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	<title>Plankhead &#187; arrrrr</title>
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		<title>Why You Should Support Your Face is a Saxophone</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/2307/why-you-should-support-your-face-is-a-saxophone</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/2307/why-you-should-support-your-face-is-a-saxophone#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 08 Feb 2012 23:38:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Filmmakery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[activismism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[animation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anticapitalist bullshit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[your face is a saxophone]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=2307</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The copyright industry is not going quietly. The legitimacy of its monopolist and consumerist practices are still upheld by policymakers and panicking creators who haven&#8217;t seen any real alternative in action. I humbly submit my silly cartoon about people with inanimate objects for heads as a first step in that direction. Your Face is a [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/31270192?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0" width="655" height="368" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe><br />
<strong>The copyright industry is not going quietly. The legitimacy of its monopolist and consumerist practices are still upheld by policymakers and panicking creators who haven&#8217;t seen any real alternative in action. I humbly submit my silly cartoon about people with inanimate objects for heads as a first step in that direction.</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://yfias.com"><strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong></a> is a surrealist satire of the advertising industry, which makes fun of actual companies and brands. It tells the story of the staff of Buzzword Marketing, and their dealings with the absurd demands of their corporate clients. Also, everybody has inanimate objects instead of heads for some reason. It&#8217;s either an artistic statement on how consumerism objectifies us all, or an excuse for us to not have to animate their mouths moving; you decide. As a bonus, <strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em> is Public Domain under CC0.</strong></p>
<p>My friends and I formed <strong>Plankhead</strong> to produce the series. At the beginning of 2011, we released the first <strong>full-length, 25 minute</strong> episode — a pilot that we pitched not to a TV network, but to the Internet. We were able to raise enough money from individual donors to make a second one, which <strong>came out astronomically better than the first</strong>. Naturally, we&#8217;d like to continue the series — we have five more episodes planned, and we&#8217;re starting on the third in the next few weeks. But this isn&#8217;t just yet another crowdfunded indie project.</p>
<p><strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong> started out as an assault on advertising. Since it began, I&#8217;ve realized that the problems with advertising are just one part — along with the copyright monopoly, unchecked greed, the pursuit of censorship, and other problems — of the holistic problem that is the <em>ancien régime</em> of the corporate entertainment industry. Much like these motivations, <strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong> is a part of a larger whole; a prototype for how to produce, promote, and proliferate culture in <strong>complete opposition</strong> to the problematic habits of the copyright industry.</p>
<p>I certainly hope you find the show entertaining. But <strong>even if you don&#8217;t</strong>, let me explain why you should still help it succeed:<br />
<span id="more-2307"></span></p>
<h3>The Problems</h3>
<p><strong>Advertising</strong><br />
In conceiving the project, I decided I was fed up with advertising-supported media. Humanity had created the Internet — possibly the most empowering technology of the millennium — and yet had failed to come up with a better way of sustaining its contents than by splattering ads all over everything. At best, it&#8217;s annoying and ugly — São Paulo, Brazil mayor Gilberto Kassab famously called advertising &#8220;<a href="http://www.good.is/post/a-happy-flourishing-city-with-no-advertising/">visual pollution</a>&#8221; when banning billboards in 2006. <strong>At worst, advertising has a chilling effect on free speech, making it too unprofitable to say something that corporations disapprove of.</strong> </p>
<p>So, I decided to prove that a full-length TV show could be made without advertiser support — by making it something that nobody in their right mind would want to sponsor. </p>
<p>But how to finance a show without ad dollars? There&#8217;s grants, but that just gives the veto to governments or private foundations instead of corporations. No question: it would need to come from individual fans — the people who actually care about the message. So, that&#8217;s why we crowdfunded Episode 2 of <strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong>, and plan to continue that.</p>
<p>Obviously, crowdfunding alone can&#8217;t go very far; Mike Masnick reminds us often that <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080522/1545021204.shtml">&#8220;Give it away and pray&#8221; isn&#8217;t a business model</a>. That&#8217;s why many independent creators make their money selling T-shirts, mugs, mousepads, posters, and other merchandise. Except that falls into the trap of…</p>
<p><strong>Selling a Product</strong><br />
The chief reason why the copyright industry is running around with its head cut off is because its products — music, movies, news, <strong>information</strong> — are <strong>no longer products</strong>. Everything digitized can, and will, be made available for free, regardless of its creator&#8217;s wishes. You can&#8217;t sell a non-scarce good.</p>
<p>Obviously, many companies and artists still try this by &#8220;selling&#8221; digital downloads. But it&#8217;s been said that the way to compete with piracy is to respect your customers; selling a glass of tap water is not respectful to your customers.</p>
<p>Whereas the old guard tries to recreate the scarcity of information by lobbying to destroy our civil liberties, more nimble independent players simply find new scarcities to sell. This often takes the form of merchandising, which the copyright industry does its fair share of as well.</p>
<p>But that runs into another problem: <strong>everything can, and will, be digitized</strong>. Why buy an official T-shirt, poster, mug, or mousepad when you can print your own? 3D printers are set to drop in cost, increase in capability, and pervade society through the next decade, making the sales of merchandise into a very short-sighted business plan.</p>
<p>Merchandising also alienates the audience, reinforcing the false dichotomy of producer and consumer. It turns the art into yet another advertisement, and the fans into nothing but customers for the mass-produced crap which the art is hawking. Speaking of which…</p>
<p><strong>Monologue Culture</strong><br />
When you hear the term &#8220;consumerism&#8221; thrown around, you often think of what I just alluded to: people being sold a bunch of crap in massive quantities. But the copyright industry fosters another type of consumerism: the consumption of monologues.</p>
<p>Most media takes the form of a creator or author communicating a message to the audience. The audience&#8217;s response, input, or thoughts do not matter, because they can&#8217;t change the message. This isn&#8217;t inherently a bad thing — indeed, it&#8217;s often a good thing for one person&#8217;s message to be communicated without meddling from others. The problem is that the audience doesn&#8217;t feel invested in the message. It doesn&#8217;t feel like it&#8217;s <em>theirs</em>.</p>
<p>The works which foster large, devoted fanbases are the ones which capture an audience&#8217;s imagination. A well-built fantasy world will inspire thousands of fan-fiction spinoffs; a great piece of music will inspire thousands of cover performances; a video game is already more engaging simply because it&#8217;s interactive, but open, hackable code will inspire thousands of modifications. Works like these <em>do</em> get the audience invested, and give them a sense of ownership.</p>
<p>This creates two challenges. First, not every story worth telling, song worth performing, or creation worth creating has the capacity to inspire direct remixing; Hitchcock&#8217;s <em>Psycho</em> isn&#8217;t the most fertile ground for a fan-fiction movement, for example. That point, I&#8217;d like to get back to. For now, let me digress with the second challenge: the fact that the copyright industry makes such creative communities illegal.</p>
<p><strong>Creative Monopolies</strong><br />
Through use of the copyright monopoly, the industry acts as an oppressive creator&#8217;s guild. If you&#8217;re not a member of their inner circle, they don&#8217;t want you to be creating anything. They can achieve this because there is no such thing as &#8220;originality&#8221; in creative work; everything is based on, built on, or inspired by something that came before. Sometimes, the best new work comes from directly appropriating the past.</p>
<p>This is what makes the copyright monopoly so powerful. Hollywood can license a soundtrack of popular music, but an independent filmmaker cannot. Live performance venues cannot exist without paying licensing fees to the Big Three record companies, just in case a performer does something that <em>might</em> intersect with a copyright. Spinoffs and sequels to stories are the exclusive domain of the original publisher, and fan-fiction is regularly intimidated or sued out of existence. These are just a few examples of the hundreds of ways in which copyright monopolies are used to financially repress artists outside of the guild.</p>
