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wstrahan

Music as a Service as an Alternative to Music Piracy? - Springer - 0 views

link.springer.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/...fulltext.html

music service alternative piracy

shared by wstrahan on 02 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Music pirates show a clearly positive approach to MaaS. The mean of attitude was 3.95 on a five-point scale.
  • While most pirates would use the free version (mean = 3.57), few would pay for MaaS (mean = 1.65).
  • Alternative
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • We can observe a strong difference between the influence of attitude on intention to use free MaaS and the intention to use paid MaaS: building a strong attitude therefore does not lead directly to high willingness to pay; instead, it is the intention to test free MaaS that is influenced by attitudes.
  • We found that the search for music recommendations and the flat rate preference influence the attitude towards MaaS positively and significantly. The new recommendation functions and the pricing model are therefore functions users rated highly and which can help build a strongly positive attitude towards MaaS.
  • Pirates seem satisfied with the sound quality of tracks provided via illegal networks and seem to feel safe from prosecution.
  • Our study demonstrated the attractiveness of MaaS offers to music pirates. Nevertheless, most music pirates prefer free MaaS.
  • We showed that flat rates are regarded as an attractive pricing model by music pirates and that this constitutes a suitable alternative to pay-per-download, which is often considered too expensive (Al-Rafee and Cronan 2006).
  • Users who do not consider music piracy owing to moral scruples and higher search costs also show a positive attitude towards MaaS.
  • A reason for the increased willingness to pay may also relate to hedonistic social benefits, established by integrating social features into recommendation systems
  • MaaS providers should therefore focus on comprehensive, user-friendly recommendation systems that support social exchanges between MaaS users. Our study results clearly demonstrate that a platform’s features positively influence the attitude towards MaaS. Besides direct recommendations from friends, users can receive recommendations based on tagged music channels or collaborative filtering.
  • The presented study demonstrates that new offers of music consumption can also be an attractive alternative for music pirates. Although there is no indication of the reduction of illegal downloads in general, music pirates consider the free ad-based version of MaaS an alternative. Music pirates who have rejected legal music consumption due to high prices in the past may well switch to legal consumption.
  • Pandora
wstrahan

Piracy Collapses As Legal Alternatives Do Their Job | TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/ternatives-do-their-job-130716

piracy alternatives

shared by wstrahan on 11 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • “When you have a good legitimate offer, the people will use it,” says Olav Torvund, former law professor at the University of Oslo. “There is no excuse for illegal copying, but when you get an offer that does not cost too much and is easy to use, it is less interesting to download illegally.”
  • Of those questioned for the survey, 47% (representing around 1.7 million people) said they use a streaming music service such as Spotify. Even more impressively, just over half (corresponding to 920,000 people and 25% of Norwegian Internet users) said that they pay for the premium option.
  • While TV show piracy has reduced by half in four years, it actually peaked at the start of 2011 with 200 million shows copied without permission. However, since then with the introduction of legal alternatives, unauthorized copying is down more than 72%.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The report shows that in 2008 almost 1.2 billion songs were copied without permission. However, by 2012 that figure had plummeted to 210 million, just 17.5% of its level four years earlier.
  • As expected, piracy of movies and TV shows in 2008 was at much lower levels than music, with 125 million movies and 135 million TV shows copied without permission. But by last year the figures for both had reduced by around half, to 65 million and 55 million respectively.
andhearsonars

Pinterest, Tumblr and the Trouble With 'Curation' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-trouble-with-curation.html

