Louis C.K. sells DRM-free comedy special, profits handsomely

I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have #(&!loads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again.
Comedian Louis C.K. • Expressing pleasure at the success of his self-produced comedy special, “Live at the Beacon Theater.” The comic, currently on an upswing as a result of his hit FX comedy “Louie,” did something fairly novel with the release model for the special — he threw it online himself, charged $5 for streaming or a digital download, passed on the DRM, and made a point of asking nicely for people not to throw the video on torrent sites. (Some did, but they were roundly criticized by their Pirate Bay peers.) The result of Louis C.K.’s move? In just its first couple of days on sale, it sold 110,000 copies, leading to $500,000 in sales and $200,000 in pure profit. He puts it like such: “This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video.” Which means, guys, that Louis C.K. is a genius apparently. source

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Apple, Lala and Wal-Mart are culprits. Does the record industry have sights on putting the cat back n the bag? Despite the lack of digital rights management in nearly all of the online music stores, some embed your name in the file, something which could lead to backdoor digital rights management down the line – especially if cloud-based services like Lala (which we otherwise love) take off. Will the labels ever learn? And why are Apple, Wal-Mart and Lala enablers? source

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All DRM has ever done is annoy consumers who actually paid for their music. No single piece of DRM has ever stopped anyone from pirating music, it’s quite the opposite as the music industry now realizes.
TorrentFreak’s Ernesto • Discussing the demise of the Recording Industry Association of America’s reliance on digital rights management to protect its content. In recent months, the music industry group has abandoned the approach: In an upcoming issue of SCMagazine, chief spokesperson Jonathan Lamy says, “DRM is dead, isn’t it?” That sounds pretty definitive to us. • source

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A poor blogger found out the hard way. Dan Cohen of GearDiary found out the other day that some books he downloaded for his Kindle/iPhone had a limit to how many times they could be downloaded and on how many times they could be shared. Worse, it seemed this number was arbitrary and was, until now, not communicated to customers. After talking to a number of Amazon customer service reps, he confirmed it was set by publishers, though it was very confusing to get to that point. Granted, Cohen posts on a site that checks out tons of devices, so it’s possible that his case is extraordinary, but why is it even there in the first place? source

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The Sims 3? No DRM. Just a serial code. Back in the dark ages of last year, this hotly anticipated game called “Spore” came out. Somehow, it managed to get completely overshadowed by its digital rights management scheme, which was particularly invasive and seemed to take ownership away from fans. Well, Electronic Arts has apparently learned its lesson; “The Sims 3,” out later this year, will not use any DRM at all beyond a serial code. Someone got burned. source

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See that little chip? It’s necessary to to control the new device. Which means your old headphones won’t work at all. source

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What their deal was Ruckus was a product of a much simpler time, when the RIAA was suing college students left and right, and the music industry needed to provide an alternative to Limewire. Ruckus, with its Windows-only software and DRM-heavy music collection, was the answer to a question few wanted answered.
The end of Ruckus Ruckus was acquired last year by TotalMusic, a music-industry-owned company that attempted to be the driving force behind the failed Facebook Music initiative. TotalMusic is kind of not doing so hot, though they just launched a streaming music site. As for Ruckus, it shut down without warning on Friday night.
What about my tunes?Did you download some DRM-addled tunes from Ruckus? Well, you’re in luck. You can continue to listen to your music until it phones back home to the DRM server, which died along with Ruckus. That should happen in the next couple of weeks. Aren’t you glad that digital rights management exists? source

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14 Dec 2011 10:23