Category: Piracy

Why is Singapore a Hub of Online Piracy?

Historically, one thinks of piracy and Singapore in the context of the high seas — both in legend and in reality.  Geography shapes history, and the the Malacca Strait has always been a valuable sea line of communication, thus good hunting ground for centuries of armed robbers right up to the present.  And although the various regimes in Singapore have a long history of dealing with piracy in the traditional sense, the current government appears to have a new problem on its hands with piracy in the online media sense.  The small, relatively affluent city-state of 5.5 million people ranks the worst out of 15 Asia-Pacific countries in per capita infringement according to research by MarkMonitor, a division of Thompson-Reuters.  Additionally, a handful of articles appeared recently citing research done by Asia-Pacific firms Sycamore and InsightAsia indicating that 70% of 16-24 year-olds are chronic users of pirate sites. This is consistent with the study released last September by London-based NetNames, demonstrating that Asia leads Europe and the U.S. for explicit use of pirate sites, with those three regions accounting for over 90% of of pirate traffic worldwide.  In my podcast interview with the author of that study, Dr. David Price did affirm that wider availability of legal, broadband-based services likely accounts for the U.S. being in third place, but his study also shows that pirate traffic continued to increase in all three regions concurrent with the expansion of legal alternatives.

The Sycamore/InsightAsia study also provides some interesting data regarding Singaporean attitudes toward piracy, revealing a willingness among those polled to examine their own behaviors — an awareness we don’t always see in the American market — that reminds one to try to understand each culture and market on its own terms rather than view data through our provincial lenses.  66% of those polled believe that their own use of pirate sites is form of theft, and 85% responded that the reason they access media through pirate sites is “Because it’s free.”  Other responses suggest an interesting contrast to many Americans’ more militant attitudes that media piracy represents some sort of civil right, despite the fact that Americans have affordable access to everything.  Singaporeans, who have have far less ready access to media, seemed to respond to the hypothetical loss of pirate sites with something of a shrug.  Those polled tended to say that if XYZ site were gone or blocked, that they’d probably move to the next, cheapest alternative.  The fact that Singaporeans didn’t raise ideological objections might partly be explained by the fact that civil rights in Singapore are not what they are in the United States, but I think there are more shades of gray here that actually make Singapore an interesting case study to watch.

I did some work-for-hire filming in Singapore in 2007, and I chatted with my friend over there who works in filmed entertainment production about some of these issues.  Granted, it’s one woman’s view from the ground, but I found her comments insightful.  For one thing, it seems we can understand the Singapore market in three broad demographics that each consume media very differently, keeping in mind that nearly 75% of the population is ethnic Chinese, descendant of immigrants who came to work for the colonial British.  The official language of Singapore is English, and school is modeled on a British system, although native English speaking is a post-independence (1963) phenomenon, which is why many people over 60, like my friend’s father, speak only Chinese and generally watch Chinese television programs.

At the other end of the market are those teens to early twenties, who are voracious users of pirate sites and are presently most interested in music and filmed entertainment coming out of Japan and Korea.  This demographic represents the hungriest consumers of media in Singapore for the same reason it does everywhere else — the young have more free time.  While iTunes is available in Singapore, broadband services akin to Netflix for filmed entertainment are not legally available, making DVD purchase the primary legal means to watch films and programs on demand.  Youth being youth, they want to consume high volumes at a high rate and feel they can’t afford enough DVD consumption.

In the middle demographic (late 20s to about 60), we find people with jobs and responsibilities and who have a broad range of media tastes, including US and UK productions.  This group buys CDs and DVDs, but they will also use pirate sites to sample programming before purchase. From this anecdotal evidence, we can predict the technorati to assert that Singapore’s piracy problem is one Neflix-type enterprise away from a solution, and while this would probably have a mitigating effect, it’s not necessarily as simple as that.

For one thing, delivering a rich library of on-demand, digital video into a particular country is complicated by trade arrangements between the producing and consuming nations, licensing agreements written into contracts before films and TV shows are even produced, and the socio-political nature of the consuming nation. With Singapore’s present piracy numbers, investors would likely write off the market as a legitimate importer/exporter of entertainment media.  This is one of the obstacles tech-utopians tend to overlook in every market when they write oversimple editorials about “switching models” to technological solutions, as though installing an app is all that’s required.  In order for their to be actual trade involved, someone has to invest considerable resources to navigate the financial, legal, and cultural seas, as it were; but if the piracy numbers are too high, that’s what will prevent a quality, Netflix-like model from manifesting in a market like Singapore.

Moreover, Singapore’s piracy trend risks cannibalizing their own burgeoning filmed-entertainment industry.  For a small nation, they produce an impressive amount of cinema and television programming out of a couple of fairly big studios and several modest production houses. It has also recently become home to satellite facilities for some major animation and effects studios like Lucasfilm and Double Negative. With the growth of this industry, it is not unreasonable to think that some of today’s teenage K-Pop fans are going to want to be tomorrow’s film and TV producers; and a message that says “Don’t pirate away your own future” may actually resonate with young Singaporeans.