<p><strong>The attacks on civil liberties by the copyright industry aren&#8217;t about irrational fears of piracy or lost sales.</strong> The executives in charge aren&#8217;t that stupid; they&#8217;re well aware that <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/skyisrising/">the entertainment industry is growing, not shrinking</a>. <strong>It is chiefly about stifling competition from the masses themselves.</strong> They fear that if we can meet all of our entertainment needs with YouTube videos, independent music, local art communities, and other such things, then we&#8217;ll no longer want to watch their TV and movies, listen to their music, read their books, or play their games. <strong>And they&#8217;re right.</strong> As Clay Shirky said in his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h2dF-IsH0I">legendary TED Talk</a>, &#8220;Time Warner has called, and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming, not producing, not sharing. And we should say no.&#8221;</p>
<p>The problem is, having entrenched themselves and stifled competition for over a century, the copyright industry has our work cut out for us.</p>
<p><strong>Nowhere Else To Go</strong><br />
While I was drafting this post, Paul M. Davis of <a href="http://shareable.net">Shareable</a> happened to put out an <a href="http://shareable.net/blog/dont-believe-the-hype-the-entertainment-industry-is-growing">article describing many of my concerns</a>. Davis is ambivalent towards Techdirt&#8217;s <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/skyisrising/">Sky is Rising infographic</a>, and writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>For the truly DIY — the creators with limited resources who live precarious lives to pursue their passions while navigating an ever-changing media landscape — the effect of the Internet is far more complex than optimistic infographics and studies often suggest.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>[A]s traditional sources of industry support (promotion, distribution, and simple business admin) crumble, it can take longer for indie artists to reach the critical mass of audience awareness to quit their day jobs. In the meantime, the workload for creators has increased, until they begin consistently making enough money to hire others to handle the additional labor that the Internet adds to the equation.</p></blockquote>
<p>It&#8217;s unquestionably a good thing that the Internet is dismantling the copyright industry&#8217;s distribution monopoly, but its promise of eliminating their stranglehold on promotion hasn&#8217;t been fully realized. Before the Internet, creative people had to play the lottery, hoping that a corporate agent would notice them and scoop them up. Now, creative people still have to play the lottery, hoping that somebody with a large social network will notice them and tweet a link to their website. The odds may be better, but it&#8217;s still a raw deal.</p>
<p>The notion that artists need to work a day job until they one day &#8220;make it&#8221; is a tragedy, not a desirable component of a healthy society. As I&#8217;ve <a href="http://falkvinge.net/2011/07/20/more-people-means-more-voices-means-better-ideas/">touched on previously</a>, distracting people by forcing them to worry about meeting their basic needs holds back human progress. The copyright industry has done a poor job of solving this problem, but thus far, so has the Internet. As Davis says, DIY promotion for an unknown artist is still absurdly difficult.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve witnessed this firsthand, in fact. The second episode of <strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong> was released at the end of October 2011. The reason you&#8217;re seeing this article months later is because working full-time on its production bankrupted me. When I said we&#8217;d raised enough money to make the episode, I was referring to buying new equipment — there wasn&#8217;t much left over to cover anybody&#8217;s cost of living. While finding and keeping a day job, I neglected to open-source the assets and project files, enact a promotional strategy, finish subtitling the new episode, or do much of anything that I&#8217;d needed to. Being unable to pay one&#8217;s bills is, as you can imagine, very distracting.</p>
<h3>The Solution</h3>
<p>It&#8217;s these problems that we&#8217;d like to tackle with <strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong>, using it to lay the groundwork for a new creative culture. Others may have pioneered the bits and pieces I&#8217;m about to describe, but it&#8217;s time to put them together in a cohesive, intentional whole.</p>
<p><strong>Free and Open Source</strong><br />
<strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong> is CC0 Public Domain. Once an episode is finished and released, it belongs to the commons, irrevocably. We wouldn&#8217;t be able to enforce any copyright monopoly on it even if we someday lost our minds and wanted to.</p>
<p>Furthermore, it will be entirely open source. All art assets, audio, project files, and (if feasible) renders will be made available to the public. We&#8217;ll use as many open formats as possible (sadly, I haven&#8217;t had the time to learn Blender, so the first two episodes&#8217; project files are in the propirateary (that&#8217;s not a typo) Apple Motion 5 format).</p>
<p>We won&#8217;t use creative monopolies, and through open source, we&#8217;ll chip away at the monologue culture problem. To further attack that…</p>
<p><strong>Selling a Process</strong><br />
As my <a href="http://vimeo.com/36257901">experiment in impromptu filmmaking</a> shows, people enjoy creating things — and it&#8217;s not just self-described &#8220;artists&#8221; who find the creative process to be just as entertaining, if not more, than experiencing the final product. This is why video games which spark people&#8217;s creativity — for example, anything that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Wright_%28game_designer%29">Will Wright</a> has ever been tangentially involved with — have proved to be so massively popular.</p>
<p>But not every message worth communicating can be expressed in an interactive medium. There will always be a place for monologue media — for immutable text, sound, or imagery comprised solely of the vision of its author(s). That&#8217;s why we need to blur the line between audience and author, consumer and producer, by bringing the fans into the creative process.</p>
<p>We can&#8217;t — and shouldn&#8217;t — finance <strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong> by selling access to the finished episodes. Instead, we sell access to the community. <strong>Everyone who contributes any amount of money to <em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em> becomes a producer of the show.</strong></p>
<p>To describe what that means, here&#8217;s an excerpt of an email I sent to current producers a couple weeks ago:</p>
<blockquote><p>Though Plankhead does provide entertaining things to the world, it&#8217;s not — as people who wear suits and have far too high incomes would say — our &#8220;core business&#8221;. We don&#8217;t aim to sustain ourselves (or, in suit-speak, &#8220;make money&#8221;) by saying to people, &#8220;You are the audience&#8221;. We do that by saying, &#8220;You are the artist&#8221;.</p>
<p>If you&#8217;re receiving this email, then you were instrumental in the creation of Your Face is a Saxophone. That makes you an artist, because you brought art into being. You&#8217;re all artists. Guilty as charged.</p>
<p>And you know how else you&#8217;re all artists? Have you ever heard a song, and then hummed it to yourself in your head for hours and hours afterwards? Have you ever quoted a movie to your friends? Ever gone halfway through a terrible pun, put on sunglasses, finished it, and then screamed YEAAAAAAHHHHH? Those are all creative acts. Even if you didn&#8217;t make up any original words or sounds, performance — even if nobody&#8217;s watching — is creative. You&#8217;re all artists.</p>
<p>Everyone has that burning drive to create. Some people have it during urination; they should probably see their doctors and get tested. For everyone else, Plankhead is here to help.</p>
<p>Enough of this abstracty mumbo-jumbo. Let&#8217;s talk concrete stuff:</p>
<p>For Episode 3 of Your Face is a Saxophone, we&#8217;re going to keep you updated, every step of the way, with production. And you know what I want you to do? Respond. Make comments. Make suggestions. Throw us ideas. Help us create this thing. If you think something should be animated differently, let us know. If you think there&#8217;s a hilarious prop missing from a background, tell us. Maybe you can even draw it for us and we&#8217;ll put it in. If you think Dave needs to re-record a line because he&#8217;s not making Blake sound enough like an adorable idiot, say so. Be a part of the process.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ll be putting up wikis and forums and stuff to make this kind of thing easier, but also suggest ideas for how we can share the production process, and get your input. Help us create the creative process.</p>
<p>For future episodes, we&#8217;ll also be letting you into the writer&#8217;s room. I&#8217;ve only written the scripts up until Episode 3, so I&#8217;m going to need everyone&#8217;s help to flesh out the stories for the remaining four episodes.</p>
<p>YFIAS isn&#8217;t just a prototype of a new way to finance art. It&#8217;s also a prototype of a new way to create it: having the community involved every step of the way, blurring the line between fan and creator.</p></blockquote>
