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Angry Birds boss: Piracy helps us 'get more business'

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Pardus

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Angry Birds boss: Piracy helps us 'get more business'

Slams music biz's 'terrible' attempts to crush pirates

By Anna Leach • Get more from this author

Posted in Business, 31st January 2012 14:01 GMT

Music industry chiefs must have been pleased to hear that the maker of pig-squishing iPhone game Angry Birds has learned from its mistakes in combating piracy.

Contrasting the music industry's ignore-then-crush approach to piracy to his own softly-softly approach with Angry Birds, Rovio chief Mikael Hed told assembled music insiders at the Midem Music Conference in Cannes that things could have worked out better if they had only chilled out.

"We could learn a lot from the music industry, and the rather terrible ways the music industry has tried to combat piracy," Hed said in a speech reported by the Guardian.

He said:

Piracy may not be a bad thing: it can get us more business at the end of the day...

... We took something from the music industry, which was to stop treating the customers as users, and start treating them as fans. We do that today: we talk about how many fans we have.

If we lose that fanbase, our business is done, but if we can grow that fanbase, our business will grow.

Though the speech has been reported as a "hey piracy's okay" statement, it's worth noting that the piracy that the Rovio bosses tolerated was around merchandise in Asia – small-scale stuff that Hed said it would be "futile" for the company to pursue through the courts.

"We have some issues with piracy, not only in apps, but also especially in the consumer products. There is tons and tons of merchandise out there, especially in Asia, which is not officially licensed product," he explained.

Though a few thousand fake plush toys could help win new fans to the franchise, in cases where Rovio felt like the pirates were harming the Angry Birds brand, or were ripping off its fans, he said it would be prepared to act. In other words: where the piracy actually affects Rovio's core business model.

Hed's comments on piracy were an aside at his Midem speech, which was primarily to announce his interest in doing content deals with music labels and getting music tracks into Angry Bird games:

Already our apps are becoming channels, and we can use that channel to cross-promote – to sell further content. The content itself has transformed into the channel, and the traditional distribution channels are no longer the kingmakers.
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Official demand to press to stop associating Pirates with computer nerds

We, Somalian Pirates have a tradition upholding the true name of piracy piracy.

We are demanding that the press stop describing internet kids who send movies to each other pirates.

File sharing is not real piracy. Do those pimply kids running the Pirate Bay think they are pirates? No! They've appropriated the term to subvert its contemporary usage in the media. They're pirates because dumb journalists bought the party line of the entertainment industry 20 years ago. The Pirate Bay is mocking you, us, and every journalist that calls them anything but file sharers. We applaud their loss in Sweden, it means one less group diluting the true meaning of the term piracy.

Real Piracy you need skill, be trained in tactical maneuvers with a Somalian S1 Fishing boat as well as have a support crew for anti ballistic missile support via RPG. Holding an Ukranian tanker hostage with a rocket propelled grenade and a couple of AK-47s and asking for 3 million dollars is real piracy. I hope you fail and the SOUP law comes in so I can sue you for copyright infringement and bringing a bad name on the Pirate tradition.

The things that we take are real too -- money, boats, jewelry, and whatever we find on the boat. File sharing takes away what? A hypothetical revenue stream from a suit? The day we see a movie executive on the high seas is the day we take him hostage and show him what real piracy looks like.

So the next time western journalist mindlessly uses the phrase "piracy" to describe a file being sent across the Internet we will retaliate and take you to court thanks to American government and Soup. We demand Piratebay change its name as well as it is copyright infringement.

We are not scared of American ships. We beat them

I'm sure by now you have all seen this story:

Pirates fire at U.S. Navy ship off Somalia
http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSL7720223

In case you missed it, allow me to provide that link again:

http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSL7720223

That's right. Even though we have seemingly decrepit boats and ineffectual weapons, we still went after a U.S. military ship - and it ran away! Somalian Pirate Cruiser far superior to US destroyer.

Behold, the cowardly Americans, who supposedly have the best navy history has ever seen, as they flee in the face of our attack.

Sincerely,
Head Of The Union of Concerned Pirates
Abdulkarim
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Piraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaates
 
Doesn't Angry Birds charge $ for their games? And if you read further, he's only saying piracy is okay in one instance.

Though the speech has been reported as a "hey piracy's okay" statement, it's worth noting that the piracy that the Rovio bosses tolerated was around merchandise in Asia – small-scale stuff that Hed said it would be "futile" for the company to pursue through the courts.
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/thread
 
Angry birds piracy? My son has 4 different angry bird games on his tablet which were free downloads from the android market. Why would someone need to pirate angry birds?
 
rudder said:
Angry birds piracy? My son has 4 different angry bird games on his tablet which were free downloads from the android market. Why would someone need to pirate angry birds?
Click to expand...

The piracy in question is around merchandise and fake plush toys in Asia, not the game.
 
I also thought this at times. Things like MS's windows and office programs. I wonder if they were the ones to release the pirated content. A thought of "If the consumer won't pay for my software, at least they won't be using someone else's" kind of thing.

But the little difference is the game itself is available for free, they make the pay version with a little more, and their main source is the revenue generated from the ads, so a fan base will increase their ability to charge for so many eyeballs.

In a movie that is it, there may be some merchandise, but most movies don't do much in that arena. Selling DVD's is pretty good, but having a large base watch the movie and not pay for won't do you any good. There is some argument for if someone HAD to pay, many just wouldn't have watched it period, but that is a different argument. Music at least has it a little better, where like the article talks about, you have fans. The fans then want to see the artist in concert which I hear is where the money gets made.

What they should all should do is make it hard enough to copy to make it inconvenient for the passer-by to copy. When they make it so hard on me as the consumer to make it work, it turns me off from the product. EA's dead in space and their whole anti-piracy method comes to mind.
 
I've already bought music because I heard it used in some video or animation online, likely done so without permission. And I'm sure I'm not alone.
(Always a CD or MP3, none of this "We'll let you play this until we get tired of running the license server" crap.)
 
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