It would be a shame if investors did abandon the region as a legitimate market, particularly because Singapore could become a pivotal location for media production and commerce in Asia-Pacific, just as it is a financial services hub and presides over one of the busiest shipping ports in the world.  Additionally, I think it might be interesting to watch how those 16-24 year-olds emerge as a creative class, considering they’re still part of the first generation of natives born to an independent Singapore.  Thus, they are at the early stages of defining what it means to be Singaporean, which might explain why my friend describes a love/hate relationship with China.  As that culture evolves, it will be reflected in the films and TV Singaporeans will produce, thus opening the proverbial sea lines of communication for fair trade in media will be essential to foster that expression in a manner that’s sustainable.

Digital Citizens Alliance Report – Crime Pays

For anyone who has yet to catch on to the idea that digital media piracy is in no way sticking it to the man, perhaps the simplicity in the graphics and data on this link will help.  Based on a recent study sponsored by the Digital Citizens Alliance, the top 30 P2P and BitTorrent sites that derive revenue solely from advertising make over $4 million per year.  Much of that revenue is coming from major brand advertisers, most of which end up on these sites haphazardly through low-end media buys. I’ve already written a longer post rejecting the notion that supporting or engaging in piracy is some sort of anti-establishment, anti-corporate choice; and I see no reason to repeat all that here.  In fact, other than fending off tedious, juvenile rationalizations, there really is no argument to be had about piracy.  Supporting the activity is taking revenue from people who make something the consumer wants and giving money to people who make…nothing.

The Digital Citizens Alliance is calling on major advertisers to work with media buyers to keep their brand ads off sites that hijack creative works. It should be noted that most brand managers do not actively seek to advertise on pirate sites where their brands often appear next to low-class ads for bogus foreign dating services and banners linking to malware.  As such, the DCA is arguing that both the media producers and the advertisers are having their value hijacked and have a mutual interest in addressing the problem.

Kim Dotcom on “60 Minutes.” Meh.

Getty Images.
Getty Images.

Last night, CBS news magazine 60 Minutes aired a segment featuring the flamboyant internet pirate Kim Dotcom (Kim Schmitz), whose Megaupload cyberlocker site was taken down in early 2012 after a dramatic raid on his luxury compound in New Zealand.  Charged with contributing to, inciting, and profiting from mass copyright infringement as well as related charges of racketeering and money laundering, Dotcom, a German, remains under mansion arrest in his adopted country hoping to avoid extradition to the United States, where he would stand trial.

If you only understood half of what I just said, (e.g. what’s a cyberlocker?), you’re not alone. Not only do I believe relatively few Americans have ever heard of Kim Dotcom or necessarily know what he did, it’s likely that an even smaller set of those who have heard of the man are at this moment particularly concerned about his fate — this despite Kim’s efforts to cast himself in the role of Robin Hood to the MPAA’s Sheriff of Nottingham.    Fortunately, this particular message isn’t really flying with just about anybody other than those one might call internet extremists, and I was pleased that CBS’s Bob Simon did not provide Dotcom a soapbox for his bogus ideological prattling.  That said, that’s about as much credit I can give to the segment, which was a bit of a puff piece, to be honest.

While Simon did push back at Dotcom for his claims to be “just a businessman,” he did let slide the oft-repeated argument Kim has made that it’s not his responsibility who uploads what to his site.  For one thing, Simon might have pointed to the fact that the charges against him include incitement to promote mass infringement by offering Megaupload users money and other forms of compensation specifically for uploading highly-popular filmed entertainment and music.  Even if this weren’t true, though, Dotcom is effectively asking people to believe he was siting there in New Zealand just minding his own business thinking (read with German accent), “I haff no idea ver zees millions of dollars are coming from! Please tell somebody ziss is not my fault!  I do not mean to be making all ziss money!”  Yeah, but really, that’s what he’s saying, and Bob Simon could have jabbed a little harder at the assertion that Dotcom didn’t know what he was doing.

Instead, the segment did include just enough time touring Kim Dotcom’s luxury compound that CBS can probably share the footage with MTV for a Cribs episode (is that still on?). I get why having Schmitz on the show might have attracted eyeballs, but overall the journalism felt mailed in, particularly in light of the fact that the 60 Minutes demographic probably skews toward an audience that doesn’t really know much about the issue of piracy or how it works. Simon didn’t do much in the way of providing context for the viewer or explain the nature of the charges against Dotcom.  Even the segment title “Hollywood’s Villain” is a bit glib and careless, considering the issue of internet piracy goes well beyond a feud between a couple of movie studios and one man.  In fact, one might have thought Dotcom suggested the title himself since his latest spiel is that Hollywood and the USDOJ  singled him out just because his lavish, super-villain-like persona make him such an “attractive target.”  Granted, as my friend said, “He’s like Auric Goldfinger without the class,” but I don’t think anyone sane believes for a moment that’s why he’s under indictment. Thus, even the few minutes in the segment devoted to examining this proposition, while entertaining, was a waste of time that could have been spent addressing some of the facts in the case.

There are interesting people in the world doing some extraordinary things with technology, some who even propose to address numerous challenges faced by millions just in their daily struggle to survive.  Against this backdrop, 60 Minutes has to work a little harder to make a guy seem interesting because he got rich by enabling already-privileged kids to watch Transformers: Dark of the Moon for free.