Sunday Train: Frequency and Waiting on a Train

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I've been reading James McCommon's Waiting on a Train. And in cowed deference to the FCC, I will put the disclaimer up front that, yes!, I was more likely to read it and talk about it because Chelsea Green gave me a free review copy - since I would otherwise have had to wait until both it and I was in the library at the same time ...

... {of course, making me more likely to read it and talk about it is a gamble, since I'm not going to change my view of it because its a free copy - so if you have any publisher friends, warn them that if they reckon a book is a piece of garbage, they'd be better advised not to send a review copy}

The Chapter that is inspiring today's Sunday Train is "Amtrak Cascades: it's all about frequency". "Uznanski" is Ken Uznanski, former passenger rail chief of the Washington DoT:

"Once those intermodal trains can go through Stampede Pass, it will take some traffic off the main line and free up more room for additional passenger trains," said Uznanski.

By bringing the number of trains up to eight a day between Vancouver and Portland, ridership and ticket revenue will increase significantly. Currently ticket sales - what is known as farebox - cover 43% of the Amtrak Cascades' operating expenses; the state subsidizes the remainder. Run eight trains daily, however, the farebox recovery goes up to 70%.

It's all about frequency. When trains are frequency and convenient, ridership - particularly business travel - grows dramatically, said Uznanski.

It was a mantra I was to hear from experts all across the country - frequency builds ridership and only frequency significantly builds farebox recovery. Sure its great to have trains running more than 100mph in a corridor, but if there are only a couple of trains a day, they just aren't convenient enough to move people off the highway or away from the airport.

- John McCommons, Waiting on a Train, Chelsea Green Publishing: Vermont, p. 51

Back in Sunday Train: Rescuing the Innocent Amtrak Numbers from SubsidyScope, SubsidyScope's numbers proved to be hopelessly inept to serve as any basis for evaluating capital costs of individual Amtrak routes (even though SubsidyScope adopted the pretense that they could in fact be used for that purpose). However, as note, it might be possible to use their operating cost and revenue values as a rough guide to operating cost recovery.

Going back to the "Regional Corridor" services (shorter services running outside the Northeast Corridor), I tabulated a rough estimate of the services that had above median and below median operating cost recovery based on SubsidyScope's numbers.

So I've gone to the Amtrak timetables, and have done a rough estimate of effective frequency of weekday service. By "rough estimate" and "effective frequency", I mean:

• If the corridor seems to be served primarily by a single service, I only count that service, while most of it is served by a long distance service as well, I include the long distance train along the corridor as a service
• If there is a partial route that covers about half the corridor, I count it as half a service
• Service three weekdays per week counts as 0.6 of a service.

Going back to that table, there is some direct confirmation of the argument. There is a median of three (3) services per weekday for all regional corridors services, with a median of four (4) services for those with above-median farebox recovery, and a median of two (2) services for those with below-median farebox recovery.

To get a visual overview, the Regional Corridor farebox recovery table was originally formatted with above-median recovery ratios in the left hand column, and below-median recovery ratios in the right hand column. So simply breaking it into two tables - corridors with three or more services per day and those with fewer than three per day - and just having a look. It confirms that, while frequency is not the sole and solitary factor driving farebox recovery, there is a tendency for more frequent trains to be in the left hand column and less frequent trains to be in the right hand column.

Three or more services per weekday:

Corridor Route	Op Ratio	Corridor Route	Op Ratio
Corridor Services	58%
Chicago-St. Louis IL/MO	79%	Albany-Toronto NY/ONT	54%
Newport News DC/VA	77%	Capital CA	53%
Illinois-Saluki IL	70%	Empire NY	48%
Hiawatha IL/WI	66%	Wolverine MI/IL	39%
Downeaster ME/MA	64%	Springfield Shuttle MA/CT	32%
San Jaoquins CA	61%
Keystone PA	61%
Cascades OR/BC	61%
Pacific Surfliner CA	59%
Pere Marquette MI/IL	59%

Fewer than Three Services Per Weekday

Corridor Route	Op Ratio	Corridor Route	Op Ratio
Corridor Services	58%
Carolinian NY/NC	71%	Blue Water MI/IL	55%
Heartland TX/OK	67%	Zephyr IL	54%
Ethan Allen NY/VT	65%	Vermonter VT/DC	54%
Adirondock NY/Quebec	59%	Piedmont NC	52%
		Missouri River MO	45%
		Pennsylvanian PA/NY	43%
		Hoisier State IN/IL	15%

Whole Systems Thinking

There are two really substantial competitive advantages to frequency - but both require more than a high frequency schedule alone to tap that potential.

The first benefit is meeting demands for time-of-day sensitive travelers. Some travelers have wide latitude in the timing of their departure and/or arrival - others are faced with a more rigid earliest departure time or latest arrival time. The greater the frequency of the service on a rail corridor, the more travelers are within the real potential transport market for the corridor.

But of course, frequent and (even worse) extended delays - which are a regular occurance in McCommon's rail travels - will drive away precisely those people most strongly attracted by high frequency services - the time-of-day sensitive traveler. If the main origin of a corridor in one direction has three services that are well time for morning, afternoon and early evening travelers, and a low percentage of trains arriving and departing on schedule with frequent multiple-hour delays, reducing the number of services delayed, and reducing the average delay for those that experience delays is critical.

On the other hand, the main source of delay is limited system capacity and aging infrastructure and equipment - and investments that substantially improve the capacity to operate on time tend to be the same ones required to permit additional services to operate. So "frequency" is to a certain extent a stand-ing for "reliability and timeliness".

The second big advantage is the market for day trips. If there is one service each way per day, then travelers on one or both sides of the corridor are excluded from using the train for day trips. But of course, the length of the trip itself is also critical for making a day trip possible - a six hour train ride with a departure at 6am and a return departure at 6pm makes a day trip possible in one direction (but not the other) ... but it won't attract many day travelers unless that is a compelling destination from that origin.

By contrast, if there are five to eight services each way per day and it is a trip of three hours or less, that is a corridor that can be in the frame for people taking a day trip.

There is an "exception that tests the rule" in the above tables. The Pere Marquette is one service from Grand Rapids to Chicago which is effectively one of five Amtrak services per day connecting Northern Indiana and Chicago (supplemented by additional metro rail services in northwestern Indiana) ... which leaves Grand Rapids about 7:30 in the morning for an arrival before 11am, and returns from Chicago about 5:20pm for a return before 11pm. So it comes in the frame for a "day trip to Chicago", even though between Grand Rapids and New Buffalo MI it operates as a single service each way per day.

Of course, its difficult to relocate more moderate sized cities to be a convenient distances from a sequence of other moderate sized cities or a major mega-regional center like Chicago. The way to bring more origin/destination pairs within a three hour time frame is with faster average trip speeds. The first threshold is the 110mph level, which with tilt-trains over a reasonably efficient alignment is time-competitive with cars, so many car-based day trips are also rail-based day trips.

The second threshold is the 125mph level - the speed of the first generation of bullet trains - which with tilt-trains over a reasonably efficient alignment results in trips noticeably faster than most cars. That means that there are trips that are solid day-trips by rail that are not day-trips by car, which offers another step up in competitive positioning.

At this point, someone will normally chime in that there are special benefits to using a car for a day trip - but that is just a one-eyed way of saying that different transport modes have different mixes of advantage and disadvantage. A major benefit of a train for a day trip is that you can relax on the way down and the way back, rather than having to work at chauffeuring yourself.