curation pinterest tumblr internet social media

shared by andhearsonars on 13 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • evoke in the viewer a certain feeling, atmosphere or mood
  • Not just on Pinterest, but also in the form of dopamine-boosting street-fashion blogs and cryptically named Tumblr blogs devoted to the wordless and explanation-free juxtaposition of, say, cupcakes and teapots and shoes with shots of starched shirts and J.F.K.
  • artfully arranged pictures of other people’s stuff?
  • ...14 more annotations...
  • “curation,”
  • rarefied and highly specialized skill, would all of a sudden go viral
  • Not because I don’t like magazines. In many ways, I like them better. But they’re too grounded in space and time, too organized and linear, too collaborative and professional to deliver the synaptic frisson available from the stream-of-consciousness image blog.
  • A friend of a friend calls his addiction to sites like these “avenues for procrastination,” but I think there’s something else involved. Like other forms of pastiche — the mix tape, the playlist, the mash-up — these sites force you to engage and derive meaning or at least significance or at the very least pleasure from a random grouping of pictures. Why not dive into an alternative world full of beauty and novelty and emotion and the hard-to-put-your-finger-on feeling that there’s something more, somewhere, where you’re not chained to your laptop, half dead from monotony, frustration and boredom
  • the sudden rise of the mood board as mood regulator, a kind of low-dose visual lithium
  • So maybe we are like the rats, and what we’re seeking while idly yet compulsively cruising Pinterest is really just the reliably unpredictable jumble of emotions that their wistful, quirky juxtapositions evoke. Maybe that is our rectangularity.
  • This is, I think, what these sites evoke: the feeling of being addicted to longing for something; specifically being addicted to the feeling that something is missing or incomplete. The point is not the thing that is being longed for, but the feeling of longing for the thing.
  • In other words, your average Pinterest board or inspiration Tumblr basically functions as a longing machine.
  • They target aspects of our lives that “are incomplete or imperfect”; involve “overly positive, idealized, utopian imaginations of these missing aspects”; focus on “incompleteness on the one hand and fantasies about ideal, alternative realities on the other hand”
  • frivolous and feminine
  • People don’t post stuff because they wish they owned it, but because they think they are it, and they long to be understood, which is different.
  • In fact, the company discourages people from posting images they have created themselves, preferring that they venture out into the wilds of the Internet looking for beautiful things to bring back to the cave.
  • “Curation” does imply something far more deliberate than these inspiration blogs, whose very point is to put the viewer into an aesthetic reverie unencumbered by thought or analysis. These sites are not meant (as curation is) to make us more conscious, but less so.
  • But products are no longer the point. The feeling is the point. And now we can create that feeling for ourselves, then pass it around like a photo album of the life we think we were meant to have but don’t, the people we think we should be but aren’t.
jurasovaib

Rømer's determination of the speed of light - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...mination_of_the_speed_of_light

determination speed light

shared by jurasovaib on 24 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Order of magnitude[edit] Rømer starts with an order of magnitude demonstration that the speed of light must be so great that it takes much less than one second to travel a distance equal to Earth's diameter. The point L on the diagram represents the second quadrature of Jupiter, when the angle between Jupiter and the Sun (as seen from Earth) is 90°.[note 6] Rømer assumes that an observer could see an emergence of Io at the second quadrature (L), and also the emergence which occurs after one orbit of Io around Jupiter (when the Earth is taken to be at point K, the diagram not being to scale), that is 42½ hours later. During those 42½ hours, the Earth has moved further away from Jupiter by the distance LK: this, according to Rømer, is 210 times the Earth's diameter.[note 7] If light travelled at a speed of one Earth-diameter per second, it would take 3½ minutes to travel the distance LK. And if the period of Io's orbit around Jupiter were taken as the time difference between the emergence at L and the emergence at K, the value would be 3½ minutes longer than the true value. Rømer then applies the same logic to observations around the first quadrature (point G), when Earth is moving towards Jupiter. The time difference between an immersion seen from point F and the next immersion seen from point G should be 3½ minutes shorter than the true orbital period of Io. Hence, there should be a difference of about 7 minutes between the periods of Io measured at the first quadrature and those measured at the second quadrature. In practice, no difference is observed at all, from which Rømer concludes that the speed of light must be very much greater than one Earth-diameter per second.[5]
  • However Rømer also realised that any effect of the finite speed of light would add up over a long series of observations, and it is this cumulative effect that he announced to the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. The effect can be illustrated with Rømer's observations from spring 1672. Jupiter was in opposition on 2 March 1672: the first observations of emergences were on 7 March (at 07:58:25) and 14 March (at 09:52:30). Between the two observations, Io had completed four orbits of Jupiter, giving an orbital period of 42 hours 28 minutes 31¼ seconds. The last emergence observed in the series was on 29 April (at 10:30:06). By this time, Io had completed thirty orbits around Jupiter since 7 March: the apparent orbital period is 42 hours 29 minutes 3 seconds. The difference seems minute – 32 seconds – but it meant that the emergence on 29 April was occurring a quarter-hour after it would have been predicted. The only alternative explanation was that the observations on 7 and 14 March were wrong by two minutes.
braxtondn

