IPretorian Blog, Internet Privacy Protector

A while ago we wrote about “Ink” – a regular movie that acually make money after it got ripped to torrent. Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith took movie production one step further and created Pioneer One: TV-series available exclusively on BitTorrent. With 300,000 downloads for the high definition release alone Pioneer One quickly become most popular SciFi TV seed on many torrent sites.

Here comes interesting part: creators of Pioneer One raised $6000 to shoot the first episode though a Kickstarter project, but to finish the full series the crew has been looking for donations from new people who want to support the project. Goal was to raise $20.000 for next 3 episodes. This was first time movie makers ask viewers for support: if you like what you see please consider donating to the project. Response was astonishing: goal of $20.000 was reached in 10 days, at a time of this post donations are at $23,956 and counting. Quoting Josh Bernhard interview on TorrentFreak: “The response to the pilot was unbelievable. It took a week for it to really sink in that so many people had seen it and liked it. It was also particularly gratifying to see so many people responding to the story the way we intended. I’ve never been able to get that kind of feedback from an audience on this scale. It’s kind of validating, and gives me even more confidence moving forward.”

We are supporting Pioneer One off course and wish more great ideas for upcoming episodes. We believe this is a right move to the future of copyright material distribution: pay for use, not “pay up!”

IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry), representing the recording industry worldwide with some 1400 members in 72 countries, announced 2009 Digital Music report again putting the blame for decreased physical sales on file-sharers. In their annual Digital Music Report, IFPI states that file-sharers (pirates) are half as likely to buy physical music than the average music buyer. Although the report is about digital music, they carefully avoid saying anything about file-sharers and digital sales. TorrentFreak concluded very different picture from barely 2 pages of report published online:

Compared to music buyers, music sharers (pirates) are:

• 31% more likely to buy single tracks online.
• 33% more likely to buy music albums online.
• 100% more likely to pay for music subscription services.
• 60% more likely to pay for music on mobile phone.

The music industry own figures show pirates are paying more for music in digtal form, than average phisical music buyer; not forgeting fact, that digital music is cheaper that same one on phisical media, like CD. It’s very clear that music industry should get more respect for Customers actually growing their business: blame file-sharers for not buying CD’s, yet gladly taking their money for digital music.