And of course, trip speed interacts with service reliability in service of frequency in a very basic way: the sooner you can be confident that the train will be at its destination, the earlier you can schedule the same train to run back the other direction. A five hour route can get at most three day services each way from a pair of trains - and the morning departure is likely to be earlier than ideal in order to fit in three. A three hour route can get four or five.

So in reality, improved trip speed, improved reliability, and increased service frequency are a complex, and thinking in a pure analytical manner about the effect of each as independent factors is a mistake - what is critical is the leverage that is gained when all three are improved as a system.


Service Frequency Relative to the Market

That is the main point that this section of the book brought to mind as I was reading it yesterday. However, there is also a point that comes to mind when looking at some of the low-frequency services with higher farebox cost recovery ratios.

How frequent is "frequent". When doing the median test above, there is a premise that three trains per day is three trains per day, in whatever market conditions. However, stating the assumption is enough to highlight that it is a shaky assumption.

The focus above was on the share of the traveling public that are "in the frame" for considering taking a train for their trip. However, clearly, the number of those "in the frame" that then chose to take the train depends critically on what the alternatives are. In relative terms, four corridor routes per day would be an extremely low frequency on the Northeast Corridor, where in the absence of regional corridor intercity rail travel there would still by very high frequency air shuttles and intercity buses in operation as well as shorter distance metro rail services that extend out to cover the shorter intercity trips.

Indeed, those four trains per day might be viable options for making a large number of trips, but if they are competing against a wide range of much more frequent alternatives, the number of people "in the frame" will only become obvious when planes are grounded or there is a closure of a major intercity road artery.

By contrast, four trains per day from Columbus to Cleveland and from Columbus to Cincinnati would be a substantially higher frequency relative to the market, because there are no metro rail services, very few intercity bus services, and a much more limited (and, of course, more expensive per mile) choice of flights.


Time to share your thoughts

Now's the time to share your thoughts on the future of rail travel in this country. Don't fret that you haven't read the book - or even if you don't want to talk about frequency, reliability and trip speed. Just say, "On a related point" and have at it - if its on trains, it'll count as a related point.

d-_-b A Wartime Thanksgiving d-_-b

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Arc of the Sun

I am thankful that we have not engaged in any more reckless and ill-considered invasions followed by interminable occupations than we have already done.

   

   

   

______________________________________
Midnight Oil: My Country promotional video clip

Was it just a dream, were you so confused
Was it just a giant leap of logic?
Was it the time of year, that makes a state of fear
Methods, were their motives for the action

and did i hear you say
My country right or wrong

Did you save your face
Did you breach your faith
Women, there were children at the shelter
Now who can stop the hail
When human senses fail
There was never any warning, no escape

Did I hear you say
My country right or wrong
My country oh so strong
My country going wrong
My country right or wrong

I hear you say the truth must take a beating
The flag a camouflage for your deceiving
I know we all make mistakes

This is not a case of blurred vision
It's a case of
   black holes,
      pocket holes,
         soul holes

And did I hear you say
My country right or wrong
My country oh so strong
My country going wrong
My country right or wrong

Sunday Train: Revisiting 5 Lessons Learned from America was made for HSR

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I return to 2007 for "America was made for HSR" (Agent Orange links retained as the other blog I was posting to at the time is no longer up)

Wow, what a ride. Sometimes on Thursday ...

Thursday 22 March 2009, that is ...

... it felt like the America was made for High Speed Rail diary was going 200 mph itself. And I kept the ride going, cross posting the diary on the Euro and Booman Tribunes. And based partly on comments here and partly on comments there, kept polishing up the map.



Like the first diary, this is only a sketch, and 200mph routes are not the be-all and end-all of passenger rail, and this isn't a silver bullet ... but damn if it isn't one silver BB that is cool as all hell.

Now, I'm going to say the lessons follow below the fold in no particular order, so that if you see an order, I can call it serendipity, and if you don't see any order ... I told you so. ...

... (and anyway, any excuse to use the word serendipity is a good excuse, it's such a lovely word ... and you'd never believe how I stumbled across it ... but that, dear readers, is another story) ...

... with some additional reflections from late 2009.

Lesson One: Give the Silver BB image. Rinse. Repeat.

I am not sure I used the the Silver BB explanation enough times, early enough or often enough. I don't know whether I coined the phrase or stole it from someone else, but its become community property, used by farmerchuck, alizard, and A Siegel, ... among others, and hopefully more to come.

When people promise a "silver bullet" solution to solve all your problems (e.g., kill the werewolf that is troubling your village) and bake you the celebration cake too, it never works out as promised. Sometimes it does something useful, but its never a silver bullet ... indeed, some of the things that we are suffering from now, like gasoline powered motorcars spreading pollution, global warming, and suburban sprawl like an inexorable plague, were the silver bullets of an earlier day.

So the idea is to find the silver BB's ... the actual, if partial, solutions to a part of a part of the problem ... pack as many into a shotgun shell as can fit, and blast away. Repeat as necessary.

High Speed Rail is a silver BB. It has been proven to work at what it does, but what it does is only a part of a part of the solution. It can get some people out of some plane trips, and after that a smaller share of car trips, and after that a little air freight, and after that it can at times be used to assist with a very few road freight tasks.

And my diary was only about one small issue involved in one silver BB (but its such a shiny silver BB that lots of people wanted to talk about it, so they forced the discussion out of the confines of that tiny little issue).

So to everyone who pointed out that this does not solve Express land freight, or local commuter travel, or cross country air travel ... yes, and yes, and yes. But for getting people out of that plane that takes off from Columbus International Airport to O'Hare in Chicago, which reaches cruising altitude, cruises ten minutes, then starts its descent ... it can do that.

Aye-yup. At the time the silver BB's of walkable Transit-Oriented Development and the Nation of Bikeways strategy for cycling on the public right of way was already in view. Since then, the Silver-BB's of the Steel Interstate, regional stopping trains, Rapid Streetcars, trolley buses have also been added - and that is just the dimension of sustainable transport. Sustainable energy production, sustainable agriculture, and sustainable shelter are also each necessary and also each insufficient on their own.

Lesson Two: Use Old Numbers and People Will Call You On It

This all started out as a back of the envelope kind of exercise that spilled out of control. My cut-off for cities to look at was 1m ... that came from a rule of thumb circulating on the European Tribune. And I used 2000 Census Urbanized Area numbers. While these are not the SMA numbers that people are used to, it is also true that many of the cities near the edge will have grown over 1m mark in the 7 years since the census.

For the (very tiny) issue raised in the diary, it doesn't matter. The issue was, if criteria are set out, and HSR is allowed to grow project by project based on local enthusiasm and local market conditions, would the result look anything like a network created under a Master Map? Because, if we get a reasonably good Map from a bottom-up approach, then we can avoid the political fight over what the map should look like, and focus on getting reasonable criteria put into place.

In the new map above, the dashed red lines between the Northeast and Southeast networks show part of what happens if precisely three cities tip over the 1m mark ... Memphis and Nashville, in the traditional urbanized area sense, and Charlotte NC as a "networked" city based on (currently ongoing) investment in local rail knitting the broader area together. There's also dashed lines for Jacksonville. Don't fret if you reckon that there are more ... it could easily take thirty years for the system to be built out, and by that time a number of cities will come into the frame.

I have yet to see any dramatic proof in any of the dramatic top-down maps offered that they offer something dramatically better than setting more or less reasonable criteria and getting started.

And this leads straight into lesson three ...

Lesson Three: What Is High Speed?

