Tangents

I imagine a lot of people are in agreement with Henry Farrell over on Crooked Timber on which he complains that the new Gmail sucks. He’s absolutely right. Here’s hoping Google take note soon. In the meantime are there any good Greasemonkey scripts that fix Gmail somewhat?

Every so often I take a look to see what is currently topping the weekly charts for illegal downloads on Torrentfreak.com and I always have a question. What does it mean to be the most downloaded film?

Take this week’s chart topper: Real Steel certainly didn’t strike me as much of a proposition when it was in the cinema, but I wonder is it a film people are willing to watch though unwilling to pay for and thus more likely to top the charts for illegal downloads than others. These charts clearly don’t reflect the real worth of product but is the dynamic that distinguishes this consumption measurable?

So is it possible to take a film’s performance in paid legal consumption, compare against illegal unpaid consumption, measure the difference controlling for audience profile’s technical abilities etc etc, and discover a quantum that describes how willing people are to watch something, but are unwilling to pay: the Too Shit To Pay/Just Good Enough to Watch co-efficient (or TSTP/JGETW co-efficient… yes I would consider renaming it!)

Can some number cruncher start working on this? I lack skill, will, time…