Pirating the Oscars 2016

Posted by Andy Baio

Every year since 2003, I’ve tracked the illicit distribution of Oscar-nominated films online in the ongoing war between Hollywood, the MPAA, and a bunch of scrappy kids on IRC.

I just updated all the data in my spreadsheet, now encompassing 445 nominated films from the last 14 years. You can view or download the data on Google Sheets.

In my analysis last year, I wrote about how the percentage of screener leaks seemed to be going down for the last few years. While increased accountability for Academy members and greater awareness of tracking tools may have contributed to the decline, it seemed more likely that DVD screeners themselves were growing obsolete.

Movie studios have been slow to adapt to Blu-ray for Oscar screeners, making them unappealing for online piracy groups compared to other HD sources.

The exception is when the screener is the only copy of a film that’s available, and thanks to the efforts of a single group this year, we saw a small spike in the number of leaked screeners.

A group named Hive-CM8 released an incredible 15 screeners in the nine days between December 20-29, almost all nominated for Oscars: The Hateful Eight, Creed, Legend, In the Heart of the Sea, Steve Jobs, Joy, Concussion, The Danish Girl, Spotlight, Bridge of Spies, Spectre, Trumbo, Suffragette, The Big Short, and Anomalisa.

They originally promised to release a total of 40 screeners, but stopped short either because of a security breach or a guilty conscience, depending on who you believe.

As a result, screeners for fully half of this year’s 32 nominated films have already leaked online.

The median number of days from a film’s release to its first leak online was only nine days, the shortest window since 2008. Only one nominee hasn’t leaked online in any form: the Brazilian film Boy & the World, nominated for Best Animated Feature. A webrip of Boy & the World was released on September 30, 2014.

More than a month before the ceremony, 97% of Oscar nominees have leaked online in DVD or higher quality, more than last year at this time.

Also worth noting: the number of camcorder and telesync releases continues to decline, with only five of this year’s nominees released as cams. This is partly because they’re low quality, but also attributed to fewer mainstream films nominated for Oscars. (Only major blockbusters like Star Wars tend to be worth the risk and trouble to record in theaters.)

Methodology

This year, I very nearly had to abandon the project because reliable sources for leak metadata continue to disappear. Orlydb went offline entirely, VCD Quality is woefully outdated for film releases, and others have stopped tracking films entirely.

Fortunately, I was able to find one comprehensive database: d00per, which is the sole source for all leak metadata this year. If you know of any reliable secondary sources for a pre-db with a decent search engine, let me know. (You can test with Anomalisa and Hateful Eight, which seem to be missing from all but d00per.)

For my spreadsheet, I include the full-length feature films in every Oscar category except documentary and foreign films – even music, makeup, and costume design.

I use IMDB for the release dates, always using the first available U.S. date, even if it was a limited release.

The official screener release dates are from Academy member Ken Rudolph, who kindly lists the dates he receives each screener on his personal homepage.

Questions, corrections, or additions? Get in touch on Twitter or leave a comment.

The First Round Capital Holiday Train Wreck

Posted by Andy Baio

Your annual reminder of the hidden costs of taking venture capital is here — it’s the First Round Capital Holiday Video, a yearly cringe-fest of startups parodying the year’s biggest pop hits, with lyrics tweaked to reflect the worst of startup culture. (Full lyrics at the end of the post.)

I have a grim fascination with these videos and their ever-increasing production budgets. Every year, I watch them with my hands shielding my eyes, and collect them in a YouTube playlist. (For some reason, 2009’s video is only on Vimeo.)

Of course, if you ask First Round about it, and probably most of the founders in the video, they’ll say, it’s all in fun! We’re just blowing off some steam at the end of the year! I know one of the partners at First Round. I know some of the people at the startups in the videos. I don’t think their intentions are bad.

But once these startups have taken funding, do they really have a choice?

This year, Crunchbase says First Round invested in 57 startups, a median amount of $8.5M and an average of $18.5 million.

If someone gives you $8.5 million, sits on your board, and owns a significant part of your company, you’re going to dance if they say “dance.” You’re going to sing if they say “sing.”

And you’ll ask your entire team to do it too, and they’ll be captured on video, streamable on YouTube for years after they quit or were laid off.

In a situation like that, you can’t really say no. You just put on the costume, smile, and dance.

Continue reading “The First Round Capital Holiday Train Wreck” →

If Drake Was Born A Piano

Posted by Andy Baio

This morning, my friend Charles pointed me to a song on Tumblr that blew up, a remix of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”

The original poster deleted it, so I’m mirroring it here.

It’s a terrible and amazing thing to listen to — a conversion of the original MP3 to MIDI, and back again to MP3. The resulting version sounds like Mariah as a player piano — none of the original recording is preserved, only a series of hyperactive notes matching the frequencies of the original song.

Incredibly, you can still make out the lyrics and music, though likely only if you’re familiar with the original song.

