feel pretty lucky. I have no clue why some succeed online and others don’t, because quality does not seem to be the issue. The Desert Peach is brilliant, but gets very poor traffic. You can read it free at the official website:
http://www.desert-peach.com/
I tracked one book for a long time: a print creator who made a show of the webcomics thing, and even took pay subscriptions for their online comic. I don’t think they posted more than 20 pages, and haven’t updated in a year. Their traffic is terrible. I’d name them, but they resent me a lot, so they might take this as a calling out. It’s not meant to be. It’s just that many quality works don’t find an online audience.
Another posted their entire huge inventory, and despite claiming “millions of fans” has only a fraction of the readership of A Distant Soil.
Even articles at Boing Boing didn’t seem to help them much. I made a point of studying webcomics which got rec’s at Boing Boing and saw no sustained growth at some sites.
So good publicity may not be enough, either.
What’s the magic formula? Dunno, but I’m beginning to think A Distant Soil might have IT online. Which would be awesome, because I was beginning to feel badly about my little book.
And now I feel goodly about my little book.
I’m thinking that what a lot of people don’t realise is that besides the actual product they want people to see/read/buy there’s a LOT of marketing that goes into making anything publicly aware. And marketing doesn’t just mean telling people to please buy your product, it’s also how professional you look, how professional your website looks, how easy it is to use, how easy your product is to access. I’ve seen a lot of webcomics that fail on one or several of those accounts even though the material itself is good. Maybe “marketing” just has a bad echo with people and they associate it with big corporations hawking them things that they don’t actually need with big white lies.
I’d love it if everything was free and money or trading culture wasn’t necessary and everything would just get done because it was needed and made everyone happy and equal, but that’s not how things work and changing it doesn’t begin from robbing other people and just pretending we already live in a money free world.
@ Cottonball:
Great comments.
You’re absolutely right about the appeal of the website. Some of them are byzantine and very unattractive.
What I love about the current format of my website is that I can easily make changes. The readers have given me a lot of great feedback.
My old website was a lot less reader friendly, and there is a huge difference in sales based on how easy the ordering process is. So, I imagine that has something to do with its appeal. DC McQueen did a great job with the new site.
I’d love it if everything was free, too.
I really don’t get the need to pinch content. Seriously, 20,000 free webcomics, all the news you could possibly read, every classic novel ever, and many contemporary novelists posting free previews.
There’s plenty online, free and legal.
This ‘everything should be free’ mindset reminded me of an old Damon Knight short novel ‘A is for Anything’. In it Knight postulates that if everything was free the only way to get people to perform labor would be through slavery. Which in effect is what pirating does to creators by giving their product away without compensating them for their labor.
A brief synopsis of the story can be found at this link -
http://www.fantasticreviews.com/a_for_anything.htm
I am definitely going to check out that book!
Another thing to add to the cognitive disconnect: it costs money to make art. Lots of money. It costs money to make art even when you are not paid for your time.
I just paid $85 to have the pens I need to draw my work shipped in from Japan, the only place which sells pens of this quality. That is $85 for 25 pens. I have gone through several hundred of them this year. The tip is so delicate, that it is no longer useful for the type of linework I do within a few hours of use.
My digital art set up is roughly $20,000 worth of equipment and software. My oil paints run up to $20 per tube. A large, fine quality brush can run $35-$50.
I need to pay for electricity, and a drawing board, and a chair, but if I want to get compensated for any of this investment, clearly I am just a greedy artist who doesn’t love my work!
I love my work so much I spent nearly ten years working up to 100 hours a week for less than $9,000 a year because the dream was always there that someday enough I would not only be able to write and draw, but not have to starve to do it.
And these online pundits think this artist is greedy?
I am not willing to live in poverty again because people do not have the grace to respect my legal rights. If you don’t like my work, don’t read it. If you do like my work, read it right here for free.
Is that too much to ask?
I think you’re probably preaching to the choir about the whole ‘greedy artist’ syndrome, Colleen.
Its especially hilarious when you see how many cases of actual corporate greed exist out there, where there’s actual cost to what happens (theft, hurting people) as opposed to actually getting paid for the work they do. 9_9
But honestly? I don’t think anyone truly, in their gut believes artists are greedy. I don’t, really. I think its more what they tell themselves, and others, to justify doing what they know really is wrong.