We Americans are awfully insular people. I should have said seven times that what we call "High Speed" in the US is simply not high speed. 100mph is not HSR. We were going 100mph in 1930. European and Japanese HSR had reached 150+ mph by the 1960's, and have since built routes and trains that allow effective trip speeds of 200mph ... for conventional High Speed Rail. This is not "maglev", but steel wheels on steel tracks.

Now, 100mph is a really good idea, for both passengers and freight. I would love to see a 100mph network from one side of the country to another (noth to south and east to west). I would love to see 100mph lines from New York and Boston to Albany, then through the upstate cities to Buffalo, then to Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Newark, Columbus, Dayton, Cincinatti, Louisville and on ... and Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, west across Michigan and to Chicago. And multiply that nationwide.

In trying to find a term that allows me to convey a feeling of pretty darn quick without making America look silly and backward in Europe, I've settled on "Express" for that "1930's era HSR" kind of pace.

And bear in mind that the French are not shy about taking their TGV off the high speed corridor onto the regular train network (though not running at 150mph or 220mph). The Paris-Bordeaux service is high-speed less than half-way, from Paris to Tours. So if the high speed corridor bypasses a smaller city, that does not mean that all the services bypass that city. Some will come out of the corridor on a local Express rail network, pick up passengers, and return to the corridor further along.

Indeed, this French service has a terminus in a resort area where they do not allow overhead electric wires for the TGV, so its being towed by a diesel locomotive:


So I probably should have stressed that HSR corridors are the trunks for HSR services, but the services are not limited to the corridors. In particular, the HSR will have a station at a major hub airport if it passes in the vicinity ... and the remaining HSR stations will be selected from the three to five most important interchange stations between local commuter/shopping rail systems and interurban Express passenger rail system ... whether those systems are in place or still on the drawing board.

And then Senator Obama won the Presidency, and made Roy LaHood his Secretary of Transportation, and the entire fuzzy mess was clarified with their three tier system - true "Express HSR"; the 125mph tier of "Regional HSR", slower than Express HSR but faster than road transport; and the 110mph tier of "Emerging HSR", time-competitive with road transport, at roughly half the cost of Regional HSR and a fifth of the cost of Express HSR.

I argued at the time and still think that this is very politically adroit. It is, indeed, much of the political foundation for the present situation where the White House submits a budget figure for HSR and the political fight is whether to raise that by 20% or to quadruple it.

Indeed, I wish the administration could have been that adroit on most things - getting the argument to be on whether to be a little bit better than the White House proposed or a lot better would be a welcome sight in either the Health Insurance Reform or Climate Bill debates.

Lesson Four: Running Next to Highways

A lot of people raised the question of where we are going to get the Right of Way for these corridors ... and a lot of people suggested using Interstate Highway right of way. When I took this to the European Tribune, I discovered that the Europeans are way ahead of us here (and I owe a special thanks to DoDo at the European Tribune):

This is in the Netherlands:


This is on a Belgian/German line:


This is in Italy:


This is in France:


This is on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, and actually answers the question, "what do you do when the expressway is too bendy for HSR?" ... "You use the non-bendy parts and provide a straighter line corridor for the bendy bits":


So, yes, it would appear that one option is to build the HSR corridor into the fringe of selected Interstate Highways. And to answer the question as it is tickling up through some of your clever brains ... yes, all of these systems have automatic sensors to detect a car falling onto the line, in addition to their structural features designed to make that as unlikely as possible.

This is still a critical lesson. Indeed, after the 110mph Midwest and Ohio Hubs have been upgraded to 125mph, when it comes time to provide an Express HSR corridor between the greater New York area and the Great Lakes, a corridor generally along the I-80 alignment through New Jersey and Pennsylvania may bear a closer look

Lesson 5: The Core Corridors

On the European Tribune, I was asked to compute the geometric mean of population for mile for the various two-city pairs, to get an idea of where things would probably get started first. So I did. The geometric mean is the two populations multiplied together, then take the square root. The reason for using it instead of the simple average is that it adjusts for the fact that a pair of 3m:3m cities will have a bigger interurban travel market than a pair of 5m:1m cities.

And that is partly encoded in the map above. There was a substantial break between 16,000 and 18,000, so all the trips from 16,000 up (the biggest is New York / Boston at 39,000 average per mile) are shown in in the widest lines, and the ones 16,000-10,000 in the next wider lines.

The core lines (those over 16,000 in bold) are ... on the East Coast:
* 39,508 New York / Boston
* 33,476 New York / Philadelphia
* 31,627 New York / Baltimore
* 27,073 New York / Providence
* 20,978 New York / Washington
* 14,335 Orlando / Tampa
* 13,777 Washington / Virginia Beach
* 12,506 Washington / Pittsburgh
* 10,901 Miami / Orlando

In the Great Lakes / Midwest:
* 21,625 Chicago / Detroit
* 18,013 Chicago / Indianapolis
* 12,625 New York / Cleveland
* 11,828 Indianapolis / Cincinatti
* 11,114 Chicago / Cleveland
* 10,333 Chicago / Minneapolis (via Milwaukee)

In ... well, let's just call it Texas:
* 15,923 Dallas / Houston
* 11,140 Houston / San Antonio

On the West Coast:
* 37,435 Los Angeles / San Diego (via Riverside)
* 14,717 Los Angeles / Phoenix (via Riverside)
* 14,285 Los Angeles / Las Vegas (via Riverside)
* 12,687 Seattle / Portland

Now, in terms of population-miles served per dollar, the Express rail system is going to give the most "bang for the buck" in a lot of the United States. However, some areas could justify HSR right now, if the funding was available ... and, the more we build out an Express Rail network, the easier it will become to justify a HSR project, because of the opportunity to run HSR trains out of the HSR corridor into the Express passenger rail network.

Remember, this is just one silver BB ... but it sure is a shiny one.

If anything, I would amplify this. A single Express HSR corridor from New York City through northwestern NJ and northern PA, northern Ohio and northern Indiana to Chicago, combined with junctions to corridors already planned for 110mph systems (which, recall, can be upgraded to electrified, 125mph corridors in a series of incremental upgrades) means:

• NYC / Chicago via lots of country in the middle of nowhere, and
  
• NYC / Cleveland / Toledo /Detroit, junctioning with the 125mph corridor in NW PA;
  
• NYC / Pittsburgh, junctioning with the 125mph corridor in NW PA;
  
• NYC / Columbus / Dayton / Cincinnati, junctioning with the 125mph Triple-C corridor in northern OH;
  
• Chicago / Cleveland / Buffalo, junctioning with the 125mph Triple-C corridor in northern OH;
  
• Chicago / Detroit / Toronto, junctioning with the Columbus/Detroit corridor in NW OH
  
• Chicago / Columbus, junctioning with the Columbus/Detroit corridor in NW OH
  
• Chicago / Pittsburgh, junctioning with the 125mph Triple-C corridor in northern OH;
  

... and of course with the northern sections of the hypothetical "Appalachian Hub" proposal, the rang of destinations expands further.

So while I argue it is essential to think through what trips it makes sense to provide with Express HSR, given the populations and distances and other factors that drive transport markets ... it continues to be a mistake to think of Express HSR corridors in isolation from the next tier down.

All Done ... well, not all done learning lessons, but these are five that I wanted to write up ... a lot of others are still percolating in my head.

... and I can only underline that - I have only just begun to learn!