<p>This will effectively make our revenue stream <strong>completely indifferent to file-sharing</strong>. It won&#8217;t even be possible to lose a &#8220;sale&#8221; to a free download, and we&#8217;ll be able to brag that we have a 0% piracy rate.</p>
<p><strong>For-Progress, Not For-Profit</strong><br />
<strong>We reject the notion that art is an investment that needs to be recouped. It is a desirable end in and of itself.</strong> The copyright industry views art as an incidental logistical concern on the path to making money; if they believed they could make more money selling toilet paper, they&#8217;d do it. This is the root of the problems that they cause.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not seeking personal financial gain from <strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong>; my cost of living just happens to be a necessary expense of the project. And I&#8217;d wager that most artists feel exactly the same way about their work.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ll use the success of <strong><em>Your Face is a Saxophone</em></strong> to build Plankhead, our organization, into a support network for artists. <strong>A cooperative media company, owned and operated by its creative workers.</strong> Were I pitching it to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist — people who like to hear things like &#8220;it&#8217;s an AirBnb for Facebook games&#8221; or whatever — I&#8217;d call it &#8220;a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_corporation">Mondragon</a> for media&#8221;. When we get to that stage, we will promote any work in any medium that is A) technically competent and B) willing to be released under CC0 — and finance it if possible. We&#8217;ll do our best to keep personal taste out of the vetting process, because all art has a right to exist.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the goal is not to make artists fabulously wealthy; it&#8217;s to keep them fed and clothed so that they can concentrate on creating things.</p>
<h3>How You Can Help</h3>
<p>To make this happen, we need <a href="http://yfias.com/donate">producers</a> and <a href="http://yfias.com/volunteer">volunteers</a>.</p>
<p>Today, I&#8217;m setting a new fundraising goal of $3000. That amount of money would allow me to devote my full time to animating the third episode for three or four months. If we raise even more than that, we might be able to add a second or third animator to speed the process along. You can contribute and become a producer through our <a href="http://yfias.com/donate">donation page</a>.</p>
<p>We also need people who can help produce, promote, and proliferate the show. A comprehensive list is on our <a href="http://yfias.com/volunteer">volunteering page</a>, but a few examples include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Subtitle translators</li>
<li>Torrent seeders</li>
<li>Social network/blog promoters</li>
<li>Web technicians/designers</li>
<li>Python coders who can figure out how to automate the &#8220;lip&#8221;-sync animation so that we can switch to Blender already (or anyone who can help us switch to Blender in any way, for that matter)</li>
</ul>
<p>People who make significant volunteer contributions will probably get producer status out of the deal.</p>
<p>Ultimately, we need you to <strong>help us prove that this works</strong>. Let&#8217;s give the world hard, concrete evidence that even a traditional TV-length show with <strong>no copyright protection whatsoever</strong> can be successful. Let&#8217;s show that we don&#8217;t need to create a false pretense of buying and selling digital &#8220;goods&#8221; to sustain artists. Let&#8217;s validate the idea that art for art&#8217;s sake is something that society values, believes in, and wants to exist.</p>
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		<title>PC Gaming is a Donor-Supported Industry with the Pretense of Selling a Product</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/2298/pc-gaming-is-a-donor-supported-industry-with-the-pretense-of-selling-a-product</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/2298/pc-gaming-is-a-donor-supported-industry-with-the-pretense-of-selling-a-product#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:01:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Crosspostery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anticapitalist bullshit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economicry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[valve]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=2298</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In today&#8217;s world, everything digital can, and will, be made available free. They&#8217;re non-scarce goods. One industry has reacted to this new reality by sustaining itself with its fans&#8217; desire to voluntarily reward creators — even if it won&#8217;t admit that to itself. The act of physically purchasing PC games is going extinct. More and [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://falkvinge.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/TipJar.jpg" width=655/></p>
<p class="intro"><strong>In today&#8217;s world, everything digital can, and will, be made available free. They&#8217;re non-scarce goods. One industry has reacted to this new reality by sustaining itself with its fans&#8217; desire to voluntarily reward creators — even if it won&#8217;t admit that to itself.</strong></p>
<p>The act of physically purchasing PC games is going extinct. More and more gamers are finding it simpler, easier, and more convenient to download their games without leaving home; sometimes, of course, these downloads come from unofficial sources and aren&#8217;t paid for. <strong>But Valve Software&#8217;s Gabe Newell has famously called piracy a &#8220;non-issue&#8221; for their company. That&#8217;s because they sell all of their games via their Steam platform, which he claims competes with piracy on service.</strong></p>
<p>But in most cases, Steam doesn&#8217;t provide any real advantage over piracy. Nor do any other paid digital distribution platforms or methods. So why, then, do people continue to throw money at them? Is it marketing bullshit about convenience? Fear, uncertainty, and doubt about viruses?</p>
<p>No. PC gamers are a generally savvy group of people. <strong>They&#8217;re probably spending money because they want to.</strong></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://falkvinge.net/?p=9861">Continue reading at Falkvinge on Infopolicy</a></strong></p>
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		<title>Major Breakthrough in Cracking HDCP, the DRM System That Restricts the HDTV You Bought</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/1618/major-breakthrough-in-cracking-hdcp-the-drm-system-that-restricts-the-hdtv-you-bought</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/1618/major-breakthrough-in-cracking-hdcp-the-drm-system-that-restricts-the-hdtv-you-bought#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Sep 2010 00:20:56 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[digital rights manufacturing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hax0rz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[well that sucked]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=1618</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[HDCP, or High-bandwith Digital Content Protection, is a system that degrades the quality of or blocks audio and video from, among other things, Blu-Ray discs being sent to an unlicensed piece of equipment, with the intent of preventing unauthorized copying. In practice, it doesn&#8217;t actually prevent copying at all, and only serves to cripple older [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Dr-HAX-by-KrewL-RaiN.jpg" alt="" title="HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAX!" width="655" height="300" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1622" /><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdcp">HDCP</a>, or High-bandwith Digital Content Protection, is a system that degrades the quality of or blocks audio and video from, among other things, Blu-Ray discs being sent to an unlicensed piece of equipment, with the intent of preventing unauthorized copying. In practice, it <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/the-first-blu-ray-movie-on-bittorrent/">doesn&#8217;t actually prevent copying at all</a>, and only serves to cripple older HDTVs that predate the technology, equipment built by hobbyists and smaller companies without the means to pay the technology&#8217;s licensing fees, Mac and Linux users with Blu-ray drives, or even <a href="http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/18/197212">a PS3 being used in a completely normal fashion</a>. Fortunately, its defeat may be imminent.</p>
<p>An anonymous individual <a href="http://pastebin.com/kqD56TmU">posted the master key for HDCP</a>, the (now former) trade secret on which the system&#8217;s encryption algorithm is based. This master key is what&#8217;s used to generate the vendor keys unique to each model of TV, Blu-ray player, etc., and now that it&#8217;s out in the open, anyone with cryptographic tools can create their own working keys. </p>
<p>Essentially, the system is blown wide open. Permanently. A new master key can be created, but it would be incompatible with all of the HDCP devices currently in existence.</p>
<p>No word yet on exactly how the master key was discovered, but it was probably reverse-engineered; it&#8217;s been known for a while that <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/14/princeton-professor-sez-cracking-hdcp-is-eminently-doable/">one could calculate the master key using less than fifty different vendor keys</a>.</p>
<p>The person who posted the key requested that it be mirrored, so I&#8217;ve decided to do so. Hit the jump if you&#8217;d like to see the HDCP master key.<br />
<span id="more-1618"></span></p>
<div style="overflow:auto; height:400px">
<pre>HDCP MASTER KEY (MIRROR THIS TEXT!)

