Louis CK's Internet Experiment Pays Off 309
redletterdave writes "Comedian Louis C.K., real name Louis Szekely, took a major risk by openly selling his latest stand-up special, 'Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theater,' for only $5 on his website and refusing to put any DRM restrictions on the video, which made it easily susceptible to pirating and torrenting. Four days later, Louis CK's goodwill experiment has already paid off: The 44-year-old comic now reports making a profit of about $200,000, after banking more than $500,000 in revenue from the online-only sale. The special, which has sold 110,000 copies so far, is only available on Louis CK's website."
I'm shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
When you give consumers a product that they want, at a price they find fair, in a form factor (format) that is convenient for them, in a location that is convenient for them, they are happy to pay for it!
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
No, the attitude I see more often is "This thing is so good and so reasonably priced -- I *paid* for it."
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a shame that professional publishers, with very few exceptions, don't realize that.
Re:Proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't Apple already prove this when they converted their music store to a DRM-free format? It seems like nobody around here gives them any credit for that...
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
The evidence doesn't support your waggery.
Re:I'm shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
Took me a minute to decide to comment, or mod up.
I will NOT pay $20+ for a DVD full of DRM/malware. If I purchase something, it is mine. I will not subject myself to corporate restrictions on what I can do with my own property. I have gladly paid for DRM-free songs and movies, and will continue to do so as long as my rights to my own property are not encroached upon.
I have even donated more than asked to independent artists, simply because I feel that they deserved to be compensated for producing something I enjoyed.
The typical pirate's attitude is not "yay, everything's free!".
Should $CORPORATION decide to release their movies for a reasonable price and allow me to download it immediately via BitTorrent, here's my Visa.
Re:Initial offering ususally works (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly the point. He gets paid just fine for the work that he just did, but to continue to get paid he needs to do new work. This is how the system should work, as opposed to the RIAA/MPAA model of do a work and then try to lock it up and get paid for it for the rest of eternity. The public domain is being robbed by these kinds of jokers who think that once something is made it should be owned forever, rather than becoming the shared cultural heritage that it really is and belonging to all the people who saw it when it was initially made.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
it's a bit of a problem though... Louis' experiment was a matter of tentatively finding the threholds involved.
basically, though a lot of people are willing to pay for something out of goodwill, there'll always be arseholes that have no good will and will take anything they can because they can.
people steal from charity shops you know... even though the prices are insanely low and the store itself is not for profit, and in many cases the store is affiliated with a charity that will give the same items to poor people, some cunt will actually take stuff for free.
arseholes are why we can't have nice things.
Louis' experiment (and wikipedia's, and radiohead's, etc) is whether one can make a living in spite of the small percent of people that are just cunts for cunting's sake. it looks like there's enough decent people out there to make a living. but one can be forgiven for thinking "you know, if those people had shelled out a measly 5 bucks, i could have made so much more".
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
Habitual pirates buy spend more on media than those who don't pirate AND they are happier with their purchases. Isn't this a good thing?
Re:I'm shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
When you give consumers a product that they want, at a price they find fair, in a form factor (format) that is convenient for them, in a location that is convenient for them, they are happy to pay for it!
The hard part is making that happen in the first place. From the article:
Louis CK used the $500,000 to pay off several costs, including the $170,000 it took to produce the show, and the $32,000 he spent on building and editing his own website.
Leaving aside the possibility of people acquiring the video without paying for it, he had $300,000 of costs (they don't indicate where the other $100,000 went, maybe the $202,000 figure mentioned was the up front cost and the next $98,000 was distribution). Sure, he could have perhaps found a lower cost way to distribute it but it's still $170,000 in production costs. Part of the deal with publishers of any kind is that they're taking on the risk of producing it. If it doesn't sell it's them who will be losing money, not the author or act or band, etc. In this case, Louis CK put himself in a position where he would potentially lose $170,000 at the minimum. It's only established acts who have the opportunity to take that sort of risk.
Pay on the way out... (Score:5, Insightful)
LCK says he doesn't get torrents, but I think he does, this is very smart. Many people who watch the torrent version will gladly hop over to his site and pay their $5 and not even bother to d/l again. Movies should be like this, what if you could pay on the way out of the theater after you've seen the movie, wouldn't that make alot more sense?