Midnight Oil: Forgotten Years

Still it aches like tetanus / It reeks of politics
Signatures stained with tears
Who can remember, we've got to remember

The hardest years, the darkest years / Forsaking aching breaking years
The time 'n' tested heartbreak years
These should not be forgotten years

The blinded years, the binded years / The desperate and divided years
These should not be forgotten years
Remember

Small Teaspoon Model Victories against Rupert 'The Pirate' Murdoch and PirateCorp

Burning the Midnight Oil for Breaking the Silicon Cage

About a month ago, I asked, " Monday, October 19, 2009
Can the Teaspoon Model stand up to Bloodsucker Streaming Sites?"

Now, on the occasion of the first small victory of the "Teaspoon Model" over PirateCorp (aka NewsCorp), I'm catching my breath and looking back at this process. Note that if you have tuned in just for the victories, you should scroll down to the section with "Victory" in the title.

Over the past month, its become clear that one of the biggest bases of support - not active support, but tacit complicity - lies within the NewsCorp media empire itself, on the MySpaceCDN servers owned by 20th Century Fox's "Intellectual Properties" division.

That in itself is ironic, because the whole point is that these are by and large neither creations, productions, nor licensed works of any NewsCorp enterprise. They are, rather, bootlegs being illegally copied by uploaders, and then repeatedly extra-legally copied by NewsCorp when they stream the files on request.


Killing a Creative Field by Loving their Work

Of course, these free video sites streaming hosts could not exist if they had to vet each and every upload - their revenue streams are not deep enough to pay for the army of video vetters that would be required. So the law permits these type of sites to operate on an "action on complaint" basis, where a copyright owner complains about an infringing work, and then the site either contests the claim or takes the work down.

The dilemma facing creators of collaborative works, trying to find a way to generate a stream of revenue to pay all of their collaborators, has been described by Clay Shirkey in Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable (whom I referred to in What Can Newspaper Reporting learn from Yuricon?, but I did not quote this section):

Back in 1993, the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain began investigating piracy of Dave Barry’s popular column, which was published by the Miami Herald and syndicated widely. In the course of tracking down the sources of unlicensed distribution, they found many things, including the copying of his column to alt.fan.dave_barry on usenet; a 2000-person strong mailing list also reading pirated versions; and a teenager in the Midwest who was doing some of the copying himself, because he loved Barry’s work so much he wanted everybody to be able to read it.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of "When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem." I think about that conversation a lot these days.

And of course, this precise dilemma is faced quite widely: this is precisely the challenge that the creators of Japanese anime are facing: what do you do when 14 year olds can blow your business model out of the model in their spare time? And motivated by a love of your work?

I have speculated on how to generate the finds to producer creative works based on small-sum crowd-financing by fans of the work. But for the creative fields that are facing financial stress, there is also the question of how to keep putting food on the tables of the creators while waiting for the future support systems to become established.

Anime is clearly an example of a creative field facing financial distress in the New Information Economy, and in the US market in particular. As I noted in the streaming anime site discussion that prompted Teaspoon Model:

The Synch-Point R1 division of Broccoli shut down in 2005. The Geneon USA division was shut down in December 3, 2007. Central Park Media filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation in April of 2009. Last month, ADV finished the re-organization it was forced into by threat of insolvency, re-organizing as AEsir/Sentai and spinning off its production arm.

That leaves Viz Media, Bandai and Funimation as the substantial surviving dubbing houses, with AnimEigo, Manga, Media Blasters, and Nozomi all adopting lower overhead niche marketing distribution strategies focused on sub-only thinpack boxset distribution

The Rise of the Bootleg Streamers

The chart on the right is the Alexa "Reach" tracking of some of the current top site in the "AnimeToplist.com" site that allows bootleg video streaming sites to list themselves and viewers to vote for their preferred sites (this is done using the comparison feature at Alexa, so only the top-ranked site shows up in the above link).

Where the reach of a site is very "spiky", this shows that a lot of the viewers are following a particular favored show, and so the sites that can link to a streaming copy of the latest episode - which includes, of course, uploading the copy onto free streaming sites themselves - gets a surge in traffic as the viewer tune in. Of course, they get pageviews - the heavy lifting of streaming the video is done by the free streaming hosts, like MySpaceCDN.

In that particular popular bootleg site there is that notable dip that hit in the middle of this year. It may be that the site generated enough traffic to attract the attention of a copyright holder, with a sweep through one or more popular series leading the viewers to head elsewhere. That suspicion is strengthened when it is compared to one of the more popular single-series sites, that focused on "Naruto Shippuden", which receives an up-tick in reach at the same time.

But what can be done? If one site is the target of a sweep, social media networks will quickly spread word of what other sites to go to, for whatever shows have been disrupted. And if a site is prominent enough to be the target of the sweep, some of its viewers have become community members, and they will respond by working to upload replacements.

And there will always be replacements available. Bootleg anime downloads are available via torrent download, where the people downloading are also, as part of the process, uploading for others, so that there is no central storage site for a copyright or other rights holder to target. Any given rights holder only has incentive to target their own works, so while some popular series may be down, there will be others that are still available, maintaining the community.

If in the extreme, a site collapses under determined attack, it will just be recreated as one or more new sites - since the sites only link to the works, and do not stream the works themselves, they can survive on very slender revenue streams.


The Evolution of Crunchyroll

There was a different streaming site model. The site "Crunchyroll", the "Youtube of Anime", is a site that did its own streaming. However, this was not without its challenges, as found in forum postings on various decisions made in the course of its evolution. This from late in 2006:

Posted Dec 28 2006, edited Jan 22 2007
A lot has happened since the 23rd of December. I will leave out the little details and just focus on one thing. Shinji announced that we are now no longer able to upload or watch licensed material. So all videos that are licensed in the United States either have been removed or will be.

What had happened is as follows. Costs for running the site were rising quickly. This month there was 4 times as much traffic as compared to the previous month, according to alexa.com (as you can see in the link under this paragraph). Shinji estimated this month's bill to be at around $9,000. He later stated that he had somehow got enough money together to pay this off. So there are two reason for why all licensed material has been removed. 1, with less videos, there will be less traffic to the site and 2, he wont have to worry about the site being taken down by some company.

Early in 2008, thanks to strong donation revenues from supporting members, Crunchyroll was able to take down the web-ads:

after a long time of trying to combat crappy advertisements, i've decided to just take them down for now. there were some issues with the ads not always being family-friendly, or some shady ads that redirected people -_-...
...
crunchyroll originally started as a site for fun, it was a pure site that simply wanted everyone to experience the culture and joy that is asian media, but things are always more complicated than that -_-. so this is one of my attempts to make go back to crunchyroll roots and be purely about the user experience =D i want crunchyroll to be the best awesomest site on the internet ever, so it has to look good too, right? ;P

please please PLEASE thank the all crunchyroll star supporters for making this possible!!! without them, i wouldnt be able to do this. donations still aren't able to cover all of crunchyroll's costs, so i'll still continue finding ways to keep the site running~ but they do help a lot =D for sure i can keep ads off for 2 weeks, maybe longer..

please help out by donating here: http://www.crunchyroll.com/donate
...

Also in 2008, Crunchyroll was successful in negotiating for the producers of work to upload directly to the site:

Hi everyone,

I've been working hard with the great folks at ADVFilms to bring you guys a really cool Anime! starting today, CR is going to start showing episodes of the series Welcome to the N.H.K. right here for free for everyone in the U.S./Canada/U.K. (we'll be putting up 2 more episodes every week!) I think anyone who's a bit Otaku like me will find it really funny ^_^

Click to watch episode 1 and episode 2!

Also, ADV is running a special promotion to purchase the DVDs at half off. So please buy it to show your support!