This is a forty times forty element matrix of fifty-six bit
hexadecimal numbers.

To generate a source key, take a forty-bit number that (in
binary) consists of twenty ones and twenty zeroes; this is
the source KSV.  Add together those twenty rows of the matrix
that correspond to the ones in the KSV (with the lowest bit
in the KSV corresponding to the first row), taking all elements
modulo two to the power of fifty-six; this is the source
private key.

To generate a sink key, do the same, but with the transposed
matrix.

6692d179032205 b4116a96425a7f ecc2ef51af1740 959d3b6d07bce4 fa9f2af29814d9
82592e77a204a8 146a6970e3c4a1 f43a81dc36eff7 568b44f60c79f5 bb606d7fe87dd6
1b91b9b73c68f9 f31c6aeef81de6 9a9cc14469a037 a480bc978970a6 997f729d0a1a39
b3b9accda43860 f9d45a5bf64a1d 180a1013ba5023 42b73df2d33112 851f2c4d21b05e
2901308bbd685c 9fde452d3328f5 4cc518f97414a8 8fca1f7e2a0a14 dc8bdbb12e2378
672f11cedf36c5 f45a2a00da1c1d 5a3e82c124129a 084a707eadd972 cb45c81b64808d
07ebd2779e3e71 9663e2beeee6e5 25078568d83de8 28027d5c0c4e65 ec3f0fc32c7e63
1d6b501ae0f003 f5a8fcecb28092 854349337aa99e 9c669367e08bf1 d9c23474e09f70

3c901d46bada9a 40981ffcfa376f a4b686ca8fb039 63f2ce16b91863 1bade89cc52ca2
4552921af8efd2 fe8ac96a02a6f9 9248b8894b23bd 17535dbff93d56 94bdc32a095df2
cd247c6d30286e d2212f9d8ce80a dc55bdc2a6962c bcabf9b5fcbe6f c2cfc78f5fdafa
80e32223b9feab f1fa23f5b0bf0d ab6bf4b5b698ae d960315753d36f 424701e5a944ed
10f61245ebe788 f57a17fc53a314 00e22e88911d9e 76575e18c7956e c1ef4eee022e38
f5459f177591d9 08748f861098ef 287d2c63bd809e e6a28a6f5d000c 7ae5964a663c1b
0f15f7167f56c6 d6c05b2bbe8800 544a49be026410 d9f3f08602517f 74878dc02827f7
d72ef3ea24b7c8 717c7afc0b55a5 0be2a582516d08 202ded173a5428 9b71e35e45943f

9e7cd2c8789c99 1b590a91f1cffd 903dca7c36d298 52ad58ddcc1861 56dd3acba0d9c5
c76254c1be9ed1 06ecb6ae8ff373 cfcc1afcbc80a4 30eba7ac19308c d6e20ae760c986
c0d1e59db1075f 8933d5d8284b92 9280d9a3faa716 8386984f92bfd6 be56cd7c4bfa59
16593d2aa598a6 d62534326a40ee 0c1f1919936667 acbaf0eefdd395 36dbfdbf9e1439
0bd7c7e683d280 54759e16cfd9ea cac9029104bd51 436d1dca1371d3 ca2f808654cdb2
7d6923e47f97b5 70e256b741910c 7dd466ed5fff2e 26bec4a28e8cc4 5754ea7219d4eb
75270aa4d3cc8d e0ae1d1897b7f4 4fe5663e8cb342 05a80e4a1a950d 66b4eb6ed4c99e
3d7e9d469c6165 81677af04a2e15 ada4be60bc348d dfdfbbad739248 98ad5986f3ca1f

971d02ada31b46 2adab96f7b15da 9855f01b9b7b94 6cef0f65663fbf eb328e8a3c6c5d
e29f0f0b1ef2bf e4a30b29047d31 52250e7ae3a4ac fe3efc3b8c2df1 8c997d15d6078b
49da8b4611ff9f b1e061bc9be995 31fd68c4ad6dc6 fd8974f0c506dd 90421c1cd2b26c
53eec84c91ed17 5159ba3711173b 25e318ddceea6a 98a14125755955 2bb97fd341cea2
3f8404769a0a8e bce5c7a45fb5d4 9608307b43f785 2a98e5856afe75 b4dbead4815cac
d1118af62c964a 3142667a5b0d14 6c6f90933acd3d 6b14a0052e2be4 1b1811fda0f554
12300aa7f10405 1919ca0bff56ea d3e2f3aad5250c 4aeeea5101d2ec 377fc499c07057
6cb1a90cdb7b11 3c839d47a4b814 25c5ac14b5ec28 4ef18646d5b9c2 95a98cc51ebd3b

310e98028e24de 092ffc76b79f44 0740a1ca2d4737 b9f38966257c99 a75afc7454abe4
a6dd815be8ccbf ec2cac2df0c675 41f7636aa4080f 30e87b712520fd d5dfdc6d3266ac
ee28f5479f836f 0bf8ee2112173f 43ae802fa8d52d 4e0dffd36c1eac 3cbda974bb7585
fb60a4700470e3 d9f6b6083ef13d 4a5840f02d0130 6c20ef5e35e2bf dad2f85c745b5b
61c5ddc65d3fc9 7f6ec395d4ae22 2b8906fb3996e2 e4110f59eb92ac 1cb212b44128bb
545afda80a4fd1 b1ffea547eab6b fac3d9166afce8 3fe35fe17586f2 9d082667026a4c
17ffaf1cb50145 24f27b316acfff b6bb758ec4ad60 995e8726359ef7 c44952cb424035
5ec53461dbd248 40a1586f04aee7 49ea3fa4474e52 c13e8f52c51562 30a1a70162cfb8

ccbada27b91c33 33661064d05759 3388bb6315b036 0380a6b43851fb 0228dadb44ad3d
b732565bc37841 993c0d383cfaae 0bea49476758ac accc69dbfcde8b f416ab0474f022
2b7dbcc3002502 20dc4e67289e50 0068424fde9515 64806d59eb0c18 9cf08fb2abc362
8d0ee78a6cace9 b6781bd504d105 af65fab8ee6252 64a8f8dd8e2d14 cb9d3354e06b5b
53082840d3c011 8e080bedab3c4c e30d722a455843 24955a20397c17 82495c1c5114e8
656e71c31d813d 1f0a6d291823a1 6327f9534353fa b89529c2f034fb 70e9b12205c7b3
a06c87969407a2 520bfa2fe80f90 da1efc3d345c65 313936ec023811 a8cc87128be2fa
4cd0e8645ee141 be7975519e2b63 9543d23113c2a8 3d87b0da033f22 df0464c704e9d4

