Digital Media in Asia Blog

Today (5/30/06), Berkman’s Digital Media in Asia Project co-founder Eric Priest will give an informal lunchtime talk on Asia’s role in shaping the future global entertainment industries. Info is as follows:

Berkman Tuesday Luncheon Series, Tuesday, May 30 – 12:30 pm
Berkman Conference Room, Berkman Center
1587 Mass. Ave., Harvard Law School, Cambridge MA

Guest: Eric Priest
Topic: Asia at the Cutting Edge?

Some believe Asia is at the cutting edge of twenty-first century entertainment industry business models. A combination of high copyright piracy levels and high-tech populations has led entertainment companies in places like China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea to embrace the internet and emerging digital and mobile technologies as they seek innovative new revenue sources. This includes a massive new market for citizen-created media (music and movies) on the internet in China. What are the trends and are they really leading to sustainable business models for the rest of the world to emulate? Is the conservative state-run media in China creating a strong market for alternative, citizen-created Internet media and what are the implications for Chinese society, politics, and the entertainment industries? With all the emphasis on technology, is creativity increasingly an afterthought?

Eric Priest is a research fellow in the Berkman Center’s project on Internet Filtering, and a cofounder of Berkman’s Digital Media in Asia Project. He is also a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School, and an adjunct professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Bio: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/eric_priest
Digital Media in Asia project blog: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dmablog/

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A teenager was arrested in Hong Kong for hosting 600 songs for download on his computer, and a court sided with the movie industry, requiring internet service providers to turn over the names of users sharing movies online.

Speaking privately to people in the Hong Kong entertainment industry last week, there is pessimism that these tactics will yield results. The fact is, they acknowledge, that young people view the likelihood of getting sued or arrested on par with the likelihood of winning the lottery.

I’m currently in Hong Kong attending the Music Matters Asia music industry conference, where, unsurprisingly, digital media and internet file sharing is the hot topic. The slogan of Day 1: mobile is the future.  The primary growth area (and really the only meaningful growth area) for music through 2010 is monetized mobile downloads.

Here are some highlights from yesterday’s panel discussions.  I’ll add info about more highlights over the next day or two.

-Major labels in Asia claim to embrace and look forward to digital, online music distribution as an opportunity more than a challenge.  I’m not sure if this was conference-induced exuberance or whether it’s a real sentiment (probably a little of both).  I’m also not sure whether this professed excitement is shared by the major label home offices in New York and London.  It would not surprise me if Asia executives were in fact more rosy about the future than their bosses because high piracy rates have historically forced music companies in Asia to be flexible and adjust to new situations, so embracing new revenue sources is natural for them.

-I thought the best panel of the day was “Meet the Neighbors,” the only non-music industry panel.  On this panel were executives from “neighboring” industries: videogaming/online gaming, television, and mobile communications.  They raised two of the most prescient points made all day.  First, one of the panelists remarked: I’ve been listening all day and I haven’t heard anyone talk about musicians.

1) Everyone talks about ringtones, downloading, market share, but what about the artists?  Cliche, yes, but it is an absolutely key point that the industry can only survive if people are able to connect and experience artists and technology and business models enable and encourage artists to create great music.

2) The industry has to get over it’s centralist, top-down mentality.  Music is not just what record companies distribute to passive consumers.  Consumers today want to create, and share their creations.  They want technologies and business models that enable that and are seeking and finding those regardless of what the business model record companies push.

The IP First Society, a nonprofit organization based in Shanghai, will host the Shanghai International Forum on Digital Media and Intellectual Property. The forum is being held in connection with the Shanghai Intellectual Property Week, and is designed to “bring together global leading thinkers, venture capitalists, bankers, investors, professional advisors, regulators, and policy makers to explore the interplay of digital media and intellectual property from strategic, economic and regulatory perspectives.”

I’ll be appearing on a panel entitled, “Where is the Way-out: Lock & Key vs. Open Access,” discussing whether content owners are better off allowing more open access to their works or employing technological protection measures (DRMs).

The abstract for my talk:

“Competing with Free”

Digital technologies and the internet give consumers unprecedented control over how creative works can be enjoyed and shared. The increase in consumer control results in a corresponding decrease in traditional entertainment companies’ control over their content. In response to this shift, large entertainment companies employ a combination of Digital Rights Management (DRM) and copyright enforcement to extend established business models online. The strategy is unlikely to succeed, however, because strict copyright enforcement and restrictive technological protections are out of line with consumer expectations. Consumers want value and flexibility from their digital content, and piracy offers both while DRM-protected content offers neither. The best way for legitimate content to compete with free content online is to structure a DRM-free internet entertainment distribution model that provides consumers with a combination of flexibility, convenience, service, and features superior to what illicit file-sharing services can offer, at a price point low enough that the switch from pirated to legitimate content is painless.

A podcast of Jesse Parker’s April 11 discussion hosted by the Berkman Center’s Digital Media in Asia Project is available for download here.

