Stand-up comedian Louis Szekely, better known as Louis C.K. is one happy man. Why? His social experiment, as he calls it, seems to have worked and he is reaping handsome profits out of it. Many bands, musicians and performing artists all suffer from one thing, piracy. Piracy can take a high profile production and reduce it nothing more than a viral bit torrent entry that makes no money for the artist. This is why Louis C.K., who has also been a victim of this in the past decided to go for respect instead of high end encryption and big name recording label avenues.
He decided to record, produce and distribute his latest stand up comedy routine, which he held at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan, all by himself. He hired a film crew who recorded the whole thing and in order to cut costs further, he directed the whole thing by himself and the result of it was a full length stand up comedy production. But the genius part came in how he was going to distribute the recording and for how much. Typically, when doing it with big name production companies, a lot of money goes into pre and post production costs such as marketing channels, pirate-proofing the content and so on. But Louis C.K. decided he was not going to have any of this so he built his own ecommerce site and posted the content up on it for sale. And the price? A mere $5 bucks!
When asked what his strategy was and why he was doing things differently, he replied, “This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.” He also added a message to Pirate Bay users and any other Bit Torrent site users:
To those who might wish to “torrent” this video: look, I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing. I don’t know enough about it to judge either way. But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions. Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I’m just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me. So, please help me keep this being a good idea. I can’t stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.
Sincerely,
Louis C.K.
Many people were probably waiting for the initiative to crash and burn what with the well known lack of conscience that bit torrent junkies have but in a surprising turn of events, the recording actually sold over 100K units in just under 48 hours. Now, this may not seem like much but considering Louis C.K. paid just under $200,000 for the whole production including the ecommerce site, he has actually made $200,000 in profit in 48 hours. Now, I don’t know about you but that’s a good profit.
Which brings up the age old question, is it better to try and beat hackers and bit torrent users by trying to encrypt and encode content or is it better to create a system that makes it so easy to get content that the need for piracy simple ceases to exist? This is especially because for most bit torrent pirates, their biggest concern is the billions that big name companies get at the expense of the end consumer and a usual argument is that the few buck pirated are nothing compared to what the main companies make in return. But this is a risky affair and this is evidenced by the fact that even with Louis C.K.’s content going for only $5 and his plea to torrent users, there are still a few hardcore torrenters who put the recording up on torrent sites, albeit some with long winded and pathetic apologies to Louis C.K. such as the one below:
yea its the new one yea i kinda feel bad putting it here but people like louis ck gotta realize without torrents and the net he wouldnt be anywhere bc honestly louis i know ur here and i know u mite be mad at me but u gotta realize not everyone has paypal , not everyone has credit cards, some people use net lounges, some have barely money for food, art = comedy should be shared with the mass , and Believe me u can judge the popularity more from the torrent downloads then the paypal sales, also if people like it , its easier to buy on there ipad/ipod or personal/work computers…more buzz = more fales
Hope you understand louie
sorry
Either way, it was big win for the free web and a blow to piracy and it goes to show that the people who pirate are not only human but also have a real value for respect credits, as Louis C.K. has helped us see.