7e1a30947e867e 014ae464b37935 5c4babf689fa4e c4aec0cb01cc35 328c0e4a0230e4
fdacb93b419594 26deefc8a553e6 6e75a2d790cb55 2c4554518f7396 94b77184cb145d
95f883f620a8bb edff42866a2783 7b4ee6304b711d ed56e077a4b9fb c4e60e687ff6c3
0cbf144b8f64d5 023dd10a35eddd beaa3323e999c6 d2e016b31c38c4 8d2917a888f799
18c3abd28e736b 8d38e69b4966cc 624db0143dd2e7 5e2fa510f632b7 ee6e64d45b139a
a1c6d852e74be7 429843b9e6bb7e db9ab07c8dc267 9efa092299f071 dcca9e0e61e960
94406fac95f1d8 d19122f3f88782 1b11a662e9c83f d161fd6fb7f032 89f7d984da9d48
a3583fea45fe58 885e2c4839e254 47e87235f713b1 f4732e05b71aee ae026d063f4349

0a481d2db197af abfce1039d4ac0 4a6b89d2d1aeac 0842eb7178cc53 b82ce2835f1937
3b4002ca21d6b6 e64a78a78abb27 8bd6142ad04526 e035dacb23624a 4cf80110135771
7a52fafc92745e efa28a290ea782 735617cd8b0221 b095e9f4b286a5 021e9ba0727645
3e58e9ec16ed1c d7732bb5ba99a6 374bde43fa89a9 cb83e5ef2e4d04 1da4f73566d134
e01da194625c25 d62018764d7473 64643721313d24 5a01badd970941 481c9578781414
a4d3faa92d1fef bd4b247d37862a 5332a7ca3c2ca6 393ee51989d5a9 01a6e564040d37
390c472ee27892 f0217fe009e9b4 5d3f04da415b35 612ecd5b8e4eac 757e27d2169f2d
92853b737b7526 9ac837c86476df e956c2b45ebd5e d4fa6da687ac39 60f4343669ddd3

64b8d778e72e78 f86cd55efe92b8 a9adbf2e728440 966c8282cee1f9 ea195972b883f4
46ac03b37e7f24 744df253954ae5 22e3f9a0adbc58 6add7c7d8a2961 ba963e4912d17c
2840ac28fcfad9 8d8ec3ad6dfc32 a3c788dd094910 e65ebb61dabb5f b50e906b28c881
003b11eb83e6a9 a2fac0595b138d 3d55a28f915330 c343bd1849a085 54c786629d2b42
1d465cb22ccbc2 d8f87fd52aded1 ecb34f46656b71 b4cbe50f839f2c 2df6a553cc3698
40b2dd25f26d51 492f3c5c6fa566 f80dd453864548 d4be786d8735d9 e364511a0fb62d
3c2df64d6d1c9f f640e4ef4186be 41773025d6ff57 6147e75d7df3f5 49809548639d16
01067ef6034247 4e7c1b20deb154 3f8172a6b98ea0 b0691d4b575801 136a88607a3e5b

0180058ca8742e 972bc2ca1c4cb6 7b05bbc57e63df 5f01049697eaa2 c537f3121384dc
edb1fa0b34f132 689b1374cafe25 802d7bca5c6674 f8e01e75e9eb3d a59c2d9126d85d
f10f603f8c4fd9 d5a358aa84b2d5 f8320f2a3bd078 019bcf0dabb5c3 43dd8dd5e173f0
45169f788a0233 d62daee0e9839c 7d673cf77a53d2 008730faf272d0 3c08080778ae8d
920e40fad87d7e bf118230ffb194 692baf40b951b4 83549affe4e382 68e172f86a40b3
aa5e2c1b74636d c3d7809ac68aae 33c344fd9bcc33 6e6057dc7d71f0 bceef547db57fa
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44ba5fe5078279 e6f8ed790ffa59 e7877e834b4391 d1ca3db32bccd7 b382e35bff1ba1

96cb3b9ef8671e 70342fff9216a5 d635530148dcc6 bf40909f72ba4b e3697761ac11f1
f2a77a5f435c5c a57729bb9aaf37 14f78a30f9bf6f 1a7fe7f0271b01 0b224bc83ef07b
0d409ce2157473 adefa793287d48 a6b13ce8e00a7f 74d735fd54a00b e2dc16285d1b5a
8b3d55371ce703 bb3909153586b6 03c8c622aa53e9 89ee3322e069aa 325ce41fbd0175
2cd1326421cd83 3c47eed2daadda 87c2177de0c63f 39b496d688c971 179359349f5e0e
3cfa9ea9345dbc 47b1948cbfe45f 2a13b18cf3a0d1 00b03fc13e6cde 656ef26757f5d1
7c584630c27fb2 02f2e14ca8a67e fcfec527978154 4ec09910379625 e90fc0a898a5b7
5beb0f3ee5d03a 2383832708cfb7 6905747e27453e 1714e418f0f0a3 53bcdef0965e8d

2c9b5813b90c3c bb9a20c8ebb80e 045e04f3d57918 6fe6ffb0718731 201760abf11c27
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c1eb732268091a e45e0c30cfed36 31d58c384bc3e4 8a26ae8b7a5c60 83991e11e8a21e
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90af78e01d25c9 2e06a8715063da 988dbf792de669 17eabe5b043c41 b1f700946e4ad2

e329ae8a66581e 4a5bda0ff2a313 79577080aaac8c 0dd34f4f929df3 0f5e87f82b9b1f
1ead67333c42d5 ebac8fb8797375 dc26965e625abb 953ce074d8c84c 2edd54991b2104
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611138d0e928dd 24d7958e8e6149 c66faf12b50f45 eaa5eb19337961 e68c81cb35d5d3
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cf95519563f7c7 cef140efdaa431 4f8ddc5fb70009 27710736a485cd 41b05dfead9e7a
dcbf8e83a3a89a 23e46b5a421a08 84f0fb922099a4 120b226eedd549 cf4706582b36f4
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57690ff74579fe e78fb0fe43c6cf b127e3c5c7da88 1765c8883fcd01 dc0028f618172d

07d8f79c0e5b79 bdff41e18ee3b3 0990bd1c710888 b0ef52eb6da5bd b790ff7419e17d
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c26f57abe7c8cd 4d680e55e8a77d feefbd47b284a3 41bc9077e7df69 1c32ea11a0df3c