You know it'll never happen, but it's a nice idea
=D
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
The evidence doesn't support my waggery? Are you not aware of Pirate Bay, the Pirate Party, etc.? This thing from Louis CK already has several thousand downloads on Demonoid, and that's just a private tracker.
Pirates want shit for free. They refuse to acknowledge this basic human trait and cover it up with a bunch of freedom fighter bullshit. It's very simple and obvious--humans like to get things for free. To make themselves not feel guilty about it, they blame everything else but themselves--software publishers, the RIAA, Microsoft, copyright law, etc. I realize that Slashdot has become a piracy advocacy site in the last 10 years, but just because your opinion is patted on the back all the time at this one website doesn't mean it's true.
If you're a pirate, just admit reality and say you want to acquire things without having to pay for them. It's so much more respectable than the usual coverup.
Re:I'm shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone just starting out has no reasonable expectation to make $500,000 in 4 days. Someone just starting out should be absolutely thrilled if he makes $500 in 4 days. In fact, someone just starting out should be pretty darn happy to be making any money at all in the first 4 days after release.
But that's precisely the whole problem with our IP system in the US. People think that just because they produced some content they should be entitled to loads of wealth, both immediately as well as for the rest of their life for one thing they spent probably less than 100 hours producing.
I could go on, but that's probably enough for now.
Or you could, you know, make new shit (Score:5, Insightful)
Louis C.K. is real big on that. He claims, and his shows seem to back up, that he tosses his old jokes each year and moves on to new ones. He doesn't keep doing the same material over and over. Means that if he releases a new special, well there is probably a reason to watch it.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
The arseholes aren't going to pay for it either way. Charging more money and adding DRM is only going to drive the non-arseholes towards arseholish behavior. This is why Ubisoft can't make money in the PC gaming area any more: no one wants to pay for that shit. People will gladly pay, if they get their moneys worth.
Hell, the newest Humble Bundle made over a million in it's first day. No DRM, no minimum price. I paid 20 bucks (although I did send most to charity: first time I've almost felt bad sending money to charity, since I also wanted to pay the developers), well over the average required for the extra games. People will pay for things. Provided the person they are buying it from doesn't insult them, especially not while they are being paid
Re:I like it! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I'm shocked! (Score:4, Insightful)
But the question is whether these experimental results can be reproduced.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm shocked! (Score:5, Insightful)
Being literally the funniest man alive doesn't hurt.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there's definitely more to it than you're portraying.
Look at me, for example: In 1999, I spoke out on my (crappy) website against game publishers not selling games and forcing me into the second hand market. At the time, I was more than happy to steal anything I wanted, because I couldn't get the right product at the right price and easy to buy and use.
Fast forward 10 years, and I've spent hundreds of dollars at GOG.COM, where they have the right product at the right price and easy to buy and use. I've bought well over 100 games, more than I could possibly play in a very long time, specifically because I so strongly believe that a company fulfilling their end of the bargain deserves to be rewarded.
Those dollars and cents on GOGs balance sheet, is that freedom fighter bullshit?
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everybody needs to pay. Requiring that is just stupid and misses the point. What is required is that the bottom-line is enough to motivate and fund the artist(s) involved. Depending on the product and the price point, acceptable fraction of paying customers between 1% and 90% can be acceptable. 10% egoists should never be a problem. Of course, with bad products, you can get 0% paying customers, because they will feel defrauded.
To paraphrase the CEO of Borland decades back (when they were sending out Turbo Pascal 3.0 with full money-back if you did not like it even for opened packages): "Yes, it is being pirated. We estimate 2 pirated copies for every one sold. But why should we care, our revenue from this product is great!" Of course this attitude will never be rational to a greedy corporate manager. But it should make a lot of sense to an artist. And greedy corporate managers do not produce anything of worth to the human race, but artists do. So I know very much which side I want to win and it seems it it now has a real shot at winning.
But here is the real point: If DRM makes me feel defrauded (and it recently did again), then I will look for DRM-free alternatives.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
this is my point exactly - pricks will not buy at any price. not because "bawww i'm so poor"... they're on the internet. their basic needs are clearly met (food, shelter, safety), so they can't bleat about being poor. it's a matter of get it or go without. if they go without, they should spend the time they would have spent watching doing something productive.
the good thing about offering it for a very small price is precisely calling the bluff - knowing that people will steal no matter what, but doing the maths on whether you can break even or make a modest profit in spite of that.
