Torrenting from Louis CK
Louis CK did something awesome. No, not his stand up special, “Live at the Beacon Theater” which I have not seen yet (but that likely is awesome). Not his unique, groundbreaking TV show Louie (which is awesome but not what I’m talking about).
No, he decided to go outside the traditional power structure of, well, comedy and film his stand up special himself. And distribute it himself for the low, low price of $5 on his website.
No special on Showtime, no special on HBO, not even Comedy Central. He talked to the New York Times about last month:
“HBO used to be the thing,” Louis C. K. said. “It used to be called an HBO special, even if you had a special on Showtime – people would call it your HBO special. But HBO gave up that. They don’t do it anymore. I offered them ‘Hilarious,’ to broadcast, and they said, ‘Well, we don’t do any business with you. You don’t have a show on HBO, so we don’t have a reason to promote you that way.’”
Showtime, he said, “was really nice but they don’t really push stuff, they just kind of stick it on.” And Comedy Central is “a weird place – they show too many commercials and they cut all the cursing out.”
So instead of two options he clearly doesn’t like (Showtime just plugging the special in whenever and an edited, chopped up version airing on Comedy Central), he decided to do something different: Release it himself.
He paid for two performances to be filmed at The Beacon Theater in New York City for $170,000. He edited the piece himself. And then he released it on his website.
And he has made money on it. He said so himself, and there is no reason to believe that Louis CK would be lying.
The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. 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.
Despite this very cheap price for arguably the best stand up comedian alive (at least in the pantheon with Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld and much more prolific than both of them combined), some people are still torrenting the special.
If you don’t know what torrenting is… then look it up.
Anyway, Louis CK addressed this in his IAMA chat (basically Louis CK stopped by and answered questions) on Reddit:
I think it’s really interesting that i brought the price so close to stealing and made the movie so easy to get and made it so clear that it’s a human offering it that it sparked a debate about pirating.to steal from someone and not feel bad, you either have to be a sociopath or view the act differently. One way is to remove “Someone” from the equation. You’re not stealing from a person. Big companies do a lot to help people view them as less than human. I heard a speach by Noam Chomsky who said that corporations are like super humans. They cannot be hurt like a human can and they never die. They are not succeptible to scrutiny or accountability. this makes them more profitable. If companies want to enjoy these benifits to some degree they have to live with what else comes with being not human. you miss out on compassion, forgiveness, comraderie, empathy, trust all kinds of shit.
The other thing is I can only do this because I’m an individual and I can decide what my risks are that are acceptable and i can make my own goals for what is success. So I forwent (is that a word?) a lot of conventional routes and tried this. i am risking and there may be a celing to the success, but for me it’s okay. i feel like as of this year, I make enough money as a standup my goal now is to bring the cost down for those who buy my stuff. i really mean that. It makes me much happier. Also I did see that there might be a tremendous upswing to this. I was really excited about this material and I though it would be really cool to just put it out there myself witha little electronic hat that only takes fives and just see what happens.
I don’t know yet if I’ll do it again. It hasn’t run it’s course. But I AM SO HAPPY I DID IT. Just so fun and it has been massively gratifying to share the positive of it with so many people who have written and expressed their feelings.
The day before I posted the video I went on pirate bay, which i had never visited and i read the guy’s thign where he posts letters from media co’s and artists and then his nasty and kind of hilariously chest beating responses. I thought “jesus. This guy is a piece of work. I would NEVER tangle assholes with this guy.” and then I thought about it. What do I say to these people? To hope they don’t make me regret putting it out there naked like this? So I wrote that little “to torrent” letter, just being a guy saying “dude. please?” it’s the best I can do. If it doesn’t work, well.
so anyway, seeing the people who have fought about it on pirate bay and that there is a crisis of concious and everythign that’s been written and to see that i’ve gotten paid. Just so interesting and hope-giving an dcool .
The guy (or girl but, let’s be honest, it is probably a guy) who uploaded the video wrote this:
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
Louis CK, being the kind of guy he is, couldn’t help but respond. On the IAMA chat:
oh one other thing before i go. i did read what that uploader wrote and i will say it was funny to me because he seems or is acting like he’s in terrible pain when he does it. he’s having a crisis of concious and just… oh man i’m so sorry but I have to do this!” but the crazy thing is, if it’s at all bothering him, why is he doing it?? he’s sharing it, not taking it.
Well, if you look at the page, it’s because he’s promoting his own stuff and using my project as an attractor. that’s happening on youtube also. So i’m learning that SOME pirating is caused by people piggybacking their own product on another. interesting.
The part that I find most interesting is how, in the comments of the torrent at Piratebay, people are actually apologizing to Louis CK for downloading it. Saying they can’t spare the $5 to buy it, so they torrented it. Saying when they get the money, they will do it. Others saying the bought it twice (!) to pay for those who didn’t.
Who knows if these people are telling the truth — I mean, it is the internet and we should all know by now not to trust anything on the internet.
By releasing it himself — and aggressively marketing it as being self-created without a corporate filter — Louis CK is at least getting these responses.
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One thing that comes to mind is that Louis CK may be the first major stand up comedian to do something like this, but isn’t the first person in entertainment to do it. Radiohead released In Rainbows for free on their website and just asked people to pay what they thought was fair — even if that was nothing.
Despite this, people still downloaded it illegally.
Not only did many more fans illegally download the album than those who bought it in shops, they downloaded it from illegal P2P and torrent sites like Pirate Bay than from the official Radiohead site.
“Even when the price approaches zero,” reads the report, “people are more likely to act habitually (say, using Pirate Bay) than to break their habit (say, visiting www.InRainbows.com).” While Radiohead are a beloved band, an illegal website like Pirate Bay may still be “a powerful brand with a sterling reputation in the minds of millions of young music fans”.
There are significant differences between In Rainbows and Live at the Beacon Theater — In Rainbows was available as pay-what-you-want for a limited time while Live at the Beacon Theater is available for $5 for, seemingly, forever.
There are similarities as well; Louis CK and Radiohead are critically-acclaimed artists who have a kind of large-cult following. That is, they are very popular but don’t get attention in the same way that the Dane Cooks or Justin Biebers of the world do.
The feeling among a significant, though still small, portion of fans seems to be that Louis CK and Radiohead are more deserving of actually purchasing their work instead of torrenting.
Any way, this is just one more interesting aspect of Louis CK’s experiment — and if early indications are true, it will work. And it will be even more interesting to see if more comedians follow suit or if Louis CK is a unique example because of his critical cachet and high profile show on FX.