2ea8501eab0c69 63dff30ea51c9f 8de69a045d957b 4036f90d8e90b7 5886f2e5059e5d
7341e707011eca 8d6006677dabf1 2c6f2040741941 5058a43d3958d2 29eee2b01178b8
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8a3ece83c541b5 659f736aca9076 1c1864cc5b30f1 1b9f901459a142 f5571fc19f94a3
39e842e17176ca ed2a1659a97f8e 625e74d131b3da bdbdfeaa0366bd 95ebf86c33a687
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d66279737bc807 4dd946eb19d81b 4e9c473b5e9846 5a016f7ca86f9d d02c2b7dca744a</pre>
</div>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://plankhead.com/blog/1618/major-breakthrough-in-cracking-hdcp-the-drm-system-that-restricts-the-hdtv-you-bought/feed</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Intellectual Property Law Has Gone Quite Far Enough and Is Now Hereby Null and Void</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/1551/intellectual-property-law-has-gone-quite-far-enough-and-is-now-hereby-null-and-void</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/1551/intellectual-property-law-has-gone-quite-far-enough-and-is-now-hereby-null-and-void#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:32:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[anticapitalist bullshit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[free culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[grab your torrents and pitchforks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ironic short url]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[my stupid ideas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stupid copyright tricks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=1551</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A court has ruled that it is legal to remove works from the public domain and put them back under copyright in the United States. Okay. That&#8217;s it. I can&#8217;t take these ridiculous decisions anymore. I&#8217;ve been thinking this for a long time, but now I&#8217;m just gonna come out and say it: Intellectual property [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/pirateameri.png"><img src="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/pirateameri.png" alt="" title="Jolly Roger of the United States" width="655" height="345" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1553" /></a></p>
<p>A court has ruled that it is <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100621/2320049908.shtml">legal to remove works from the public domain and put them back under copyright</a> in the United States.</p>
<p>Okay. That&#8217;s it. I can&#8217;t take these ridiculous decisions anymore. I&#8217;ve been thinking this for a long time, but now I&#8217;m just gonna come out and say it:</p>
<p><strong>Intellectual property law in the United States no longer serves the public, and until it has been reformed to do so, it is to be ignored.</strong></p>
<p>We the people of the United States of America have the right, and duty, to disregard and oppose these unconstitutional sections of the law. They no longer serves to, as stated in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the Constitution, &#8220;promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.&#8221; The law in its current incarnation actively impedes the Progress of Science and the Arts, and the limited Times are now so lengthy so as to be effectively unlimited. Copyright, patent, and trademark law together not only no longer matches the description in I.8.8, but it in many cases violates the First Amendment.</p>
<p>I believe in the necessity for there to be laws which promote the progress of science and art, and grant the creative persons responsible for such advances the exclusive right to claim a reasonable level of authorial control for a limited time. The former need is not being met by the law at all, and the latter is incidentally met in an unsatisfactory way by the current overarching and easily-abused law. But by upholding the current useful portions of the law, we validate the entirety of it.</p>
<p>As a citizen of the United States, I hereby declare that I do not consent to governance by Intellectual Property law, including, but not limited to, the current laws pertaining to copyrights, patents, and trademarks. I encourage the like-minded people of the United States to join me in affirming our non-consent, and continuing to do so until the law once again serves the public good as outlined in our Constitution.</p>
<p>In regards to my own work, I would appreciate it if the spirit of the Creative Commons licenses I release them under were respected, but please do so out of goodwill, and not out of a false sense of legal obligation to do so.</p>
<p xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:vcard="http://www.w3.org/2001/vcard-rdf/3.0#" style="font-size:9px"><a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" style="text-decoration:none;"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/zero/1.0/80x15.png" border="0" alt="CC0" /></a><br />
To the extent possible under law, <a href="http://plankhead.com" rel="dct:publisher"><span property="dct:title">Zacqary Adam Green</span></a> has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to <span property="dct:title">Intellectual Property Law Has Gone Quite Far Enough and Is Now Hereby Null and Void</span> and the <a href="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/pirateameri.png" rel="dct:title">header image</a> preceding it. This work is published from the <span about="http://plankhead.com" property="vcard:Country" datatype="dct:ISO3166" content="US">United States</span>. Not that any of this matters as of this writing, of course, because copyright is null and void; I&#8217;m just saying this for when one day it&#8217;s valid again.</p>
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		<title>Why a World In Which Movie Piracy Were Legal Would Have No Drawbacks Whatsoever</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/1442/why-a-world-where-movie-piracy-were-legal-would-have-no-drawbacks-whatsoever</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/1442/why-a-world-where-movie-piracy-were-legal-would-have-no-drawbacks-whatsoever#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:22:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[economicry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[infographics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[my stupid ideas]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=1442</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sources: » Ticket Price » Gross]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/piracyinfog2.png"><img src="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/piracyinfog2.png" alt="Why a World In Which Movie Piracy Were Legal Would Have No Drawbacks Whatsoever — Average US movie ticket price: $7.50; Time the decision to pay this price is made: Before the movie; Total US gross of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: $402,111,870; How much money would it have made if the decision to pay $7.50 were made AFTER the movie? See? No drawbacks." title="Why a World In Which Movie Piracy Were Legal Would Have No Drawbacks Whatsoever — Infographic" width="655" height="940" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1452" /></a></p>
<p>Sources:<br />
» <a href="http://www.natoonline.org/statisticstickets.htm">Ticket Price</a><br />
» <a href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=transformers2.htm">Gross</a></p>
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		<slash:comments>4</slash:comments>
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		<title>Indies: Remind Pirates That You Do This For A Living</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/1002/indies-remind-pirates-that-you-do-this-for-a-living</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/1002/indies-remind-pirates-that-you-do-this-for-a-living#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2009 09:09:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellany]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[free culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[paying the rent]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=1002</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve received some skepticism, sometimes based on first-hand accounts, about my theory that pirates will donate to support you if you just ask and make it easy for them. It&#8217;s based on the idea that no, they actually won&#8217;t. This strikes me as unlikely. No pirate, hell, no person has ever publicly stated that they [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://plankhead.com/projects/for-a-living"><img src="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/game-developers-foraliving-300x168.png" alt="Paying for this game allows the developers to eat. Assuming you did, you&#039;re awesome. If you didn&#039;t, please do so by going to [URL}. Thank you." title="Paying for this game allows the developers to eat. Assuming you did, you&#039;re awesome. If you didn&#039;t, please do so by going to [URL}. Thank you." width="300" height="168" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-953" /></a></p>
<p>I&#8217;ve received some skepticism, sometimes based on first-hand accounts, about my theory that pirates will donate to support you if you just ask and make it easy for them. It&#8217;s based on the idea that no, they actually won&#8217;t.</p>
<p>This strikes me as unlikely. No pirate, hell, no person has ever publicly stated that they don&#8217;t believe people who work so hard to entertain us should receive no money in return, and that they&#8217;d certainly give money to an artist they support. I don&#8217;t think this isn&#8217;t happening because all of those people are lying. I think it&#8217;s happening because of a lack of education.</p>
