Well, that didn’t work.
Why didn’t it work? Well, I’ve outlined a few reasons here already. I’ll repeat a few key ones:
- “Look, we’re on BitTorrent and use Creative Commons!” is not a valid promotional strategy. Pioneer One beat us to the punch with the TV-on-BitTorrent thing. Everyone else is doing Creative Commons. It’s not newsworthy anymore. Techdirt will not write about your radical new business model until you become wildly successful with it.
- The Kickstarter time limit does not help your fundraiser go viral. The desperate motive for backers to tell all their friends to pledge money RIGHT NOW seems to be overhyped. It’s an angle you can use in your own promotion efforts, but it doesn’t magically get everyone to tell their friends. Furthermore, sometimes an opportunity for fundraising arises after the time limit ends — for example, we’ll be screening YFIAS at the NYC Anarchist Film Festival (don’t worry, “anarchist” is just a scarier term for “left-libertarian”; no Molotovs will be thrown), but that’s not till the second week of April.
- The Internet is not the best place to promote an unknown thing that runs more than 10 minutes. Overwhelmingly, the most support came from people I’d spoken to or met away from keyboard. If you have little to no reputation, you need to start offline.
Let me expand on that last point, that the Internet is not the best place to promote an unknown thing which runs more than 10 minutes. Having thought more about that, I’ve realized that’s not necessarily true. It was just true for Your Face is a Saxophone. You know why?
Because I really, really, really botched the first three minutes of the pilot.
Case in point, Adapa said on the YFIAS Suprbay thread:
I also didn’t get past the opening credits. I meant to go back and watch the rest but…time is short and, like most people, there are lots of other things competing for my attention…so I never did get around to it.
So if the opening (of any future project) is weak you would be better off pulling it (with the hope of improving it and resubmitting later even at the risk of that not happening) rather than pushing ahead. You generally only get one shot at people’s attention.
Anecdotally, I heard this from a lot of other people. Statistically, here’s what YouTube Hot Spots had to say:
Low points on the graph mean that a lot of people stopped watching the video at that point, compared to videos of a similar length. In that first part of the graph, it’s really, really low.
The opening scene was the weakest in the entire episode. That made me feel terrible putting it out, but I just wanted to put it out already. Future episodes, however, will absolutely, positively, open on a high note.
Oh, yes, there will be future episodes.
Production on Your Face is a Saxophone will still continue this summer. Just because we couldn’t secure as much money as we’d hoped to by now doesn’t mean we’re not doing this. Maybe we won’t finish till late next year, and maybe we’ll have to put it together with duct tape and string, but dammit, world, your face will be a god damn saxophone, whether you can spare nine-thousand measly dollars or not.
Now, if you can spare some money, we’re still taking donations. Details are on YFIAS.com under the Support our Fundraiser section. We’re still offering sweet rewards based on how much you donate, like a DVD of the finished season, T-shirts, all that stuff.
I’ll also look into getting grants or something like that. I don’t know. I’ll figure out something.
It’s one in the morning and this post isn’t as coherent as I’d hoped it would be.
Major Breakthrough in Cracking HDCP, the DRM System That Restricts the HDTV You Bought
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’t actually prevent copying at all, 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’s licensing fees, Mac and Linux users with Blu-ray drives, or even a PS3 being used in a completely normal fashion. Fortunately, its defeat may be imminent.
An anonymous individual posted the master key for HDCP, the (now former) trade secret on which the system’s encryption algorithm is based. This master key is what’s used to generate the vendor keys unique to each model of TV, Blu-ray player, etc., and now that it’s out in the open, anyone with cryptographic tools can create their own working keys.
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.
No word yet on exactly how the master key was discovered, but it was probably reverse-engineered; it’s been known for a while that one could calculate the master key using less than fifty different vendor keys.
The person who posted the key requested that it be mirrored, so I’ve decided to do so. Hit the jump if you’d like to see the HDCP master key.
Continue reading ‘Major Breakthrough in Cracking HDCP, the DRM System That Restricts the HDTV You Bought’