Finally came the big announcement that Crunchyroll was changing from streaming videos uploaded by fans to videos uploaded by the producers of the work:

I'm working with TV TOKYO to bring you the best anime titles immediately after broadcast! Starting January 8th, we'll have the newest eps of Naruto Shippuden, Shugo Chara, Skip Beat!, and many other titles on CR with english subs for ppl everywhere possible (with some exceptions like Japan).

We're now working with so many great partners like Gonzo, Toei, ADV, Media Blasters, Directions, Udon, Organic, etc...and with their help, we've been able to bring some of the coolest Asian content to you guys. We are also working with even more partners in Japan to get permission to show all the content on the site (which means you can keep enjoying it!) Now with TV TOKYO, we're going to take CR to the next level--they're the largest anime TV station in Japan, they produced Bleach, Cowboy Bebop and premiered Eva (my fav anime of all time~!!)

This isn't any normal announcement, but the beginning of something awesome for Asian entertainment! CR has been growing so much that now so many companies from Japan, Korea, and everywhere are noticing and wanting to work closely with us. We'll be getting content straight from the source, so the quality of everything will be much better, and immediately available from our partners (so we don't need to wait for user uploads!) Plus by watching on CR, we can help support the anime producers so they keep making more great content. All of us at CR have been working really hard to make it happen! I know ppl have questions, and I don't have all the details yet cause we're working them out, but check back for updates!
...

As the announcement notes, there were more details to follow. The biggest detail was the primary release model, with paying subscribers ("premium members", at around $7/month) having access to most Crunchyroll series an hour after Japanese broadcast, and then most series becoming available for ad-supported free streaming a week later.

So now I turn to Alexa for Crunchyroll. For context, I give DailyKos (the red plot, ironically) as well as three of the bootleg anime streaming sites. In 2008, Crunchyroll is the dominant anime streaming site - even though by that time, they have an ongoing site policy to take down any anime that was licensed for distribution in the US, while most rival bootleg streaming sites are leech sites that link to free video streaming hosts.

With the new model, much long-time content - including unlicensed bootlegs of shows never licensed for US release - was taken down, with all material to be uploaded by the rights holder and distributed under the terms specified by the rights holder. As well, many non-US members were faced with the headache of a patchwork quilt of national distribution rights: with different national laws and different preferences of different broadcasters and DVD distributers, there is little rhyme or reason as to which series a non-US viewer will be able to view on Crunchyroll.

The impact of that on Crunchyroll's reach is dramatic - but of course, had already been funded primarily by a smaller number of donating members, now formalized as premium members.

Here is a look at the same information, focusing on the last month.

Now, the uniform picture of doom and gloom that would be gleaned from a quick glance at the red trend arrows is exaggerated by the anime release schedule, since the snapshot date happens to be in a lull in the weekly schedule. However, stepping back to the last traffic peak, the last weekly peek for Crunchyroll was a reach of around 0.075%. The four bloodsucker leech sites shown appear to be at roughly 0.02%, 0.015%, and two at 0.005% - a total of 0.045%.

And there are a host of others - another three or four at 0.005% and ten or twenty at 0.001% and where Crunchyroll clearly dominated the streaming sites in 2008, the bloodsucker leeches may now be gaining ground.


The Source of the Competition

However, the reason these bloodsucker leech sites proliferate is because they directly require such a small share of the total resources that they rely upon. The major part of the bandwidth resource is not paid by their server - its paid by the free streaming sites.

Data-mining the sites for links is what revealed the heavy reliance of one site on MySpaceCDN (this was the site that gained the attention when its site administer whined about FUNimation, one of the most aggressive rights holders in copyright enforcement, sending a legal notice to its server). Extending the same data-mining tools - "wget" and "sed", plus sed and batch scripts - to more sites showed that there are three main sites that these bloodsuckers rely upon for their free streaming - some relying primarily on one, some relying heavily on two or all three:

• Megavideo
  
• Veoh
  
• MySpaceCDN
  

There are additional sites that are important supplementary sources, but these are the three primary sites.

Which means that the "Teaspoon Model" that I originally proposed simpler to get launched than I had at first imagined:

And swatting down that cloud of bloodsucking flies would seem to be impossible but still, I wonder. After all, as I noticed when I started looking into this - being an aggregator for material available elsewhere in the Internet means pointing to where to find the material. And the reason they attract memberships (they are presently trying to raise $100 for their new and improved site design) is because its time consuming to wander around the back alleys and dank corners of the Internet trying to find places where the bootleg material is available.

So this is what I was thinking. Perhaps a small, struggling company that wanted to reduce the density of the cloud of bloodsucking flies draining the work of the artists who create this material of market value could gain leverage not by trying to find the Super-Teaspoon - but by recruiting a supporting group, each armed with ordinary teaspoons.

There'd have to be at least one person at the company actually sending out the letters to the sites streaming the bootlegs - but they would be far more effective if backed up by ten or twenty people contributing a couple of hours a week tracking down where the material is located. Indeed, the "white hats" could drop in info on where to get the material legally while at the bootleg bloodsucker streaming sites, including the proliferating opportunities for legal free streams.

At the outset, the Teaspoon Model could focus on effective strategies for bootlegs uploaded to these three hosts. It would then be up to the bootleg streaming sites to come up with countering strategies - but as their free streams keep disappearing, the alternative of the licensed free streams, with no problem of shows vanishing and having to be replaced, there is at least the prospect that some will just give up trying to stream in direct competition with licensed free streams, and instead redirect US viewers to the licensed site for material that is legally available.


Celebrating Small Victories for the Teaspoon Model

That leaves the pragmatic question of how hard is it to pursue this model?

Note that what I have been doing in exploring is not the full-fledged Teaspoon Model, where a rights holder works with a community - though in a sense, the move of Crunchyroll from illegal streaming of unlicensed shows to uploading of shows by the rights holder was a move in the same spirit.

Rather, as I have been pursuing my research on this market, I have been emailing the lists of links to various stakeholders, including both rights holders of various sorts and the free streaming hosts.

Megavideo Megavideo is the most straightforward case. Whenever they receive a cc: of a long list of bootleg anime on their servers, those animes disappear. The same was true of the big set of links I gleaned of series competing directly against licensed free streams from Crunchyroll. Of 1,700 links (some of them duplicates across the two sites), over 99% have been taken down.

Veoh Veoh has been more hit and miss. After taking down almost all links from an earlier list they received, their first receipt of the latest collection of links seemed to generate no response. However, of the two sites I was examining, one had no Veoh links at all - but a large number of links hidden behind a php server. Further investigation showed that these were backdoor links to files that Veoh used to stream videos.

However, it may be that the anime site that so cleverly went through the backdoor for files at Veoh servers shot itself in the foot. After Veoh received those links, almost all of them went down. The Veoh embedded streaming player, of course, gives viewers a path to the Veoh site - and it seems that Veoh is not so keen on passively streaming files, hidden behind the bootleg anime sites streaming player. Between that and the final phase, reported in the next session, that is a total of 943 unique Veoh links taken down.

MySpaceCDN There was, however, no evident response from MySpaceCDN. On other other hand, when looking at the drop/retention rates of the Veoh files, I saw that some series were clearly receiving attention from another party. There were not enough of my links going down for it to be coming off of the lists I had distributed - but too many to be background turnover..

Looking at the AnimeNewsNetwork, I saw that those were TV Tokyo shows. It is, of course, not surprising that I had a lot of TV Tokyo shows in my lists of links, since last week I focused on series competing head to head with Crunchyroll, and their deal with TV Tokyo was the foundation of their move to all-licensed streaming.