Louie's overheads are low - he paid for shooting it, and web hosting, and all the rest he does himself. there's no distributor, he didn't use a post house, all mastering was done in files rather than tapes. you save tens of thousands by doing it yourself.
a feature film might be able to do this, but it'd need enough marketing to get the film out there, and it'd need a low budget. something like Avatar couldn't survive this way (even if it was a good movie instead of a smurf handjob fest).
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Paying a REASONABLE price is always preferable to people. and that is the point. a 1 hour TV show is NOT WORTH more than 0.99 to most people. A longer special like the example is worth more.
The problem is that CBS,NBC,ABC,Viacom,etc all think that tv show is worth $$BILLIONS$$ZOMG! and it is in reality not. If I cant view it for free on my TV then THAT is the value of it to me. You had better price it so close to that value that I dont care about the cost 1/2 hour sitcom single viewing? $0.50 is the top reasonable price without commercials. and THAT is far more they are getting per set of eyeballs than any advertising is making them.
They want the cake, the frosting, and then to charge us to eat it and then crap it out later.
and that is why people say "screw it" and torrent them instead.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:1, Insightful)
When you use terminology like "MAFIAA" or tell them to go fuck themselves, whatever point you were trying to make just sounds ridiculous. That said, I don't really get the mentality that you want to support artists, but in order to punish content cartels that artists willingly signed up with to distribute their work globally, you refuse to pay for the artists' work. That doesn't hurt the publishers; it just means the artist sells less records, which makes publishers less likely to take risks on edgier acts that don't guarantee a return on their investment. You only hurt the artists in that equation.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
Not only do you claim people are forcing you to read and watch things, but you act as if the fact you refuse to pay for something means you're owed it for free. What a strange position to take.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course they're not obligated to create it.
But then, bear in mind, that entertainment as a whole is not something that anyone ever needs to buy. What entertainment we absolustely have to have to maintain our sanity we can generally provide for ourselves.
On top of that, there's such a glut and over-supply of entertainment available these days, it's almost surprising that *any* of them make much money.
Bottom line, it's a buyer's market, more than any industry has ever been before. The MAFIAA et al keep trying to make that not true, but it's just not possible.
So no, they're not obligated to create the entertainment I want for the price I demand... unless they actually want to turn a profit. If you're in the entertainment business and no one likes what you're creating, it is in every sense of the word, worthless.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
worrying too much about arseholes are why we can't have nice things.
There, fixed that for you.
The bottom line is that nothing you can do will stop the people that are going to pirate it no matter what. NOTHING short of not releasing it will prevent them from getting a copy for free and thinking they are the hot shit because of it.
Lets say that there are 1000 of those people in the world that want your product, is it worth pissing off the 100,000 people that legitimately buy your "product" with annoying DRM to slightly annoy just one of those 1000 jackasses while he breaks whatever actually useless DRM scheme you PAID EXTRA to use on your product? To say nothing of the fact that you are pumping up that one jackholes ego by giving him some drm to crack!
Well that's all of my.02, I'm off to go buy a comedy album, even though I've never seen this guy. Maybe I'll check out youtube first.
Ya, I think the lesson is clear to anyone that isn't an idiot, or working for a DRM creation company.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing is a big part of it. As with Radiohead, they proved only that if the marketing money is already spent, you can coast.
He can figure web hosting and the cost of the venue and filming into his accounts, but he didn't take into account the money that was spent making him famous: spots on Letterman, Showtime specials, etc.
Unknown people try this experiment every single day on Myspace and Jango and such, and if they're lucky a musician will make enough money to pay for the studio time. They're not famous to start with and can't pay for TV time to make themselves famous.
If Louis CK were still some small-time hack making his way on the comedy circuit, there's no chance he'd have made back even the $200k he spent on this project. And as you observe, that's for the cheapest kind of movie you can imagine: some shmo talking in front of a camera, with no costumes, no effects, no locations, no score, no actors, etc.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
If you can't get the right product at the right price, you go without.
Why? What difference does it make if you do or don't go without?
Serious question.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?
DO you think there would be 5 dollar downloads if no one ahd been bucking the system for 15+ years? No, it would all be locked up by big companies who may, or may not release it.