<p>The phenomenon of indie artists putting a big &#8220;donate&#8221; button on their site is a relatively new one. It&#8217;s a reflex for many people to buy a movie from Amazon or buy a game from Steam. Donation is a bit more disjointed and confusing, and not everyone knows where to go. If it was downloaded from The Pirate Bay, there&#8217;s even more disconnect from the creator&#8217;s website. That&#8217;s what my new <a href="http://plankhead.com/projects/for-a-living">For a Living project</a> is looking to remedy.</p>
<p>Go to the <a href="http://plankhead.com/projects/for-a-living">project&#8217;s page</a> to download a graphic that you can place in your movie, game, or other form of visual media. It&#8217;s like an FBI Warning, except not about how stuff is illegal and instead about how food costs money.</p>
<p>I&#8217;m not sure how the same could be applied to music. Podcasts have audible credits and copyright information, so it&#8217;s an easy translation. For a music album, doing this on every song would get annoying. Fortunately, a lot of other factors are making it much easier for indie musicians to benefit from file-sharing, so there&#8217;s not a lot to worry about.</p>
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		<title>The Indie Paradox: Paying Rent Without Depending On Corporations</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/920/the-indie-paradox-paying-rent-without-depending-on-corporations</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/920/the-indie-paradox-paying-rent-without-depending-on-corporations#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2009 00:29:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[digital rights manufacturing]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[free culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[indie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[my stupid ideas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[paying the rent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the intertubes]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=920</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Piracy happens for two reasons: people don&#8217;t have a lot of money, and 90% of everything is crap (or DRM&#8217;d, but that makes it crap). Therefore, by getting everything free, you won&#8217;t lose any of your hard-earned cash on that 90%. Unfortunately, because no money is going to the creators of the other 10%, they [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=617lGZjYyNo"><img src="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/ifyni1.jpg" alt="If you&#039;re not indie..." title="If you&#039;re not indie..." width="375" height="226" class="alignright size-full wp-image-935" /></a>Piracy happens for two reasons: people don&#8217;t have a lot of money, and 90% of everything is crap (or DRM&#8217;d, but that makes it crap). Therefore, by getting everything free, you won&#8217;t lose any of your hard-earned cash on that 90%. Unfortunately, because no money is going to the creators of the other 10%, they won&#8217;t continue making things for everyone to download free.</p>
<p>Large corporations have come up with a solution: go into the manufacturing business. They are now Digital Rights Manufacturing companies, creating new rights for themselves using a revolutionary new process known as &#8220;fellating lawmakers&#8221;. Their revenue stream comes from licensing these digital rights at high prices, and suing people who don&#8217;t pay. But it&#8217;s too expensive for indie artists and creators, and it doesn&#8217;t win you any friends.</p>
<p>Because of this situation, indie game developers are <a href="http://kotaku.com/5264139/indie-devs-turn-to-in+game-ads-after-piracy-strike">doing horrible things like experimenting with in-game advertising</a>. I&#8217;m not saying this as a knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of annoying ads bombarding us. I&#8217;m saying this as a knee-jerk reaction to the horrors of depending on the advertising industry for revenue.</p>
<p>Think about it: TV series with devoted fanbases are <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefly_(TV series)">cancelled because they don&#8217;t make enough ad revenue</a>. Millions of websites depending on Google AdSense would go broke if their accounts were inexplicably terminated (I&#8217;ve read about this happening before but can&#8217;t find a link detailing it. Maybe I&#8217;m typing the wrong words into Goo&#8230;gle&#8230;wait a minute). And remember when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Gerstmann#Termination_from_GameSpot">GameSpot fired Jeff Gertsmann when their advertisers didn&#8217;t like his reviews</a>? For people who call themselves indie, it&#8217;s not very indie-pendent.</p>
<p>The best way to be indie in any medium, be it game development, filmmaking, music, writing&#8230;hell, even running a business in general, the only party you should be depending on is individual people. Some may know them as &#8220;customers&#8221;, or &#8220;users&#8221; who &#8220;generate content&#8221; on your &#8220;social media application&#8221;, but let&#8217;s avoid such corporate-speak, as it makes baby Jesus cry and is killing America. But there&#8217;s still the problem of how exactly to make money on individual people anymore. In a world where art is hard work and people don&#8217;t seem to want to pay for it, one man will stand up to explain his opinion. That man is me. Reread the previous two sentences in a movie trailer guy voice, then click the jump-cut-continue-reading thingy:<br />
<span id="more-920"></span><br />
The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. Part of the admission process is defining what exactly the problem is, so let&#8217;s do that now:</p>
<ul>
<li>Indie creators need money</li>
<li>People seem to prefer downloading stuff for free</li>
<li>If your money comes from ads, you are a slave to the advertisers</li>
</ul>
<p>Video games are seemingly the easiest medium to solve this for, but the proposed solutions only work for specific cases. I thought about the approach brought up by <a href="http://www.dimerocker.com/">Dimerocker</a> (as of writing, their site consists entirely of an unmutable coming-soon video with bad techno music, so don&#8217;t click) near the end of the <a href="http://kotaku.com/5264139/indie-devs-turn-to-in+game-ads-after-piracy-strike">Kotaku piece</a>. Asia has dealt with this problem, and the most popular games there are free-to-play with premium components which you can get for micropayments. Piracy is impossible because the games have to be played on the web. This is great for MMO, arcade, and proceduralist games. Unfortunately, this doesn&#8217;t work very well for games disinterested in replay value. Some narrative or art games are meant to be played once, and would not benefit from premium items or costumes or levels. For the same reason, this is no way to make a profit from movies.</p>
<p>But a video game business model which could potentially work for other mediums is a revival of the traditional arcade. Imagine a game in which you could play the first level, and every level after that cost 25 cents. It would be browser-based, or otherwise require an Internet connection, and every level you purchase is accessible to you forever. You can save your game, stop playing, pick it up later as normal, and only pay more when you progress to a new &#8220;chapter.&#8221; This could be applied to movies and books as well, allowing you to pay by the chapter (in the novel or DVD sense) after getting an initial, free teaser.</p>
<p>Anyone reading this is free to try that out, and I hope it works for you, but I still see problems. Presumably a large service would offer this, so what if such a service were to go offline, temporarily or permanently? Not only would that anger customers, whose purchased movies, books, and games are now inaccessible, but creators, who were dependant on the service for their money. Also, the service would be free to pull any &#8220;objectionable content,&#8221; which would happen willy-nilly if the history of YouTube and Apple are considered. It&#8217;s a combination of <a href="http://boingboing.net/2008/09/26/walmart-shutting-dow.html">DRM server scares</a> and not actually being indie which still doesn&#8217;t sit well with me.</p>
<p>Perhaps it would work if everyone assembled such a service themselves. Host files on Amazon S3, take PayPal (or some other, more micropayment-focused service), and you&#8217;re done. You&#8217;re depending on corporations for the infrastructure, but they&#8217;re basically <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_pipe">dumb pipes</a>. They won&#8217;t shut you down if you&#8217;re controversial, and if they go bankrupt, switch to someone else. </p>
<p>Alternatively, for the convenience of people without credit cards or living in countries with taxes or tariffs that cause problems, make payment optional. Very few forms of media can be experienced on the Internet without downloading anything, and technologies allowing you to record music or movies from your screen and speakers prove that people want options. Right now, game developers have a free ride; while it&#8217;s possible to hear the same song or see the same movie on your iPod as opposed to your computer, Grand Theft Auto IV probably wouldn&#8217;t work all that well (it doesn&#8217;t work all that well on PCs in the first place, but I digress). This will change. But because of this desire for options, things need to be downloadable in an open format recognized by whatever Personal Media Device or Mobile Entertainment Console or MPπ player happens to exist. Therefore, piracy will occur, so you need to not depend on people paying for easily redistributable stuff. Make them pay for your continued ability to do work. I don&#8217;t have an easy, surefire answer about how to do this, other than that you should make donations easy, flexible, and conspicuous. Allow people to pay whatever they want, and some might pay $5000. If not, at least the 100,000 people who downloaded it from Pirate Bay will pay a dollar. With enough experimentation and loud screaming about this business model, the general public will get used to it, and it will be completely normal.</p>