7 Telltale Signs Social Media Is Killing Your Self-Esteem | Alternet - 1 views

www.alternet.org/...media-killing-your-self-esteem

media self-image

shared by braxtondn on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Yet what often begins as a harmless virtual habit for some can fast-track into a damaging, narcissism-fueled habit which negatively impacts our self-worth and the way we perceive others
    • braxtondn
      braxtondn on 26 Jun 14
       
      Can this be fixed? Does it have to have such a negative impact? Is it really the media or the people on the social networks that are causing the media to have this kind of effect on people
  • Of 298 users, 50 percent said social media made their lives and their self-esteem worse.
  • According to psychotherapist Sherrie Campbell, social media can give us a false sense of belonging and connecting that is not built on real-life exchanges. This makes it increasingly easy to lose oneself to cyberspace connections and give them more weight than they deserve
    • braxtondn
      braxtondn on 26 Jun 14
       
      People go on the social medias knowing what to expect. Its up to the person to control whether or not to let the things they see, effect their lifestyle or what they thick of themselves. There are things on many social networks that allow people to edit their photos so they can loo a certain way, in order for it to be acceptable to society and the media. This is another reason how the media is becoming harmful to self-image.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “When we look to social media, we end up comparing ourselves to what we see which can lower our self-esteem. On social media, everyone’s life looks perfect but you’re only seeing a snapshot of reality. We can be whoever we want to be in social media and if we take what we see literally then it’s possible that we can feel we are falling short in life,” Campbell told AlterNe
  • Women who spent longer periods of time on Facebook had a higher incidence of "appearance-focused behavior" (such as anorexia) and were more anxious and body conscience overall. What's more, 20 minutes on social media was enough to contribute to a user’s weight and shape concerns
    • braxtondn
      braxtondn on 26 Jun 14
       
      It is amazing how only 20 mins on a social network can have that effect on one's life.  People are more focused on trying to be accepted into society that they will let a social networks and media tell them how to eat, look, and live.
  • It is important to remember that what you are viewing is only a small sliver of someone’s life, which for the most part, is heavily embellished and mostly rooted in fantasy. When such images are starting to poison the way you look at your own life it may be time to step away from the screen.
    • braxtondn
      braxtondn on 26 Jun 14
       
      This is one way to fix the effects that media has over people's self image. Just because you see models looking all glamorous on the tv screens, instagram posts, Facebook, or magazine covers, doesn't mean that their life is technically better than your own.
wstrahan

China and Nigeria: Neo-Colonialism, South-South Solidarity, or Both? | Daniel Wagner - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...nigeria-neocolo_b_3624204.html