Still, I went looking, and found some TV Tokyo email addresses, and forwarded the links. And today, I checked my master list of MySpaceCDN and, finally, after nothing bus frustration on the MySpaceCDN front, success. 523 MySpaceCDN series taken down.

So, while there is no indication that Rupert Murdoch's MySpaceCDN servers have abandoned its tacit complicity with the bootleg anime streaming sites: when faced with a demand from a rights holder, even NewsCorp must submit.

And even, as a research project, I put more work into this than an ordinary community supporter might do - on the other hand that was over 2,500 bootleg streams coming down as a result.


Looking Ahead to the Teaspoon Model

One thing that has become clear is that the strategy of using the bootleg host streaming sites to find, organize, and present links to bootleg animes on the big free streaming sites is much more efficient than wading through those big streaming sites themselves. Finding, organizing and presenting of the links is, after all, what the bootleg streaming sites are doing.

Provided that the conduit to TV Tokyo remains open, it would only take an hour or two a week to collect new releases and a few hundred of links from back catalogs - and, of course, the links are readily collected with full series and episode information, as all the popular sites include that information in their html page title code. Another hour to vet that the links are live, and the list is ready for sending on.

Clearly, if the original rights holder cooperates, a small group of five to ten supporters of a licensed streaming site could hold a market space for a licensed streaming site to operate with only a modest contribution of time from each. The group would require one or two members with some skill in writing scripts for stream editing - which could be Perl, sed, awk, or even Forth. But other than that, all it would require is the access to the internet.

Sunday Train: The Birmingham Hub

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Programming Note: I recently received for review a copy of Waiting on a Train by James McCommons, published by Chelsea Green Publishing. I'll likely be talking about it next week, but til then, you can read James Kunstler's Intro online at AlterNet.

Back in early September, I discussed the Steel Interstate in the context of the Appalachian Hub. The concept of the Steel Interstate is electrifying main rail corridors and establishing 100mph Rapid Freight Rail paths.

The broadest application of this concept is the proposal to Electrify STRACNET, the STrategic RAil Corridor NETwork.

The Appalachian Hub, recall, is a hypothetical Emerging/Regional HSR passenger rail network, modeled on the Midwest Hub and Ohio Hub plans.

And it is hypothetical, of course, because the state governments of the Appalachian regiona have been laying down on the job. The High Speed Rail corridor planning framework established under the Clinton Administration in the 90's is a bottom-up system, with states establishing High Speed Rail commissions, advancing plans to the stage of gaining designation as a HSR corridor, sorting out the financing, and applying for Federal funding.

This was almost entirely a "paper railroad" process during the eight years of the aggressively anti-railroad Bush administration. Of course, the low priority place on national security by the Bush Administration was most dramatically shown in its willingness to send US service men and women to fight and die overseas in pursuit of narrow partisan political advantage and the interests of the Oil Lobby ... but their aggressive anti-rail stance was yet another example of sacrificing US national security on the alter of the interests of the Oil Lobby.

In a a large sub-continental nation that imports 2/3 of the petroleum it consumes, the capacity to haul freight across the country by domestically generated electric energy is important for allowing our economy to cope with oil price shocks without collapsing into recession.

At the same time, its vital logistic support capacity for national security in the event of a serious disruption of a major oil export sea lane.

And its not just the Bush family that sacrifices US national security so that it can pander to foreign and domestic oil interests ... its a trait of the modern Republican Party to use tough talk on US national security as a smoke cover for their policies which betray national security for thirty pieces of silver.

So the hypothetical Appalachian Hub includes Steel Interstates built on Electrification of STRACNET. But don't get the priority turned around - the electrification of STRACNET is a vital national priority, while the adoption of those corridors for the Appalachian Hub is an effort to leverage that foundation policy to gain additional benefit for the Appalachian region.


The Central Appalachian Hub

This is the context for the Appalachian Hub: the state-based system of HSR corridor planning has resulted in extensive plans backed up by ongoing incremental improvements in the Northeast, Great Lakes and eastern Midwest, and the Atlantic Coast down to North Carolina.

In the area south and east of South Carolina, there is some notional planning for extending the Southeast Corridor to Florida and for a Gulf Coast corridor - but not backed up by the same state level support as elsewhere in the Eastern US. And in West Virgina, Kentucky and Tennessee, not even that much.

In that context, I sketched in two Steel Interstate corridors, to be used as the backbone of an Appalachian Hub. This first is the Steel Interstate proposed by Roanoke-based RAIL Solution from Harrisburg, PA to Knoxville, TN, extended along the STRACNET corridor from Knoxville through Chattanooga, Nashville and on to Memphis. The second cuts across Tennessee and Kentucky, following the STRACNET corridor from Cincinnati through Louisville, Nashville, and Chattanooga to Altlanta - and connecting into the Midwest and Ohio Hubs at the north and the Southeast and Gulf corridors in the South.



So, there's the backbone in Kentucky and Tennessee (note in the figure that an off-STRACNET Louisville-Indianapolis option is included, as a more direct Nashville/Chicago route) ...

... and I have previously looked at the more northern part of the Appalachian region in West Virginia and Pennsylvania ...

... but when looking at the STRACNET map, there is a part of Southern Appalachia that looks like it should be far more than just a stop along the way for the Gulf Coast corridor.


The Birmingham Hub

Birmingham, Alabama is one of the clearest hubs in the STRACNET system. In addition to the corridors to Atlanta and New Orleans in the Gulf Coast Corridor, there are STRACNET corridors to Pensacola, Chattanooga, Nashville, and Memphis.



So that's what I am adding here. Note that the STRACNET corridors to Nashville and Memphis are not that far apart in Northern Alabama, so that an alternative Memphis alignment option is noted that runs from the STRACNET corridor at Decatur, Alabama to the STRACNET corridor at Florence, Alabama.

It is, of course, no accident that Birmingham occupies the place that it does in STRACNET. Nor is it pure political pork landed by some long-serving Alabama Senator or House Committee Chair. It is, rather, simple geography: when looking at the lay of the land in Southern Appalachia, Birmingham is located in a major valley between the Appalachian ranges to the east and foothills running off to the west.

This is a view of the Birmingham Hub lines as they run into Birmingham. It is, indeed, possible to organize the Hub into three corridors - Atlanta/Memphis, Chattanooga/New Orleans and Pensacola/Nashville. However, its not possible for all three to share a common transfer station in downtown Birmingham, since they converge on T-triangle to the east of the current Amtrak station, with Chattanooga and Atlanta on the eastern one leg, Nashville and Memphis on the northern leg, and Pensacola and New Orleans on the southern leg.

This offers an additional reason to run the Memphis route on the Nashville Corridor to Decatur and then run west to Florence. Then the Atlanta/Memphis corridor would have its own central Birmingham station, and transfer with the other two corridors at other locations: the outer suburban eastern Birmingham station to transfer with the Chattanooga/New Orleans corridor and the outer suburban northern Birmingham station to transfer with the Pensacola/Nashville corridor.


Financing the Birmingham Hub

The core of the financing of the Birmingham Hub is the financing of Steel Interstates. Construction of a State Interstate implies development of electrified Rapid Rail paths that support on-time freight delivery - whether by construction of dedicated Rapid Rail track or by construction of Rapid-Rail compatible track with time-slice allocation between Rapid Rail and Express Heavy Freight rail.