<p>Either way, all that&#8217;s left is getting the word out. But with the ubiquity of Facebook, Twitter, IMing, and the age-old practice of human beings ejaculating the word-language from their face-mouths, anything with a compelling, free teaser and a low-to-no price of entry to its awesomeness will sell itself. Such a system will work very well for the 10% of people who make stuff that isn&#8217;t crap. </p>
<p>The other 90% may be out of luck. I&#8217;ve been thinking for about a half hour how to follow up that statement, originally believing that&#8217;s not a good thing. After all, lots of great ideas fail miserably the first time they&#8217;re attempted. But then I realized that that 99% of crap is mediocre, derivative, and boring, failing to add anything new to the world. A decreased chance for mediocrity to achieve anything for a creator is actually a pretty awesome thing. People who genuinely have passion for what they do will improve themselves and come back strong, while idiots jumping on the bandwagon will move on to find something they&#8217;re actually good at. To some degree, the world works that way already.</p>
<p>So the best thing for an indie artist, musician, filmmaker, game developer, or writer to do in this day and age is twofold: Don&#8217;t suck at what you do, and make it easy for people to realize that.</p>
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		<title>Blue Gold: Terrifyingly Inspiring</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/914/blue-gold-terrifyingly-inspiring</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/914/blue-gold-terrifyingly-inspiring#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2009 07:46:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[documentaries]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecogreenery]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[movie reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=914</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[What better way to segue out of my recent torrent (pun very much intended) of anti-copyright, free culture hippie posts than to talk about an excellent documentary which I&#8217;d never have seen if it weren&#8217;t for the horrible, illegal practice of pirating movies on the high seas Internet? Blue Gold is a film I heard [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>What better way to segue out of my recent torrent (pun very much intended) of anti-copyright, free culture hippie posts than to talk about an excellent documentary which I&#8217;d never have seen if it weren&#8217;t for the horrible, illegal practice of pirating movies on the <del>high seas</del> Internet? <a href="http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com/">Blue Gold</a> is a film I heard about when <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/documentary-filmmaker-supports-bittorrent-uploader-090514/">TorrentFreak reported</a> the fact that the director was embracing the piracy of the movie, happy that more people would see the movie, and can they please donate. That&#8217;s not what the movie&#8217;s about, though. It&#8217;s about how the dwindling water supply on Earth could make us slaves to corporations if we don&#8217;t do something about it. Have a look at the trailer:</p>
<p><object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ikb4WG8UJRw&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1&#038;rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Ikb4WG8UJRw&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1&#038;rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object></p>
<p>The film is excellent, showing why the water&#8217;s disappearing, why it could kill us all, how governments and corporations (the line is blurry) are exploiting it, and how we can fix this whole fiasco. It proposes &#8220;the blue alternative,&#8221; which is a bunch of simple ideas that can be used to help rainwater get back into the ground and heal the disrupted natural cycle, among other things. I guess now we have to go blue as well as green. Can&#8217;t we just simplify it and go turquoise?</p>
<p>Colorful buzzwords aside, everyone should see this movie. It&#8217;s available free on <a href="http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4885564/Blue_Gold___World_Water_Wars_-_LIMITED_-_DVDRip_-_GCJM">The Pirate Bay</a>, and you can <a href="http://www.bluegold-worldwaterwars.com/">buy the DVD or donate from the official site</a>.</p>
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		<title>If You Like Stealing Music, You&#8217;ll LOVE Burger King&#8217;s Cheeseburger Deals!</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/890/if-you-like-stealing-music-youll-love-burger-kings-cheeseburger-deals</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/890/if-you-like-stealing-music-youll-love-burger-kings-cheeseburger-deals#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 09 May 2009 19:26:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[advertising]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lolwut]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=890</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[TorrentFreak has told its friends about Burger King&#8217;s new King Deals. So cheap, and so tasty. Oh, also, their ad makes no sense. Apparently, Burger King is like downloading music from the Internet, only legal. Check out the original post for the original ad. In the meantime, I&#8217;ll show you my improvements to it:]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://torrentfreak.com/burger-king-says-cheeseburgers-better-than-music-piracy-090509/">TorrentFreak has told its friends</a> about Burger King&#8217;s new King Deals. So cheap, and so tasty. Oh, also, their ad makes no sense. Apparently, Burger King is like downloading music from the Internet, only legal.</p>
<p>Check out the <a href="http://torrentfreak.com/burger-king-says-cheeseburgers-better-than-music-piracy-090509/">original post</a> for the original ad. In the meantime, I&#8217;ll show you my improvements to it:</p>
<p><a href="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/bklongwinded.jpg"><img src="http://plankhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/bklongwinded.jpg" alt="Like downloading music from the Internet, only legal, and it&#039;s food, and not much like downloading music at all, but we digress," title="Like downloading music from the Internet, only legal, and it&#039;s food, and not much like downloading music at all, but we digress," width="351" height="650" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-891" /></a></p>
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		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
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		<title>Update: Pirate Bay Lawyer Wants A Retrial</title>
		<link>http://plankhead.com/blog/842/update-pirate-bay-lawyer-wants-a-retrial</link>
		<comments>http://plankhead.com/blog/842/update-pirate-bay-lawyer-wants-a-retrial#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:14:47 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Zacqary Adam Green</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Commentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[arrrrr]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[grab your torrents and pitchforks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[news]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stupid copyright tricks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://plankhead.com/?p=842</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Time to clarify my last post, as the news has surfaced in English from The Local, whose slogan is &#8220;Sweden&#8217;s news in English.&#8221; Convenient, no? &#8220;A lawyer representing one of the men convicted in the Pirate Bay trial has called for a retrial after reports that the judge was a member of the same copyright [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Time to clarify my <a href="http://plankhead.com/blog/835/the-pirate-bay-trial-judge-in-league-with-plaintiffs">last post</a>, as the news has <a href="http://www.thelocal.se/19028.html">surfaced in English</a> from <a href="http://thelocal.se">The Local</a>, whose slogan is &#8220;Sweden&#8217;s news in English.&#8221; Convenient, no?</p>
<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;A lawyer representing one of the men convicted in the Pirate Bay trial has called for a retrial after reports that the judge was a member of the same copyright protection organisations as several of the main entertainment industry representatives.<br />
[...]<br />
One of the groups of which [Judge] Norström is a signed up member is Svenska föreningen för upphovsrätt (&#8216;the Swedish Copyright Association&#8217;), where he is joined by Henrik Pontén, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted, all of whom represented the entertainment industry in the case against file sharing site The Pirate Bay.</p>
<p>The judge also sits on the board of Svenska föreningen för industriellt rättsskydd (Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property), a group actively advocating for more stringent copyright laws.</p>
<p>Norström argues that he was not however swayed in his judgement by involvement with copyright protection groups.&#8221;</em></p></blockquote>
<p>Of course <em>you</em> don&#8217;t think you have a conflict of interest, Norström. You&#8217;re a member of the scumbag lobby, so you have to stay in character. It&#8217;s rather disgusting how the &#8220;good guys&#8221; upholding the &#8220;law&#8221; are resorting to political corruption. Granted, Norström did dismiss a lot of the charges based on lack of evidence, but that just amounts to covering his ass.</p>
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