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Generation Y-Pay? Seriously?
When it doesn't see the market rate of digital content falling towards zero as a political problem, or a legal one, intellectual property clearing houses think of the issue as a marketing one.
And if you have a marketing problem, you have to identify a target market and give it a stupid name.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow us (or rather The Industry Trust for IP Awareness) to introduce Generation Y-Pay:
The new approach, unveiled today, fronted by Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels star Nick Moran, is born out of research that shows the film and TV industry needs to offer some "carrot" to go with the "stick" to change the attitude of the web generation. The Industry Trust for IP Awareness (Itipa) says the problem is that 16-to-34-year-olds, the so-called Generation Y, has an attitude to online content that it sums up as "Generation Y-pay?"
A survey has shown that while 74% of 16-to-34-year-olds agree that paying to rent or see films in daily life is right and proper, just 39% think they should pay for the same content when they are viewing the content on the internet.
If I were Itipa - after sorting out my stupid name - I'd be a bit more worried about the quarter of people who don't think they should be paying to go to the cinema.
So the idea now is that - taking a break from this sort of thing you appeal to their better natures:
The campaign appeals to young people by promoting the idea that making positive, legal choices ensures their favourite shows and actors stay on screen.
"With the digital revolution set to open up access to more unauthorised film and TV content, it is going to be more important than ever for people to understand the positive connection they have to the British creative industries, such as film and TV," said Liz Bales, the director general of the Itipa. "Our industry must share responsibility for showing the public the positive role they play.
"Film and TV is the industry that we as a nation are most proud of, the challenge is that Generation Y-pay underestimates how vital they are to funding future films and TV shows. They don't realise that without them [buying legal products] great British film and TV couldn't get made," Bales added.
Wow. Apparently the film and TV industry think that people have better natures despite being idiots.
You can't help wondering if this catch-more-wasps-with-honey approach would have been more effective if it had been launched a decade ago, rather than spending ten years scolding and then suddenly going "oh... but we love you, we really do."
2 comments:
Where did this TV argument come from? I saw a thing on thee BBC site from a few months ago from one of the people behind Spooks saying a similar thing about the effect of illegal downloading on tv. Even if we accept their lie that illegal downloaders are replacing legal purchasers (they're not) then how can this effect TV? Ten years ago few people purchased TV programmes for non broadcast viewing. Twenty years ago even less. Thirty years ago none. Yet TV companies then and for another thirty years before that managed to quite happily produce plenty of television without the benefit of people purchasing DVD box sets. I'd argue, admittedly without any real evidence to back up my statement, that more people today spend money on television than ever before.
As far as advertising revenues goes (I'll presume that's another argument they'd have), if the channels were quicker in putting up online options for people then they'd have no problem with that either. For example, I now have no issues with using the Channel 4 on demand website to watch television. It has a great archive of both older and newer programmes and the adverts are of minimal irritation. However, until recently this simply wasn't an option. Their service had fewer programmes to watch with limited time periods available for each one. There was really little option but to download programmes from elsewhere if there was no DVD release or if I only wanted to watch one episode (e.g. the most recent) of a programme. Admittedly the quality isn't the greatest on the site but if I want a better version I'll buy the DVD. Either way I'm supporting their revenue from advertising or DVD sales. If all programmes were available this way there shouldn't be a problem. Hence, I'm not the one causing the problem.
As for illegally downloading programmes from abroad, much of their current word of mouth advertising is provided for the television companies for free from various online communities. I'm a fan of some programmes where I like to read about them online but don't want to read spoilers. This isn't possible with the time gaps between domestic and international broadcast. If I want to see a programme as soon as I can this has become possible because of illegal downloading. From this type of downloading many TV companies have surely benefited from additional word of mouth that wouldn't previously have been available to them. Now surely if they were making the programmes available online simultaneously in various countries then they would benefit from even more of this free advertising at the same time as satisfying advertising revenue demands. The same type of simultaneous release could be done for DVD sales. OK it might not be that simple and there are things like promotional appearances to consider but this really doesn't seem as prominent to me for television as it is for say film or music.
Anyway, I've lost my point and I've typed too much. None of it was about music. I guess my point was about wondering whether anyone can play devil's advocate and give me their argument against this.
I resent that name.
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