#neocolonialism china nigeria

shared by wstrahan on 25 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • Bilateral relations between China and Nigeria will likely take one of two paths in the long term: either China will remain the overwhelmingly dominant actor or Nigeria will become a regional superpower, evening out the playing field. If China remains the stronger player it will shape Nigeria in its own interests (commonly referred to as "Chinese Imperialism").
  • During the first eleven years of its independence, Nigeria and China had no diplomatic relations. The Nigerian government's view of China grew especially sour after Mao officially supported the secessionist state in Biafra by supplying the Biafran administration with weapons.
  • During the period of General Abacha's military rule (1993-1998), Beijing's no-strings-attached development projects were increasingly well received. Nigeria's leaders grew resentful of Western conditions for aid and investment, and many Nigerians began to question what a generation of economic dependence on the West achieved for Nigeria.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Abuja subsequently adopted a new approach to international trade, balancing traditional Western partners and China.
  • The evolution of Nigerian-Chinese relations mirrors that of China's relationship with other African states (such as Angola, Sudan, and Zimbabwe) that sought alternative forms of aid and development packages following the imposition of sanctions by Western nations based on alleged human rights violations.
  • Today, more than 200 Chinese firms operate in Nigeria.
  • China agreed to provide Nigeria with a soft loan of $1.1 billion loan in exchange for Nigeria agreeing to increase its daily supply of oil to China ten-fold (from 20,000 barrels per day to 200,000) by 2015.
  • China recently embraced a new foreign policy in West Africa that contrasts with its traditionally passive approach to the spread of Islamic terrorism and extremism in Africa. Last year a Chinese diplomat in Mali pledged support for the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)'s military campaign to dislodge Al Qaeda-affiliate groups in northern Mali.
  • China's number one concern in West Africa is access to natural resources and new consumer markets
  • While many Nigerians consider China's growing presence to be nothing short of a God send, others have raised concerns about Nigerian sovereignty, bearing in mind the impact Chinese trade and investment has had on other African countries.
  • The Chinese model of importing its own workers to build infrastructure projects, for example, does not sit well with many Nigerians.
  • A number of Nigerians have also voiced objections to the "slave-like" labor conditions in Chinese-operated factories across Nigeria. Attention was first brought to these conditions when 37 Nigerian workers died after being trapped inside a locked Chinese-owned factory that caught fire in 2002
  • Western powers that claim a desire to help Nigeria develop are often perceived as insincere, with their own aid being viewed as an infringement on Nigeria's sovereignty, since it often comes with strings attached.
wstrahan

Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of imperialism by Kwame Nkrumah - 0 views

www.marxists.org/...introduction.htm

#neocolonialism #taboo

shared by wstrahan on 25 Jun 14 - No Cached
    • wstrahan
      wstrahan on 25 Jun 14
       
      Neo-colonialism isn't a problem until it's being used to impoverish less developed countries, rather than help develop them.
  • Non-alignment, as practised by Ghana and many other countries, is based on co-operation with all States whether they be capitalist, socialist or have a mixed economy. Such a policy, therefore, involves foreign investment from capitalist countries, but it must be invested in accordance with a national plan drawn up by the government of the non-aligned State with its own interests in mind.
    • wstrahan
      wstrahan on 25 Jun 14
       
      Countries like Ghana choose not to align with an economic policy like capitalism or socialism in order to trade with all countries based on their own national plan.
  • ...30 more annotations...
  • The growth of nuclear weapons has made out of date the old-fashioned balance of power which rested upon the ultimate sanction of a major war. Certainty of mutual mass destruction effectively prevents either of the great power blocs from threatening the other with the possibility of a world-wide war, and military conflict has thus become confined to ‘limited wars’. For these neo-colonialism is the breeding ground.
    • wstrahan
      wstrahan on 25 Jun 14
       