And on webcomic success, the most important thing you can do is to update frequently and consistently. Having a bunch of material up is not the same. (Of course, a clear and easily navigable website is important too.)
People are more likely to stick with mediocre work that is consistent and frequent updates then higher quality that appears once in a blue moon. The latter WILL build audiences, but it will likely take much longer, and they certainly will never have the same daily pageviews.
Well, I really do meet lots of people who think the creators are all greedy and rich. I sometimes wonder if some people are resentful that they never got their dream job assume people who do sail through life. It must seem like a never ending fun fest from the outside.
Being a creative professional is a heck of a lot of work, very long hours, and little chance of success. I can’t tell you how many creators I know who chucked art for a living and got day jobs, and never looked back. Being a professional was so brutal they simply don’t miss it.
I’m glad I made it, but it was no party. And the next job can always sink you.
And speaking of corporate greed, I have been waiting months for payment from the TV producers for whom I produced conceptual designs. But hey, I should just do it for the love, right?
I agree with you absolutely that regular posting is essential to online success.
It’s a good model for print success, too!
Oh, and BTW, some of the more bizarre comments I have seen on anti-copyright threads include “Copyright is Rape” (which ranks high on my Most Offensive Comments Ever list,) and claims that no one should ever read or buy anything which has a copyright.
I realize this is a whack job fringe element, and reason will leave this sort unmoved, but that is what we are dealing with.
Colleen, I think one of the things that drives traffic on your site is your blogging as well. You are fun, witty and smart, and there is such a variety to the posts. “What will Colleen say today?” That combined with the new pages on the webcomic are potently attractive. Heck, it’s one of the reasons I check back a couple of times a day! And I’ve read all four books already, but I still enjoy seeing the page by page as well. It’s making me pay attention more closely to the craft of your work.
Wow, that is a great compliment!
And it brings up a good point: so much of internet success is about showmanship. I mean, OK, we all know there are great authors and popular ones, and sometimes the two do not meet. The creator who is able to be outgoing is the creator who will succeed online.
Which makes me wonder where writers like JD Salinger and Harper Lee would end up in today’s publishing world.
I think scribblerworks has made a good point. Of course I love the webcomic, but I already read all the comicbooks, so the story isn’t new to me.
I don’t read any other web-comics, and, honestly, if it wasn’t for the blog I probably wouldn’t follow the ADS-webcomic either, because I generally find it a bit strenuous to read comics a page a day on a screen. Call me oldfashioned, but I prefer them on paper.
The reason I come back to this site almost every day is the blogging and only the blogging. The posts deal with serious content but are still fun to read. Excellent job, Colleen
I agree with Martina in that the blogging and the on-line interaction is what brings me back to the site on a daily basis.
Like a lot of people, I have bought and read all issues of ADS and so the web comic is just a re- read for me. I discovered, however, that reading one page at a time does allow you to absorb and dissect more of the story and as a result I see many things that I missed in the first reading.
If only the comic was on line, I probably would hit the site every couple of days instead of daily.
Another thing you mentioned is the reader friendliness of your website. I also think that is one of the keys to your sucess. Interestingly enough I was just in an on-line discussion on my comic art list on website designs for art sales and there was a similiar theme. There are a few dealers that have a simple and easy to access website that I check on a daily basis, even though they don’t normally have a lot of art I want. And then there are the dealers that usually have stuff I am interested in but their websites are so difficult to navigate that I have to force myself to do a weekly search on their sites. (Usually through gritted teeth!)
“Several people I know who are internet utopianists receive huge funding from Google in the form of lecture fees and contracts.”
Can’t speak to contracts, but I have to doubt the lecture fees. When I was at Google, I was active in the Authors@Google group, which was responsible for just about all non-technical speakers at Google (many of the talks are up on YouTube). It was policy that we didn’t pay speaker fees. We did once pick up an extra night’s hotel for someone who was in town for a conference and stayed over to speak, and would in some cases buy a number of books by the speaker that were handed out free of charge to Googlers at the talk (I’m told this is less common now, but I used to pitch speaking at Google to authors as “Think of it as a bookstore appearance with guaranteed book sales”).
There are some conferences where expenses were picked up, at least for food and hotel; dunno about travel, but again not speaking fees.