Jesse is the Founder and Managing General Partner of Dragonvest Partners – a fund that invests in talented Chinese entrepreneurs. He has over 25 years experience in the technology business sector and the Greater China marketplace. In this podcast he offers his unique perspective on how technological change has impacted China, his knowledge about the growth of digital media industries in China, and his strategy for how or why he invests in Chinese digital media companies.

Jesse Parker, an expert on investment in Chinese digital media ventures, will lead a discussion on Tuesday April 11 at 5PM in the Berkman Center Conference room.

Mr. Parker is the Founder and Managing General Partner of Dragonvest Partners – a fund that invests in talented Chinese entrepreneurs. He has over 25 years experience in the technology business sector and the Greater China marketplace. Come hear about his unique perspective on how technological change has impacted China, his knowledge about the growth of digital media industries in China, and his strategy for how or why he invests in Chinese digital media companies. Snacks and refreshments will be served. Please contact Susie Lindsay (slindsay@law.harvard.edu) for information.

Today’s talk with Peter Yu, sponsored by the Digital Media in Asia Project and Harvard Law School’s East Asia Legal Studies Program, will be webcast at 12:30.  Please vistit the Berkman Center homepage for more information and for a link to the webcast.  It’s in Real Audio format (unfortunately) so if you don’t have a Real Audio player you can download one here: www.real.com.

Celebrated Chinese film director Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine) has threatened to sue Hu Ge, a 31 year-old Shanghai audio engineer, with copyright infringement–because of a homemade spoof about steamed buns.  Hu was so disappointed with Chen’s latest film, The Promise, that he put together The Steamed Bun Murder, a 20-minute parody of the film, and posted it on the internet. Hu’s parody has become an overnight sensation in China, and something of a cause c�l�bre.

From The Times:

[Hu’s] satire, unprecedented in China’s carefully monitored media, has
attracted millions of viewers, almost certainly many more than paid to
see The Promise. The film has proved to be something of a box-office flop, although distributors say it has earned �15 million.

Chinese collapse in gales of laughter as they watch Mr Hu’s spoof. The Steamed Bun Murder
not only parodies the most expensive film made in China, but also pokes
fun at state television. He uses a poker-faced presenter and stuffy
communist terminology in his tongue-in-cheek report of the
investigation into the humble bun murder.

If Chen pursues a legal case it is unclear if Chinese courts would allow a parody fair-use defense. Such parodies are rarely produced or broadcast by the strictly controlled state-run traditional media, so these might be untested legal waters.

There is a developing trend of homemade spoofs gaining phenomenal popularity over the internet in China (e.g., the Back Dorm Boys, whose goofy dormroom webcam video of themselves performing Backstreet Boys tracks was such a sensation it landed them an advertising deal with Motorola). Clearly, Chinese consumers see the internet as a source of alternative content that’s in tune with the modern Chinese urban experience in a way that the conservative state-run media is not. Hu’s spoof is a salient example, taking direct shots at a state-run media perceived as stuffy.

This Thursday, March 2, we’re pleased to present a live and webcast event, co-hosted with the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School.  Professor Peter Yu will present “Elegant Offenses, Digital Opium and the Sinicyberspace.”  Lunchtime talks begin promptly at 12:30 p.m.  This talk is open to the public, and is located at Harvard Law School, Pound Hall 106. You are invited to bring your lunch beginning at 12 noon to meet the guest speaker and others in EALS and the Digital Media in Asia Project. We’ll supply fruit, cookies, and beverages.

We will post a link to the webcast on this blog shortly before the event.

From Professor Yu:

About Peter Yu:

Peter K. Yu (余家明) is Associate Professor of Law and the founding director of the nationally-ranked Intellectual Property & Communications Law Program at Michigan State University College of Law.  He holds appointments in the Asian Studies Center and the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media at Michigan State University. He is also a research fellow of the Center for Studies of Intellectual Property Rights at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China and a member of the affiliated faculty of the Working Group on Property, Citizenship, and Social Entrepreneurism at Syracuse University College of Law.  Born and raised in Hong Kong, Professor Yu is a leading expert in international intellectual property and communications law.  He is the editor or coeditor of three books and currently is working on a book titled Paranoid Pirates and Schizophrenic Swashbucklers: Protecting Intellectual Property in Post-WTO China.  Professor Yu has spoken at events organized by the ITU, UNCTAD, WIPO and the U.S. government and at leading research institutions from around the world.  He is a frequent commentator in the national and international media, and his publications are available on his website at www.peteryu.com.

Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson led a thought-provoking session Wednesday night (2/8/06) about his vision–enticing but embryonic–of using technology, the Internet, and even soccer to connect what he calls the biggest of the big–China–with the smallest of the small–Jamaica. His love for Jamaica, and his track record of helping the people there and truly changing lives, gave the presentation an added richness, sincerity, and importance. He was looking for suggestions and ideas from the group as much as he was looking to present ideas himself. And it was a good group–about 25 people, many happy to engage in a discussion about how to further a unique vision that still needs the right spark.

Unfortunately we had some technical problems with the webcast (we’ll fix that before the next event in our Digital Media in Asia speaker series).

Click here for a recap of the session at the Berkman Center web site.

To participate in Nesson’s online dialog about a China-Jamaica connection, check out his wiki.