      Nuclear weapons have increased the growth in neo-colonialism. Larger economic countries such as the U.S. and Russia would rather avoid a world war and nuclear mass destruction by fighting "limited wars"
  • Limited war, once embarked upon, achieves a momentum of its own. Of this, the war in South Vietnam is only one example. It escalates despite the desire of the great power blocs to keep it limited. While this particular war may be prevented from leading to a world conflict, the multiplication of similar limited wars can only have one end-world war and the terrible consequences of nuclear conflict.
  • Neo-colonialism is also the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.
  • In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was taking abroad.
  • Neo-colonialism, like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of the capitalist countries.
  • The problem which faced the wealthy nations of the world at the end of the second world war was the impossibility of returning to the pre-war situation in which there was a great gulf between the few rich and the many poor. Irrespective of what particular political party was in power, the internal pressures in the rich countries of the world were such that no post-war capitalist country could survive unless it became a ‘Welfare State’. There might be differences in degree in the extent of the social benefits given to the industrial and agricultural workers, but what was everywhere impossible was a return to the mass unemployment and to the low level of living of the pre-war years.
  • In the past it was possible to convert a country upon which a neo-colonial regime had been imposed — Egypt in the nineteenth century is an example — into a colonial territory.
  • The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.
  • e, but neo-
  • Where neo-colonialism exists the power exercising control is often the State which formerly ruled the territory in question, but this is not necessarily so. For example, in the case of South Vietnam the former imperial power was France, but neo-colonial control of the State has now gone to the United States.
  • The neo-colonial State may be obliged to take the manufactured products of the imperialist power to the exclusion of competing products from elsewhere. Control over government policy in the neo-colonial State may be secured by payments towards the cost of running the State, by the provision of civil servants in positions where they can dictate policy, and by monetary control over foreign exchange through the imposition of a banking system controlled by the imperial power.
  • The control of the Congo by great international financial concerns is a case in point.
  • The struggle against neo-colonialism is not aimed at excluding the capital of the developed world from operating in less developed countries. It is aimed at preventing the financial power of the developed countries being used in such a way as to impoverish the less developed.
  • The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and the poor countries of the world.
  • The system of neo-colonialism was therefore instituted and in the short run it has served the developed powers admirably. It is in the long run that its consequences are likely to be catastrophic for them
  • Neo-colonialism is based upon the principle of breaking up former large united colonial territories into a number of small non-viable States which are incapable of independent development and must rely upon the former imperial power for defence and even internal security. Their economic and financial systems are linked, as in colonial days, with those of the former colonial ruler.
  • In the neo-colonialist territories, since the former colonial power has in theory relinquished political control, if the social conditions occasioned by neo-colonialism cause a revolt the local neo-colonialist government can be sacrificed and another equally subservient one substituted in its place.
  • The introduction of neo-colonialism increases the rivalry between the great powers which was provoked by the old-style colonialism. However little real power the government of a neo-colonialist State may possess, it must have, from the very fact of its nominal independence, a certain area of manoeuvre. It may not be able to exist without a neo-colonialist master but it may still have the ability to change masters.
  • The ideal neo-colonialist State would be one which was wholly subservient to neo-colonialist interests but the existence of the socialist nations makes it impossible to enforce the full rigour of the neo-colonialist system. The existence of an alternative system is itself a challenge to the neo-colonialist regime. Warnings about ‘the dangers of Communist subversion are likely to be two-edged since they bring to the notice of those living under a neo-colonialist system the possibility of a change of regime.
  • In fact neo-colonialism is the victim of its own contradictions. In order to make it attractive to those upon whom it is practised it must be shown as capable of raising their living standards, but the economic object of neo-colonialism is to keep those standards depressed in the interest of the developed countries.
  • Their manufacturers naturally object to any attempt to raise the price of the raw materials which they obtain from the neo-colonialist territory in question, or to the establishment there of manufacturing industries which might compete directly or indirectly with their own exports to the territory.
  • In the end the situation arises that the only type of aid which the neo-colonialist masters consider as safe is ‘military aid’.
  • Once a neo-colonialist territory is brought to such a state of economic chaos and misery that revolt actually breaks out then, and only then, is there no limit to the generosity of the neo-colonial overlord, provided, of course, that the funds supplied are utilised exclusively for military purposes.
  • Military aid in fact marks the last stage of neo-colonialism and its effect is self-destructive. Sooner or later the weapons supplied pass into the hands of the opponents of the neo-colonialist regime and the war itself increases the social misery which originally provoked it.
  • Nowhere has it proved successful, either in raising living standards or in ultimately benefiting countries which have indulged in it.
  • This book is therefore an attempt to examine neo-colonialism not only in its African context and its relation to African unity, but in world perspective. Neo-colonialism is by no means exclusively an African question. Long before it was practised on any large scale in Africa it was an established system in other parts of the world
  • ‘The industrial nations have added nearly $2 billion to their reserves, which now approximate $52 billion. At the same time, the reserves of the less-developed group not only have stopped rising, but have declined some $200 million. To analysts such as Britain’s Miss Ward, the significance of such statistics is clear: the economic gap is rapidly widening “between a white, complacent, highly bourgeois, very wealthy, very small North Atlantic elite and everybody else, and this is not a very comfortable heritage to leave to one’s children.”
  • ‘For the vast majority of mankind the most urgent problem is not war, or Communism, or the cost of living, or taxation. It is hunger. Over 1,500,000,000 people, some-thing like two-thirds of the world’s population, are living in conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional disease.
  • What is lacking are any positive proposals for dealing with the situation. All that The Wall Street Journal’s correspondent can do is to point out that the traditional methods recommended for curing the evils are only likely to make the situation worse.
morganaletarg