This may have changed in the three years since I left, but if anyone was making good money from Google via speaker fees then, I’d be very surprised.
That’s very interesting. One author in particular just nodded sagely and said “Big” over and over again when asked. Was he trying to BS me? Dunno.
I know another who was paid a huge fee for a commission. He loves Google.
This guy specifically mentions “private events” by Google and Ferrari.
http://oreilly.com/social-media/excerpts/9780596802004/why-speakers-earn-30k-an-hour.html
“Even for private functions, say when Google or Ferrari throws an annual event for their employees, how much would it be worth to have a speaker who can make their staff a little smarter, better, or more motivated when returning to work? Maybe it’s not worth $30,000 or even $5,000, but there is some economic value to what good speakers, on the right topics, do for people.”
Maybe that’s just an example?
Or, perhaps, Google doesn’t pay authors per se, but pays “speakers”? Or lobbyists?
Well, he mentions Google, but he doesn’t actually say that Google pays. Rather, he uses Google as an example of a large company who *might* pay big bucks. The only annual Google company events were the ski trips (later Disneyland) and holiday party, neither of which had a speaker or even a big name band/singer. The ski trip did have a really good 80s cover band though, which I’m sure was paid, but at whatever the going rate for that level of band would be. Similarly, the holiday party would have various entertainers, but local-level, not big name. A number of large companies do bring in big name speakers and entertainers for such, but Google didn’t.
On the other hand, in the list of big fee speakers shown right above that quote in the article, I know of four who’ve spoken at Google sans fee, and one who’s stopped by at least twice but I don’t believe has formally spoken (Bill Clinton, although Hillary Clinton has spoken).
Also, note that I wrote that A@G was responsible for pretty much all non-technical speakers at Google. That included speakers brought in by Women@Google and various other groups (I recently attended a talk by an astronaut co-”sponsored” by Google’s Hispanic Employees group [I forget their name], which at least used to mean that the other group did the invitation and A@G then did the organizational work for the talk, making use of the built-up infrastructure for such.] [I got the right to attend all external speaker talks at Google until the end of time on my way out due to my A@G service]), what was termed Candidates@Google (pretty much all major Presidential candidates in the last campaign), and others. So not just authors.
I’d guess the person paid a big fee for a commission would be Scott McCloud, who did a 16 or so page comic for the Google Chrome launch. I honestly wouldn’t see that as different from any general work for hire or contracting assignment. Knowing the folk who commissioned that, I’m pretty sure they just thought it’d be a cool and interesting way of conveying information about the new product and thought Scott would do a good job, in particular because he’s well-educated about the Web, not because it’d influence him to be pro-Google. Also, Scott had previously given a non-paid talk at Google during his 50-state tour.
It is possible Google pays for speakers at non-internal events. They did once have a booth at the Vegas Trek convention and were a sponsor of it as some level, and provided free Wi-Fi in the Convention Center a year or two ago at Comic-Con, and they certainly have a presence at various technical conferences and conventions.There’s certainly Google lobbyists and the like.
Btw, for what it’s worth, I’m in agreement with you vis a vis piracy.
Thank you so much for that perspective. It is possible the primary person I am thinking of was a paid lobbyist, which explains a lot.
I’m sure McCloud is an “information wants to be free!” dude whether he got a commission or not.
I don’t object to anyone doing work for Google. What galls me is that people like me who have no financial stake with RIAA or MPAA get called shills.
Yet people who have a financial stake in Google are shill free, apparently. The woman I am thinking of does not work in comics, BTW. Her specialty is law. She once barked at one of my colleagues in an artist union, calling her a “copyright troll”.
Fun times.
EDIT: And just reread my original comment, and yes, it does read like I call these people shills. I apologize. I was trying to point out that these people are paid and/or get support from this corporation which unfairly profits from illegal exploitations of creative works, and yet people like me are the shills for objecting, for only a shill (regardless of whether we get paid or not) would object to piracy.
My mention of the Creators Bill of Rights is to show how sad it is that a couple of decades ago we all fought for creators and creative control of our work. And now we have less control than ever. And less respect.
Hmm, I always thought of Scott as a “micropayments for the win” dude. I’ll be seeing him tonight when he gives a talk at Stanford, so I can ask him what his take on these things is.