Of course, in today's world you're statement is incredibly stupid. Companies can change the terms of an agreement any time they like now.
I can tell you why I pirate when I do
1) I can't return many items if they don't work as advertised.
2) I can't read the EULA until I am installing it; which is too late to get my money back
3) Someone recommends a tv series. For example: Archer* It was recommended. I down loaded season one. I now own the disks. Sometime a show will suck, and I'll delete it.
4) Downloading cost them exactly nothing. SO there is NOT a loss.
And I will continue until the consumer isn't getting screwed.
I prefer to change the terms.
*LAAAAAANA
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
When you use terminology like "MAFIAA" or tell them to go fuck themselves, whatever point you were trying to make just sounds ridiculous.
The tactics used by the media distribution cartels are actually quite similar in nature (albeit less violent) to early Mafia tactics. The analogy is an apt one. The fact that it's used to associate a despicable organisation with an outright illegal one is a pretty standard rhetorical trope.
Given the fact that these same organisations have conducted a concerted campaign to make their entire customer base feel like criminals, and given as well that they have a track record of ripping off the very artists you claim to sympathise with, I don't think a healthy 'Fuck you' is at all an inappropriate response.
If you can't engage in a rational argument that's garnished with a few rhetorical flourishes and an expletive or two, I'd recommend you never ever discuss anything of import with the irish, the French, the Scots (if you can find a true one), a goodly number of the British... or pretty much anyone from central Europe.
I'll end this with a smile and a word. As my Irish grandfather used to say:
Fuck you, you humourless cunt and have a beautiful fucking day. I hope the surgery to remove that giant stick up your ass isn't too painful. No, wait - I hope it is.
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:3, Insightful)
Amen. I waited until 2009 before I bittorrented anything. I kept hoping we would win the DRM war before I bought a high-def TV. But eventually I got one, and I was either going to have to be satisfied with watching low-def video on it, or piracy. Both cable TV and movie studios refused to sell me video I could play through my HTPC. The answer was foo.x264.mkv files, and guess what: pirates are the sole source. The studios could have had my money, but even in 2011 they steadfastly refuse. I waited. I told everyone the day was fast approaching. They didn't care. They didn't want to be paid.
To be fair, they did make one token effort. They released the HDCP keys, I think last year some time, in the hopes some Chinese manufacturer would make a highdef HDMI capture device. But so far, I still don't see 'em on the market, so buying content still isn't viable the way DVDs got saved by DeCSS. Maybe this will change with time, but I'm starting to get used to torrenting. If Hollywood had an ounce of sense they would pay millions of dollars to flood the market with HDCP defeaters over the next two weeks. Shit, they ought to be giving them away, along with buying a repeal of DMCA.
Re:Pay on the way out... (Score:3, Insightful)
You cant mod somebody up and then post in the same article!!! Noobs I say!
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:0, Insightful)
But the point, that you seem to be missing entirely, is that you're not entitled to those products. I can't afford a Porch, does that give me the right to take someone else's for a joyride? The manufacturers are FORCING me to do it with their ridiculous prices!
Re:Pirate attitude (Score:4, Insightful)
a 1 hour TV show is NOT WORTH more than 0.99 to most people
I'd say it's not even worth that. The TV I watch is typically on DVDs. I don't remember the last time I watched a 1-hour show - perhaps you mean a 1 US-TV-Hour show, which is 40 minutes. I get four of these on a DVD. For the price of my rental plan, I pay about 10p (about 15) per episode. Online distribution means that they're not paying the cost of shipping me a shiny disk. If I can make a copy and watch it again[1] then that's worth slightly more, but I rarely want to watch a TV show more than once. 20 per episode, or maybe $5 for a season for a DRM-free download would put things in the impulse buy category - and I'd even be prepared to pay it before they even started filming the season for a lot of shows.
GOG.com has learned that this is an incredibly valuable price point. I have about ten games that I've bought from there and not yet played. Most of them cost about $3 on one of their weekend promotions. I bought them because they looked like they might be fun. Some that I've bought like this before have turned out to be quite boring and I've deleted them after 15 minutes. Some have been so much fun I've played them solidly for days. At this price, I'm willing to take a risk - if it's rubbish then I've only lost the price of a pint of beer.
[1] Legally, I mean - doing this with DVDs is trivial, but not legal if they are rented.