It reminds me of this German project from 2009, in which Austrian composer Peter Ablinger used a computer-controlled piano to play a child’s voice.

So I had to try out a couple other songs to see how it sounds. I’m pretty happy with the results. Enjoy.

And a bunch more on my Soundcloud playlist.

I used a web-based converter for the MP3 to MIDI conversion, and I used timidity and ffmpeg for the conversion back to MP3.

And, of course, just as I was finishing these videos, my friend Tim pointed out that Tim Troppoli tried this same technique earlier this year. And, go figure, he used Smash Mouth’s “All Star” too. It’s like the Lenna photo for audio.

More great examples in his video, including Piano Man and Stayin’ Alive. I’m not familiar with the Pokemon theme, and it was totally nonsensical to me. I can’t make out a single lyric, a great example of how your brain’s filling in the gaps.

Update: Here’s an example from 2009 of the same technique used on David Lee Roth’s isolated vocals from Van Halen’s Running with the Devil. And the vocals on this version of Oasis’ Wonderwall are particularly clear for me.

Lying With a Zero Axis

Posted by Andy Baio

In June, data journalist David Yanofsky wrote a Quartz article about chart design, “It’s OK not to start your y-axis at zero.”

Last month, Vox followed with a more spirited defense of the practice, “Shut up about the y-axis. It shouldn’t always start at zero.”

Both publications noticed a common trend: any time they published a chart that truncated the y-axis, they’d get a bunch of angry emails and tweets claiming it’s deceptive. But Vox and Quartz are absolutely right — context matters, and often, starting a chart at a zero axis can mislead too.

Vox’s article led to some angry responses, like this one from writer Ramez Naam:

Today, the National Review tweeted this (now-deleted) incredibly misleading chart about climate change, inadvertently proving Quartz and Vox right.

Twitter had a field day with it.

Snark aside, here’s one way to make the chart meaningful again.

Tracking the "Trump Is A Comment Section Running for President" Joke

Posted by Andy Baio

Donald Trump joined Twitter in March 2009, and announced his presidential campaign on June 16. Since then, if you’ve spent any time on Twitter, you’ve probably seen some variation of this joke:

This incarnation by Brian Gaar was posted last week, and got over 36,000 retweets.

But he’s hardly the first. Literally thousands of people have posted this sentiment, and I’ve personally seen several in my timeline with thousands of retweets.

Which got me thinking, who was the first and how did it evolve?

Let’s go back in reverse-chronological order, hitting some of the most popular versions.

On December 8, the day after Brian Gaar’s tweet last week, New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz got over 1,400 RTs with the same idea, this time adding an image.

Many people saw it from this tweet on November 22 by @mamasnark, which got over 10,200 retweets. (I see several people citing this tweet as the original when it reappears now.)

On November 10, Jon Stewart appeared at the Stand Up for Heroes benefit at Madison Square Garden and said, “It’s like an Internet comment troll ran for president.” This quote got extensive coverage from publications like the Hollywood Reporter, MSNBC, and Huffington Post.

Four days earlier, on November 6, Keith Olbermann appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher and said that Trump “sounds like an Internet comments section running for President.”

On August 7, Marc Andreesen tweeted it as an overheard comment, getting over 2,500 retweets.

On July 18, Barbara Haynes got over 13,000 RTs with this tweet that used the #DonaldTrump hashtag.

On July 14, a Daily Kos blogger wrote, “Donald Trump is what would happen if a reddit comment thread ran for office.” This quote was picked up on Twitter.

On July 8, The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi got more than 2,700 retweets for her take on it.

Only a single day after Trump announced his presidency, on June 17, a Twitter user in Johannesburg drew a parallel to the News24 comments section and tweeted the idea — though as a reply and with no retweets, it was likely only seen by her 332 followers that also follow Trump.

But, of course, the idea that Trump is an Internet comments section goes back long before he announced his candidacy.

On April 28, this similar joke got 357 retweets.

On February 27, this minimalist take from @lafix for nearly 350 retweets.

How far back does this joke go? The earliest incarnation of the “Internet comment personified” idea on Twitter is this tweet by a guy named Mark on April 27, 2011.

So, did all these people rip off Mark?

No, of course not. I’ve written about the phenomenon of multiple discovery before, and nowhere is it more obvious and easily provable than in the comedy world, and especially easy to document on Twitter.

As Donald Trump came online, and as his prominence in the public eye grew, many more people started thinking about his behavior.

Of course, there are plagiarists in the world who brazenly copy jokes on Twitter, Instagram, and elsewhere, sometimes resulting in huge audiences.

But most people simply drew the connection between garbage Internet comment sections and the way Trump acts, and tweeted their epiphany.

So, settle in. It’s going to be a long year.

Want many more examples? Oscar Bartos made @trump_comment, a bot dedicated to retweeting examples of this meme, and self-referential takes like this one.

Did I miss any major examples? Post a comment or tweet at me.

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