Honestly, while some in the information wants to be free camp do have well-nuanced arguments, some of which I’m in at least partial agreement with, I think a lot of less thoughtful folk in that camp’s arguments boil down to “But I waaaaaaant it”. Which certainly shouldn’t trump creator’s rights.
LOL! OK, and how is that micropayments thing working out? I don’t know anyone who has made a go of it, but I understand there is some new system on the horizon that’s supposed to revolutionize everything.
I’ve made it clear repeatedly on this blog that I am not a copyright absolutist, don’t see any point in going after minor infringements, couldn’t care less about meddling with fanfic and fanart, and my only standard is “Does this cause harm?”
It seems every pirate is utterly convinced they do no harm. And they have the same circular arguments and straw men that they bring out to argue time and again.
I’m with Jaron Lanier. Information doesn’t want anything. People do. Humanize the internet and stop reducing human accomplishments to 0′s and 1′s.
Don’t want to pay for my stuff? Fine. Don’t pirate it. Come here and read for free. And if you don’t want to read it at all, fine, too.
Apparently, that is still too much to ask.
Yep, a few weeks ago PayPal announced a micropayments system; http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/26/paypal-unveils-micropayments-for-digital-goods-facebook-signs-up/
It’s not quite “micro” in that if you charge a nickel or less you lose money and I’d guess a dime is where it might start being worth it (you’d get 45% of the price at that point), but it is significantly lower transaction cost than previously, from a company with an established rep for doing Internet financial transactions/processing, and it’s probably significant that they’ve got Facebook on board with them.
On the other hand, it may just be too late, given the amount of material people have put up for free legitimately over the last 15 years having created expectations that’ll be hard to overcome and compete with, not even mentioning the piracy problem.
Oh yeah, the Paypal thing. I use those buttons for selling direct already. They are dandy handy.
I used to spend a fortune on a secure shopping cart and monthly CC processing. About $150 a month. Now it’s super-easy to just put up a button and let PP have their percentage. And I don’t have to have a web tech come in and change the shopping cart every time I move inventory.
But I’m with you, here. My skeptic-o-meter is running high about those little payments.
I have to say that blog right now is what makes me come back as well (since I’ve read the whole comic now, I don’t feel the need to come back every day, though of course the artwork I haven’t seen can be nice to look at.) Your blog is always incredibly interesting and often very useful, not to mention makes me aware of things I otherwise wouldn’t know about.
However, yours is really one of the few comics I feel that way about. I think most of the creators aren’t necessarily so social, so I don’t think its necessarily a requirement, depending.
Also, “…claims that no one should ever read or buy anything which has a copyright.” I actually laughed at that. Couldn’t help it, since the whole point is not paying anyway.
It’s like the “I will be immortal or die trying.”
((Also, is the random underlying words thing a new ad thing you’re trying out? I do want you to get what money you can, but it keeps bugging me since I keep thinking you’re linking to something relevant, and then realizing its something about wells fargo, lol))
Tyg, thanks for the info, I actually find it cool that they go for local people instead of big stars for performances (though that’s just me, and I’m rather biased in the matter.
)
It’s awesome that Paypal is doing micropayments now, but how exactly would that work for comics? A few cents a page? A dollar a chapter?
I wonder if there is something that webcomic creators could offer for small amoutns to take advantage of it (high rez versions of the comic pages, special wallpapers, who knows.)
Still, people often find it easier to spend a couple dollars on a bunch of little things then the same amount on large things. *shrugs*
Even if COICA passes, it’ll just stun the beast; not kill it (as everyone knows, in a slasher film, the killer is never really dead — just dormant). What needs to be done is to change people’s views of piracy, in an effort to make it less socially acceptable.
@ Mike: I agree.
The move to turn creative people and their works into widgets not only devalues the work, it devalues humanity. Artists’ rights are human rights.
The underlined words are contextual ads. If you click on them, it just brings up an ad box. If you choose to ignore them, that’s cool. If you decide you are just terribly interested in info about Well Fargo, I get 2 cents per ad click! LOL! Real penny ante.
Please don’t think I am encouraging you to click just to give me 2 cents, though! The advertisers don’t want to be nickle and dimed any more than I do! LOL!
Hi, Google employees. I see you on my stat counter. Welcome!