My friend Michelle, the most famous blogger in Quebec, recently re-opened the Pandora box (text in French) about content piracy. Her case is simple: as an avid Lost fan, she simply has no legal means to watch the first 4 episodes of this season to catch up to her recorded episodes.

Another friend, Philippe Martin, tweeted about an article from France that talks about the 3 strikes law they are looking to adopt in France. In France, some suggested an amendment that propose to intervene only when the downloaded content is already available on the Internet. Interesting idea. In another tweet, Philippe points me to “Quebecor Opens Door to Canadian Three Strikes Policy”.

With the CRTC currently investigating net neutrality and being lobbied by companies such as Quebecor for a law similarly abusive than what a few countries like France want, I decided to play the role of a legislator and ask myself:

What would be the perfect anti-piracy law?

I don’t know if it’s perfect, but I think I came up with a damn good one.

Please note that to simplify the language I loosely use the term content owner. I am targeting the music and movie industry when referring to content owners.

Here’s the draft of my perfect anti-piracy law:

• An individual can download and share digital content from any source unless:
• the content has already been made available for download by the content owner
• the content was never released for personal listening or viewing by the content owner
• the content made available by the content owner is not copy protected

I haven’t talked about any coercive measures. That wasn’t the point. I wouldn’t wish for ISPs to spy on individuals. The point is that if you make content available for download through purchase (or freely with advertising), you are answering the needs of the consumer. You wouldn’t have any excuse to pirate and it would be easier to go against real pirates (those who profit from piracy).

Such a law would be progressive because it forces the music and movie industry to rethink their business model.

For example, no more region locking. If Hollywood wouldn’t make a movie available for download in Canada but would in the USA, it would be fare game for Canadians to download and share freely. It would force them to review global licensing issues.

It would also incite Canadian content owners to offer their content for download across the globe. I think it would benefit artists and everyone involved. I am confident artists would increase their royalties through increased sales.

It’s also important to allow individuals to be able to play the content the way they want to play it. To simplify things for consumers, content should not be copy protected. If I want to play my purchased movie through an iPod, the computer, an XBox, whatever, I should be able to. If I want to play a digital movie I purchased on the TV screen instead of the computer, I should be able to. Hollywood is just realizing, though the Hulu/Boxee saga that digital content can be played on the TV and want to control how users play Hulu’s content. It’s laughable since it is technologically easy to have a browser control play content on any screen, including the TV.

I also think we should force download availability as a prerequisite of content availability. Streaming-only technology put limits on the way we can play content (we need an Internet link). So, if a content is only made available through streaming, downloadable copies should be fare game to individuals.

What do you think?

What would be your perfect anti-piracy law?

Because of my wife’s blog, I discovered the Pushing Daisies Touch of Wonder Tour microsite. It’s about a tour they are making across the States to promote the new season that will begin in October.

I love the Pushing Daisies TV show, but please, this Flash site is so yesterday. The concept of their Touch of Wonder Tour is quite interesting. However, the Web implementation begs for a Web 2.0 / social media approach through better usage of Web standards. At the end of the day (or the tour), they would get a better bang for their bucks.

First, maybe if I already knew about this site, I would have found it through a Google search:

The people (probably paid generously) who made this Flash site at least knew how to add a URL to the Google index. As you see in the search result above, they are first before Kim’s blog (my wife). Strangely, they did not bother to enter a title to their site:

A quick look at the HTML source tells us there’s really nothing there for SEO:

As of this day, it’s not even XHTML 1.0 compliant but at this point, no wonder.

Anyway, let’s take a tour of their Web site.

It’s your standard Flash microsite for the entertainment business with some animations, a few annoying sounds and Icons/Buttons for different features/sections of the site:

• Touch of Wonder Tour: brief description of the tour and calendar
• Daisy Diary: small bios of the tour team, Pushing Daisy Blog, Photos and Videos of the tour
• Tour Stops: map of the cities where the tour stops with pop-overs giving the dates and locations
• Ned’s Pie Recipes: recipes for 3 different pies
• Show Info: Brief description of the show
• Send a Daisy: send to friend feature

That’s all nice and dandy. Let’s see what sucks and how leveraging Web 2.0, social media and HTML standards would bring more pie to the table. Here are my recommendations to people who create such sites:

1. Evidently, textual content in HTML with actual meta tags would be more search engine friendly.
2. There’s nothing prohibiting having a nice XHTML/CSS and edgy graphical look for the “Touch of Wonder Tour” section as well as the rest of the site.
3. The calendar’s location could be linked to a Google map and replace the Tour Stops. It would easily allow visitors to get and print driving directions.
4. The Daisy Diary section shows a pseudo blog, without RSS subscription and is a victim of the dreaded Flash scrollbar syndrome that hides most of the textual content and makes you scroll and scroll to read stuff. This section begs for a standard blog engine that supports Atom/RSS. Start conversations with your fans through comments. Tour participants could even comment about their experience.
5. The Daisy Diary Videos are so tiny they are almost unwatchable. These begs for Youtube videos imbedded in blog posts. Gain the advantage that videos might go viral through bloggers reposting them. You could post these videos in your Facebook fan page, send updates to your fans so that videos can go viral through the social graph. You still gain comments from viewers and get ideas for improvements for the tour’s video sessions.
6. As for videos, the tour pictures would benefit from being imbedded in blog posts. Why not even use Flickr? It encourages bloggers to repost their favorite photos. Show me you value my time by losing the slow loading photo gallery.
7. Why can’t I print your recipes in Ned Pie Recipes section? You either need to spend more bucks to add the feature, but HTML gives you the feature for free. Do your pies taste so bad you don’t want people to try them out?
8. Because of an artistic trip, the Show Info text is barely readable. HTML anyone?
9. The funny thing about the Send a Daisy feature is that it opens a separate HTML page, probably because the artists didn’t know how to program this in Flash. As of this point, if you followed my advice, the rest of the site is already in HTML, so it’s a no brainer. At the same time, why not leverage Facebook, Twitter and other social networks? For example, a post to Facebook link/widget is free, quick and much more efficient for fans to spread to word to many friends.
10. You could go a step further and create Facebook events for the different tour stops in the calendar so that friends can invite friends to participate on the tour.
11. If you are a bit crazy, you could appear really edgy by supporting microformats for calendar dates and locations. Lots of my tech friends are Pushing Daisies fans and would be quite surprised! Google also loves microformats.

Instead of building yet another usability deficient Flash site in the entertainment business, wouldn’t be more efficient to leverage what makes the Web really work? Wouldn’t be more efficient to invest your budget in knowing more about your fans, in helping your fans spread the word? The cost savings will allow you to invest in the social media specialist you desperately need in the first place. You will even have a margin left in your budget to advertise through social networks and blog sites that cater to your target audience.

EDIT 2008-08-12: Looks like they are on Twitter and on Flickr at least since September 5. Just received this message on Twitter:

ABCPieHole @JeromeParadis Looks like you had some trouble finding us, but we’re here! Read your post as well. Do check out our Flickr: http://bit.ly/pd

Since I wrote this article on September 6, I must have missed their presence. I am glad to see their recent involvement in social media. It proves to show that when you are active elsewhere, your main Web site should reflect your social media presence. In any case am looking forward to read ABCPieHole’s Twitter updates!

EDIT 2 2008-08-12: They are having great conversations through Twitter. If you love the show, follow them! I am glad to see they are listening and taking note of my recommendations:

This just in!

I was watching live Microsoft’s E3 2007 conference and they just announced that XBox Live Video Marketplace for the XBox 360 is going global and will be available for Canada and Europe.

It will be arriving in Canada by end of the year 2007, so Canadians will now be able to enjoy downloadable TV shows and movies, including a good selection of HDTV content. My source was right that it would arrive soon.

It seems that in their live blogging of the event, Engadget did not think it was important enough to mention this.

In any case, the announcement is made even more important by the face that Apple’s iTunes Store, which has been around for much longer than XBox Live Video Marketplace, does not yet offer downloadable TV shows and movie episodes in Canada.

EDIT 2007-07-11, 8:23 AM: Some mention in the Gamerscore Blog.

EDIT 2007-07-11, 9:13 AM: XBox 360 Fanboy made it a news story.

Microsoft recently launched the Microsoft Mediaroom Web site their just renamed IPTV  initiative. A video presentation of the service is available on the site.

Bell Canada has been known to test Microsoft’s IPTV solution for a while now. With Microsoft’s Mediaroom new Web site launch, we can pretty much confirm that Bell will offer the service.

One thing that excites me about the Mediaroom, is the possibility to use the XBox 360 as a set-top box for television and it becomes the ultimate entertainment convergence device. So, if you have both a XBox 360 and an HDTV decoder, you can say goodbye to the need for an HDTV decoder (I’m glad I rent these things).  The wife should be happy with the removal of one electronic device from the entertainment center (or, if you are like me, it makes more place for another device).

Presently, no information has been posted on Bell Canada’s about their support for Microsoft Mediaroom.  When contacted, a Bell Canada representative could only say that the launch date for this new service has not yet been determined.

I recently was invited to the Joost beta.

If you need me to send you an invite, just leave me a note.