Homosexuality at the Online Hogwarts: Harry Potter Slash Fanfiction - 1 views

literature.proquest.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/searchFulltext.do

lgbt representation fanworks community history

shared by morganaletarg on 26 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • rites observes that the majority of YA novels about gay and lesbian teens "are very Foucaultian in their tendency to privilege the discourse of homosexuality over the physical sexual acts of gay men, defining homosexuality more rhetorically than physically" (102-03).
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 26 Jun 14
       
      reasons no one has ever actually enjoyed an LGBT YA book
  • Star Trek is widely considered to be the first "modern" fandom, and the majority of studies of participatory media fandom begin their history with Trek fans. However, activities that could be called "fannish" go back much further, and include eighteenthcentury unauthorized sequels of works such as Gulliver's Travels, the aforementioned Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and the entire body of literary and folk "retellings." See Brewer, Pflieger, Derecho, and Stasi.
    • morganaletarg
      morganaletarg on 26 Jun 14
       
      sources on history of fandom
  • According to Francesca Coppa, the Internet enabled "an increasingly customizable fannish experience" (54). As a result, "[a]rguably, this may be fandom's postmodern moment, where the rules are 'there ain't no rules' and traditions are made to be broken" (57).
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • how do depictions of adolescent sexuality in Potter fanfiction differ from those of published literature for adolescents?
  • One avenue that has yet to be explored, with specific regard to adolescent fans, is the potential to encounter and experiment with alternative modes of sexual discourse, particularly queer discourse.
  • "adolescent literature is as often an ideological tool used to curb teenagers' libido as it is some sort of depiction of what adolescents' sexuality actually is"
  • Slash, like other forms of fanfiction in the modern era, initially circulated by way of self-published zines. Because of the controversial nature of the stories, slash was available only to those who knew the right people in order to be put on mailing lists, and who had the financial resources to order zines and attend conventions-in other words, adults.
  • [S]lash is not so much queer in the act as it is queer in the space . . . . Slash is a sandbox where women come to be strange and unusual, or to do strange and unusual things, or to play with strange and unusual sand. The women may be queer or not, strange or not, unusual or not. The many different acts and behaviors of slash may be queer or not, strange or not, unusual or not. The queerness may be sexualized or it may not, and what is sexual for one woman may not be for another. The space is simply that: a space, where women can be strange and unusual and/or do strange and unusual things.8
  • Harry's discovery of his wizard nature is akin to a coming-out narrative-he escapes from a literal closet, and his relatives' horrified reactions bear a striking resemblance to the language of homophobia, especially in the way they hurl about words like "abnormality" (Chamber 2) as weapons. Thus, one can, from the perspective of the Muggle realm, read the entire wizarding world in terms of Julad's "queer space."
  • morganaletarg on 27 Jun 14
     
    representation, history, fanwork does what published works don't
  • Bonnie Boaz on 30 Jun 14
     
    Your commentary provides a nice selection of pieces for readers. You model the best of Diigo work here! : ) (Even though I found this in a file cabinet -- of sorts!) YA novels are "Foucoultian" ?? Really? I've never read a YA book featuring homosexuality, but much media represents gay behaviors from heterosexual framework. Even Orange..New Black -- I think, anyway. Agree about fanwork doing what published works don't.
wstrahan