With the a Steel Interstate in place, establishment of Emerging/Regional Higher Speed Rail passenger services is a matter of building stations, where required, buying the trains, and hiring the staff. These trains will have higher revenue per mile than existing conventional Amtrak trains, lower staff costs per mile, due to the higher speed, and lower cost for traction per mile, as a result of electric traction.

Note that some operating subsidies may be required - just as the passenger aviation and passenger road systems require ongoing operating subsidies. However, if typical long distance Amtrak trains have operating recovery ratios of 40% to 50%, it seems a plausible goal for these corridors to reach 80% or higher operating recovery - and in the event of oil price shocks, which increase the need for operating subsidies for road and air transport, it seems likely that many of these corridors should generate operating surpluses.

Since freight rail already largely pays for the infrastructure it uses, unlike the air and road freight it competes against, and the Steel Interstate will reduce operating costs while improving its ability to compete, it is possible to leverage public investment in Steel Interstate projects by focusing on subsidizing interests costs while relying on user and access fees to refund the original capital costs.

In Sunday Train: Supporting Rail Electrification with the Climate Bill (11 October), I described a means of funding investments in Steel Interstates by allowing states to use part of their share of CO2 emission fees for subsidizing interest costs of building these systems. Additional sources of revenue could include:

• a per-mile user fee for long-haul trucks on the Interstate Highways, divided between State Highway Funds (to offset the inability of states to effectively tax the long haul trucks that rip up their roads) and a Steel Interstate fund
• a $5/barrel tax on imported petroleum, scaling down to $2 when the price of crude oil passes from $80/barrel to $120/barrel
• or, indeed, since this is a critical public investment with far more effective counter-inflationary impacts than the current standard counter-inflationary policy of running the economy in first gear to avoid people getting pay increases, an entitlement to a certain amount of Steel Interstate interest subsidy per capita could simply be appropriated.

Conclusions ...

The Appalachian Hub is an ongoing project, and so more critical than coming to any tentative conclusions at this point is to throw the floor open for discussion.

Action: Citizen's Tax on Rupert 'the Pirate' Murdoch

Check last week's review of the story so far.

Act on Friday, 4pm and 10pm Eastern, 1pm and 7pm Pacific.

The diary this week is to throw the floor open. I have listed the various reasons why I am happy to impose a Direct Action Citizen's Tax on Rupert "The Pirate" Murdoch. The focus this week is on you. What do you have against Rupert "The Pirate" Murdoch?

• His Hypocrisy?
• His War-Mongering?
• His Vicious Union-Busting Politics?
• The further destruction of our political discourse, also known as "Fox News"?
• His ongoing fight in support of monopoly power in the media?
• ...or whatever - share it in the comments.

The ongoing story of the "Teaspoon Model" is below the fold, and after that, instructions on how to impose the Direct Action Citizen's Tax, and The List.

_____________ {pretend this is the fold} _______________

Yesterday (Thursday), I used the scripting tools I developed last week, and took it to two larger bootleg streaming sites. I focused on the bootlegs they were streaming in competition with the site Crunchyroll.

Rupert Murdoch's MySpaceCDN servers are the biggest streaming support host at one of the two, and second biggest at the other, which had a strong preference for MegaVideo. However, as discussed last week, in the first Teaspoon Model experiment, MegaVideo was among the three "White Hats" - Megavideo, Veoh, and Imeem - simply taking out the trash when they were cc:'d the list sent to the rights owner, without seeming to wait around for the formal Cease and Desist letter.

That is not to say I assume they view it as a sacrifice - Veoh and Megavideo are pursuing models of ad-supported streaming, and most advertisers are reluctant to be associated with bootleg, unlicensed content. But from the perspective of a beleaguered niche media industry like the US Anime industry, the attitude of the hosts that receive many of these uploads is encouraging.

How many? Let me tabulate the main hosts on the three sites I have explored so far.

Host	1st Site	2nd Site	3rd Site	total
MySpaceCDN	461	911	419	1,791
MegaVideo	81	725	969	1,775
Hidden*	47	594	0	641
Veoh	22	0*	497	519
YouTube***	18	20	112	150
Video.Mail.ru	0	56	58	114
Clip.vn	0	13	70	83
MySpace	47	13	93	153

Notes
{* One site relies heavily on "hiding" its links. Preliminary investigation indicates that these are links that it is hiding from other streaming sites "stealing" them, since once the link is translated to text, it points to a location in its host called "/damnthief/", which translates the Id text into an off-site stream. I believe many of these are streamed from Veoh.

The irony of uploading bootleg animes to leech of free hosting sites in competition against streaming sites like Crunchyroll that pay the original creators is likely lost on them.}

{** Youtube numbers are inflated, since two or three YouTube clips are normally required for one anime episode.}

What the Action is and How to Participate

The Action consists of charging the MySpaceCDN servers, owned by NewsCorp Subsidiary 20th Century Fox, a "tax" by requesting that they do the same thing for us that they are doing for the bootleg anime streaming sites - stream the file. Bandwidth costs money, and while any one of us as an individual cannot use a noticeable amount of bandwidth, if we all do it at the same time, and bring our friends in on the action, it can start to add up.

How to participate. Note that you should be sure that you are on a broadband system without a bandwidth surcharge - the point is to impose a Direct Citizen Tax on Rupert's media empire, not to impose a tax on participants.

What you do is emulate the process that the streaming players use - except by skipping the streaming playing, you have greater ability to download multiple streams at the same time. Right click on the links and save them to disk. For the first one, create a temporary directory to save them into. Then when they are downloaded, delete the temporary directory.

Each file will be about 60Mbyte-80MB, so if your hard drive space is limited, you could, if you wished, download a batch, delete the downloads and empty your trash, then repeat.

I've already emailed Hulu.com, copied to MySpace and 20th Century Fox, to alert them to the bootleg streaming taking place from MySpaceCDN servers. So you could also, if you wish, send an email to media@Hulu.com and ask them whether they are serious about continuing as an ad-supported free streaming, and if they are, whether they have been forwarding these links to the copyright owners for action, or else requesting that NewsCorp, one of their owners, takes action itself to remove the bootleg streams they provide in competition with Hulu.com's licensed streams.

The links are a long list below the rundown on the diaries posted on this issue over the past three weeks as I have been learning things and passing them on.

Act on Friday, 4pm and 10pm Eastern, 1pm and 7pm Pacific.

By request, I am working on a way to automate this, since the command-line web tool "wget" has an option to download and erase a file using the web address.

A selected list of some of the Crunchyroll series available for free streaming, competing against parasite sites: 11Eyes, The Book of Bantorra, Aoi Hana, Asura_Cryin, CODE GEASS: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Fairy Tale, Hanasakeru Seishonen, Miracle Train, Naruto Shippuden, Sasameki Koto, Shugo Chara, Sora No Otoshimono, Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee, White Album.


