Evidence of meeting #26 for Canadian Heritage in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was music.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
Do you want to explain that, just very briefly?
President, Jumpwire Media LLC
You have an IP address linked to your computer, and if you block that IP address, people can't necessarily determine where you are or who you are. A lot of people use this when they use BitTorrent or use streaming sites.
The real key here, and the reason I built my company this way, is that I could see five years ago that everyone was already paying for content: they were paying for it with their data. People have been paying for content for a long time. People think that data is not worth anything and that they can't monetize it. But actually, you can; we do it all the time.
What most people don't realize is that BitTorrent is a file-sharing service. Each person has a little bit on their computer. But the interesting thing is that the trackers that track all the BitTorrent traffic moving through are public. Anyone can grab this data—the government, companies like mine. You just have to have a very good filtering system. The person who built our filtering system happens to be a friend of the Bram who built BitTorrent. So we have the best filtering system in the world, no question.
But we also have a Ph.D. on staff who knows how to clean that data, because the data can be very messy. First of all, if you're downloading an episode of Being Erica, and it's episode one, and you can also download the entire season of Being Erica, most people will put that as one thing. You have to strip that out or filter it to make sure that you have two separate areas: how many people are downloading the whole season and how many people are just downloading one episode. This is what we talk about when we talk about filtering.
Going back to this whole idea that you're paying with your data, there is so much free data on the web right now. When you set up a Facebook fan page, if you're the person who sets it up, you get all the free data. It's all there.
If you look on any YouTube video and look beside the views, click on the down arrows and you will see nothing but data, free.
Most people say that's not monetizable. It absolutely is, and if we had an Internet connection I could show you right now all the free data that's out there, that we use all the time. And BitTorrent is the same way.
People say that people haven't been paying for their content. No, they haven't been paying for it with money, but they've been paying for it with something that's better than money—it's their data. I'm always a bit shocked when people say, “Well, that's not really money.” I'm like, “Yes, it is.”
We talk with lots of music people all the time, and there are a lot of indies.... The music business is in disarray, and anyone who comes in here is going to be upset: their entire business model has collapsed, and they've been trying to preserve it. And I don't blame them, but there are all these indies that are changing the way it's done now. I meet them all the time. These young guys are making....
I mean, how much money do you really need to make, as an artist, if you're doing it yourself? If you make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year and you live out in Fergus, Ontario....
President, Jumpwire Media LLC
Life's good: in Canada, with free health care....
Conservative
President, Jumpwire Media LLC
I know.
Did you see what I did there? I was making you look good.
Conservative
President, Jumpwire Media LLC
I was just looking at all your websites. You guys are doing a great job. Every single one of you pops up as number one in Google search.
Liberal
Scott Simms Liberal Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL
I'd like you to monetize my data, then. That would be great.
This is very interesting, because the impression we get is that everyone seems to be madly off in different directions to find this new type of model. So what you're saying is that the model is there; it's just underutilized.
But is there anybody using it the way you have described?
President, Jumpwire Media LLC
Oh, my God, yes--I mean, so many. There's a brand new ad agency in Minnesota that no one knows about. It's probably going to be one of the biggest in the world. It's called Axiom Partners. All they do is data. They just look at data and then they go and sell the data back to the brands and say, “Here's what everyone's doing.”
The amount of free data online would baffle them. To get a client, I walk in, set up my computer in front of the CEO, pull down all their content, and show them all the free data out there. By the time I leave, I say, “This is your demographic, your psychographic. I just saved you a million dollars. When do you want to hire me?”
It's that simple. I'm surprised everybody's not doing it. But they are; there's a whole underground world of people--under 30, generally, which I am not--who are running these new companies that are starting to....
It's all about data. It doesn't get any more than that. There's something called an ad locker where you can put your ads. It recently came out, and I'm trying to find the information. My apologies if I got the name wrong. Essentially, it's this whole idea that you pick the ads you want advertised to you, put them in a little locker, and wherever you are on the web they're advertised to you, right? You don't see anything else. You just see the ads you like.
I think it's a genius idea. But this is all done on data.
Conservative
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Honestly, I have to admit that I have understood absolutely nothing in...
Bloc
Roger Pomerleau Bloc Drummond, QC
I will have to ask the question again so that you may perhaps express your answer differently.
Let us suppose that the music of an artist is used on the Web. How can he be paid for that? You talked about data and all but...
President, Jumpwire Media LLC
How do we make sure that they get paid? Who's “we”?
President, Jumpwire Media LLC
This is really difficult and controversial, because quite frankly--
President, Jumpwire Media LLC
No, no, I'm not that republican; I'm an eco-capitalist.
There is a long history of artists being abused by large companies who...and I have to be very delicate here, because they are some of my clients. But there has been a long history of artists being abused by people who find a way to place barriers to entry, and then leverage that, and give the artists, or the sports celebrities, or whatever....
If a gentleman who plays basketball is making $100 million, I can guarantee you there's an owner who's making $1 billion. And it has always been that way.
But now it has shifted. The paradigm has completely changed. It's been disrupted. Everyone is running around like chickens with their heads cut off. And I get it. But now I meet all these bands who create their own content. They place it on YouTube. They monetize it themselves. They don't need record labels. They don't need the government. They don't need anybody. They do it themselves. With the Internet and the advent of mobile, it's a do-it-yourself entrepreneurial world, which is what artists started out being anyway.
My sister is a painter, an artist. I run the business side of what she does, and it's difficult. Artists are all over the place. There will come a time when they will require people to do business for them, but I'm noticing that most of them do it themselves. They find a friend who helps them out, and they make a lot of money.
Like, if you're 16 or 17 years old and you're making $10,000 a month, we have a bigger problem. How are all these giant multinational companies we build going to entice a 16-year-old to work for them for $500 a week? It's not going to happen.
I have that problem now. They're like, “Why would I want to work for you when I can make ten grand a month on YouTube?”
I spoke at Ryerson University two days ago. I was shocked at how many 22- or 23-year-olds in radio and television weren't making a thousand bucks a month on YouTube. I threw that out to them. I said, “Why aren't you making a $1,000 a month on YouTube?”
So I've sort of danced around your question because I don't want to be too controversial, but you obviously see what my side is. I'm like, no, we're going through one of the biggest revolutions since the Industrial Revolution. A lot of people, generally older, are pretty upset because their entire business models have collapsed, and they're just trying to get towards retirement.
You're seeing it happen. In New York eight weeks ago, every single one of the major publishing companies, including Condé Nast, changed their CEOs. Most of them were under 50.
You have to be able to speak both languages. I speak some French and a little English. When I go to Quebec I feel like an idiot. But when I'm talking about digital or analog, I am completely comfortable in both worlds. I have no problem. I can talk to very technical engineers about semantic web and cryptology--all the way up to CEOs of major multinational media corporations. That's my job. I am the guy in the hammock. I'm the age group that has to translate for both.
And that's the future: the future is that I'm not sure what's going to happen next.