"Spotify Was Designed from the Ground Up to Combat Piracy" | TorrentFreak - 0 views

torrentfreak.com/und-up-to-combat-piracy-131204

spotify combat piracy

shared by wstrahan on 11 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • “Spotify was designed from the ground up to combat piracy,” the company confirms. “Founded in Sweden, the home of The Pirate Bay, we believed that if we could build a service which was better
  • than piracy, then we could convince people to stop illegal file-sharing, and start
  • consuming music legally again.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Right from the beginning Spotify founder Daniel Ek held a solid belief that if his service offered a better experience and superior convenience than that being offered by The Pirate Bay, people would jump on board.
  • And they have. Earlier this year the service confirmed it had amassed a total of 24 million users worldwide, 18 million on their ad-supported service and 6 million paying a subscription.
  • The notion, that “it’s impossible to compete with free”, sat well with lawmakers and governments, who looked at offerings coming out of The Pirate Bay and thousands of other similar sites and widely agreed that no-one will pay for something if they can get it for nothing.
  • “A key part of this [success] has been in ensuring that Spotify has a free [ad supported] tier. By offering this free tier, Spotify is able to compete with piracy on cost and bring music consumers into the legal framework,” the company notes.
  • In Sweden, a market that should be the most difficult to turn around if file-sharing traditions are any barometer, Spotify says that the number of people who pirated music fell by 25 percent between 2009 and 2011.
  • In Denmark the IFPI reports that 48% of users using streaming services had previously been illegal downloaders. An impressive 8 out of 10 of those have now stopped completely.
  • Norway, a success story documented earlier this year, has seen its piracy rates drop to just one-fifth of their levels four years earlier, with streaming services taking most of the credit.
  • There can be little doubt that torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay will always have a following, but when services such as Spotify offer their basic services for free, one has to question why people wouldn’t at least try them
wstrahan

Streaming revenues turn the tide against digital pirates - FT.com - 0 views

www.ft.com/...6f-11e3-b519-00144feabdc0.html

streaming music video pirates netflix spotify

shared by wstrahan on 11 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • Spotify, the subscription streaming service, has more than 6m subscribers. In video, Netflix, boosted by original productions such as House of Cards , has more than 36m subscribers. Amazon, Google and now Apple, with iTunes Radio, are bringing streaming to a much wider audience
  • This is – at last – translating into meaningful income. The Recording Industry Association of America calculates that revenues from services including Spotify, Pandora and YouTube went from 3 per cent of industry revenues in 2007 to 15 per cent, or more than $1bn, in 2012.
  • Apple’s strategy has pleased some music companies because its streaming service also encourages downloads. But many content owners still believe that streaming cannibalises download and DVD revenues
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • What is lost from many calculations is the fact that the urge to own may be weaker in the age of streaming, but so is the urge to steal
  • Traffic to peer-to-peer file-sharing and torrent sites is declining where legal alternatives are offered
  • . Netflix’s Ted Sarandos said in May: “When we launch in a territory, the BitTorrent traffic drops as the Netflix traffic grows.”
  • In an analysis of the Dutch market, Will Page, an economist working for Spotify, found that releases by Rihanna and Taylor Swift that were held off Spotify sold just one legal copy for each BitTorrent download, while hits from One Direction and Robbie Williams that were instantly available for streaming sold four copies. “The legitimate market is beginning to outshine the illegitimate market,” says Cary Sherman, the RIAA’s chairman.
  • High rates of piracy for hits such as Game of Thrones in markets such as Australia show that consumers still look to illegal sources if content is not available legally in all parts of the world the minute that US consumers get it.
  • No one is ready to declare victory against the pirates, but the tide is starting to turn against them. The Napster generation is growing up – and behind it is an iTunes, Netflix or Spotify generation that has higher expectations of online content, but is more willing to pay.
normonique

Electroconvulsive therapy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views

en.wikipedia.org/...Electroconvulsive_therapy

neurotechnology

shared by normonique on 18 Jul 14 - Cached
  • Electroconvulsive therapy can differ in its application in three ways: electrode placement, frequency of treatments, and the electrical waveform of the stimulus.
    • normonique
      normonique on 18 Jul 14
       
      Relate to Acupuncture.  -Within my last visit the Acupunctures attached a small electric pulse (not painful) to the pinpoint of the pain.  -I was knocked out within I believe less than 5 min. and awoken pain free.  -All the tension seemed it only needed to be stretched out. So I followed my treatment with yoga and felt new the following day.  -My question is that culturally Asians use natural medicine, would this application in my current culture benefit from alternative medicine with similar application or to treat a similar problem.
  • normonique on 18 Jul 14
     
    "electrode"
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