Archive for February, 2012
I’m Creating a Google Calendar Notifier for Your Desktop.
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You might remember that I created a Google Calendar notifier in C# a while ago. I didn’t really have the time to give it the attention it deserved at the time. I had a grasp of what object-oriented programming was, but my coding practices then were… iffy. Needless to say the program was never released to the public.
I’ve long wanted to redo the project in C++ with help from the Qt GUI toolkit. I’ve officially started work a few days ago. With previous OOP projects in C++ under my belt, I’ve developed a better feel for how to write clean and maintainable code so I want to move forward with this plan before my bachelor thesis and Software Engineering project are in full swing.
But wait, there’s more! For the first time ever, I’m opening up my source code for everyone else to see and built upon. Check it out at GitHub over here.
Spotify is Eliminating Music Piracy. Let’s Do the Same for TV Shows.
0Spotify and several other streaming music services finally arrived in Belgium a few months back. While I have some concerns over their impact on MP3 sales and their alleged unequal treatment of indie artists, there bring a major benefit to the industry I haven’t highlighted yet. They reduce piracy.
How the music industry slowly entered the digital age
Back in the day when Napster reigned free, downloading music illegally was the only way to instantly get access to just about any song that has ever been played on the radio. While morally wrong, people still used it. It was easy and convenient. More so than a trip to the record store. And even then, record stores only had a fraction of Napster’s selection in stock. The technology was there, but the record companies weren’t willing to participate.
Then legal WMA-powered music stores started to crop up online. They were a hassle to deal with and enforced user-unfriendly policies. You could not transfer your music collection to another computer. If you had to reinstall Windows for some reason, you were screwed. Those measures didn’t prevent piracy either. It only made the legal downloading experience a pain.
Eventually the industry got the message and allowed online stores to switch to the unrestricted MP3 format. You know what’s awesome about iTunes? I can look up any song, click a button to buy it and it transfers right into my library. The song information is always accurate and the accompanying album art has a decent resolution. And as of a few months ago, I can redownload past purchases as well. It’s easy and convenient. But it still isn’t free like illegal music.
You can compete with free!?
Most people will do the right thing and buy music they love if you make the process easy and convenient. But there are songs out there that I might want to listen to, but I’d never buy them. And some people refuse digital music for the simple reason that they can get it for free illegally. Can we still monetize these groups?
This is where streaming services like Spotify and YouTube come in. Anyone can listen to any song they want and have advertisers pay for it. It’s easy, convenient and free. I bet it’s not a huge money maker, but since it monetizes people who don’t buy music it’s basically a new revenue stream. Why would you even bother searching for a shady-looking site that has the song if it’s all right there, for free? Letting people stream music for free, supported by ads, is the most effective and crowd-pleasing incentive ever to turn pirates into paying customers.
It looks like the music industry finally caught up with the digital way of doing this. The effects of streaming services on piracy will not be evident immediately. That said, I can see that legal alternatives are finally maturing. Most of the reasons why someone might choose to illegally download music no longer hold. With piracy becoming less of a problem, the music industry can stop trying to break the internet with terribly written anti-piracy legislation and focus on putting out innovative records again.
Can we apply this model to movies and TV already?
But let’s not stop there. Movie and TV piracy is still a problem. Whenever a new episode of The Big Bang Theory airs in the US, people all over the world pirate it. Why? Because they can. Piracy can’t be stopped with rules and legislation. Shut down one Megavideo and two clones rise. Enforce DNS blocks and people change their DNS server. As soon as a program has been aired, people will be able to pirate it. The only way to eradicate piracy is through legal alternatives.
"But Pieter, we can’t sell these shows to international channels if we open the floodgates and let people watch our stuff online as it comes out!" Yes, you’re right. It’s a dying business model based on geographical limitations that is no longer sustainable.
The internet is a global network, so regional restrictions cannot be enforced. You can geoblock Hulu and Netflix if you want, but if you don’t provide a legal alternative to piracy, people will pirate your stuff.
Here’s hoping you take the lessons we’ve learned from the music industry and get over your privacy problem already.