The List

11 Eyes ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/178/vid_b959ed011b8442a585e9f4d7a7a68622.flv
11 Eyes ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/227/vid_2efe0de4c3624cf59de17cbd5950b399.flv
11eyes - ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/124/vid_cb30759275c540da8352883482c3f783.flv
11eyes - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/227/vid_2efe0de4c3624cf59de17cbd5950b399.flv
11eyes - ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/160/vid_620716bbef2b4307a19e33002a7a0396.flv
11eyes - ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/134/vid_2a59e437c90f4605868d21838c726dd9.flv
11eyes - ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/150/vid_72883fcd7c804e87a099c7619f422310.flv
Aoi Hana - ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/154/vid_45cf3cacfbe2489dbadf0e372f34f30a.flv
Aoi Hana - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/226/vid_bd651f38d8ee4f06a2763b9eb04cb4b4.flv
Aoi Hana - ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/232/vid_33d003e37f6b4cba970b42fdb55a3710.flv
Aoi Hana - ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/178/vid_103716c4eb28416bb59233d4dfd7e169.flv
Aoi Hana - ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/175/vid_2155f5b765b444ee83dd86ba848ab0de.flv
Aoi Hana - ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/164/vid_4a22a73cc538412eba5a20c182f8a1b8.flv
Aoi Hana - ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/114/vid_1e1a955e8d604aa8807d9cab0b2beb0d.flv
Aoi Hana ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/226/vid_5266410a9f8145deaec2a513140269ba.flv
Aoi Hana ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/226/vid_bd651f38d8ee4f06a2763b9eb04cb4b4.flv
Aoi Hana ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/232/vid_33d003e37f6b4cba970b42fdb55a3710.flv
Aoi Hana ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/98/vid_b5d99be896254c6e9c19e3f79bb0f509.flv
Aoi Hana ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/178/vid_103716c4eb28416bb59233d4dfd7e169.flv
Aoi Hana ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/175/vid_2155f5b765b444ee83dd86ba848ab0de.flv
Aoi Hana ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/164/vid_4a22a73cc538412eba5a20c182f8a1b8.flv
Aoi Hana ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/213/vid_50d0bbdaac4941c394ea8d7bebe350cc.flv
Aoi Hana ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/114/vid_1e1a955e8d604aa8807d9cab0b2beb0d.flv
Asura Cryin' - ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/124/vid_3622c8db50264463bdc2179195ac5c15.flv
Asura Cryin' - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/229/vid_d3b92f7a36d146f586ab9ec90680c83a.flv
Asura Cryin' - ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/134/vid_c68f4e3030164befaa42021e316eed94.flv
Asura Cryin' - ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/219/vid_6b2f51bc43ae4a02b0f1b414b1e463d3.flv
Asura Cryin' 2 - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/108/vid_2380ff2352f64deaa0072c440368b4bf.flv
Asura Cryin' 2 - ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/217/vid_97a6920b97884ea39b597fdf16a3a939.flv
Asura Cryin' 2 - ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/124/vid_33d4404ae035400b89b465d55bba21f9.flv
Asura Cryin' 2 - ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/214/vid_3331a7c48032404e95e1ebd2d76fd041.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/124/vid_3622c8db50264463bdc2179195ac5c15.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/148/vid_59b9ec299ac24983a9a5c8263b7c19eb.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/176/vid_bbba16750165472d925628206e0d17c7.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/114/vid_a9ade428de84445b9c83f9ced317409e.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/98/vid_1729385c8f864416a3cfae177cf58855.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/167/vid_6d492fdd5f5d4c8da0d88f636c370352.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/124/vid_d5b01cc47243425a9a5b0a4cb3637550.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/234/vid_15a9efe835794c4d8a97a7d3664ec0a6.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/219/vid_6b2f51bc43ae4a02b0f1b414b1e463d3.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/123/vid_b2a0db2bdb23478688852f72053a5ae1.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/200/vid_4ee86807f44642a992657017cb322495.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/140/vid_b33490ed48e14b9db8be41e3f7e6e0f7.flv
Asura Cryin' Season 2 ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/103/vid_877d445269044973a4e416cbffc00cd7.flv
Asura Cryin' Season 2 ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/108/vid_2380ff2352f64deaa0072c440368b4bf.flv
Asura Cryin' Season 2 ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/203/vid_2522ead889984b238796de9f234fd87a.flv
Asura Cryin' Season 2 ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/177/vid_a5b4294250a4482da97fb56080b43790.flv
Asura Cryin' Season 2 ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/217/vid_97a6920b97884ea39b597fdf16a3a939.flv
Asura Cryin’ - ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/138/vid_bbca43e6d1464f2d83060f17583c46d5.flv
Asura Cryin’ - ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/140/vid_b33490ed48e14b9db8be41e3f7e6e0f7.flv
Asura Cryin’ Second Season ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/228/vid_fb9b019e562048a2993746365103958a.flv
Blassreiter ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/216/vid_22b21abc1d9e42b89cd9969ee1835226.flv
Chi's New Address ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/105/vid_2127e4712a914dd3877464628503518e.flv
Chi's New Address ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/98/vid_dba669aa31c8403b8789e7bfb2519c98.flv
Chi's New Address ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/101/vid_ed2fe73d403247729205d7ea8f5d866f.flv
Chi's New Address ep-14 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/219/vid_f8e67b88eb7d49d69b184a4db5fd03c9.flv
Chi's New Address ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/172/vid_3db96970d1c043868b883d077093b4e1.flv
Chi's New Address ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/151/vid_5db13c1c5dc04eedb49b96642441af0f.flv
Chi's New Address ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/239/vid_58e282be5f0b4eb696f83014d742053b.flv
Chi's New Address ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/142/vid_2caa1c2edffb4ee5b0c67a4bca5c9615.flv
Chrono Crusade ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/61/vid_e3d62dbb251d46a9ba758898ca456078.flv
Chrono Crusade ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/163/vid_ddb02e9660bc4a6ab27996961e591e70.flv
Chrono Crusade ep-15 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/74/vid_e9c9c17e708243d5a5902021ead7dd3c.flv
Chrono Crusade ep-19 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/154/vid_d85fd6ff0c4142d1abc8efaa32b82cc8.flv
Chrono Crusade ep-20 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/127/vid_be4bcf0df4134b49ba699701309a2880.flv
Chrono Crusade ep-21 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/224/vid_b22b20d8be86479f998e1bb92afcb692.flv
Fairy Tail - ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/103/vid_09ef7c211e994b4f93ba05686dd0e72c.flv
Fairy Tail ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/136/vid_c13594d14f9f4b5281772b7d639d8b71.flv
Fairy Tail ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/166/vid_554e220aeac443978782e2848b6743b7.flv
Fairy Tail ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/211/vid_1d948466bef443769e32331e58c5b30f.flv
Fairy Tail ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/176/vid_a1fa4b76325b44dcbe611390159d480f.flv
Fairy Tail ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/182/vid_ecc1bc05f7304d40bd7502949218fb82.flv
Fairy Tail ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/102/vid_c386d8c0b5504ac7bc237b3717c92861.flv
Fairy Tail ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/212/vid_89fd3377e0ee4417bd87521780ff2031.flv
Fairy Tale ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/103/vid_09ef7c211e994b4f93ba05686dd0e72c.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/193/vid_fb9058c029ab4fa6b09c04b9b35bc006.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/222/vid_9993162cad574bd79e939a5677d95af3.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/162/vid_7a3ec361d7f648d0b5a8c3471bad8e89.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/151/vid_b9a5e14d42264dbbb4e30c5ee5788800.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-12.5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/120/vid_3cd0836ebcee4897a7a43c9a88cce3cc.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-13 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/120/vid_3cd0836ebcee4897a7a43c9a88cce3cc.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-14 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/174/vid_872b32d812734bd696e0cadadb99b437.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-15 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/131/vid_eadb43798b5248ff9d3f99481e6518f2.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-16 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/101/vid_ddf85e2ce3fa4d9cbcc30915d84ed94a.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-17 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/109/vid_b956f6a053894cba98cedac0934e002f.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-17 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/231/vid_09722c4f66be4dbe9c0390fe469d76d8.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-18 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/135/vid_4a5f857981334a679bdfe3d227abb6a1.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-18 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/169/vid_081ddd07f13d46c58c24d6b2f0fdafd8.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-19 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/152/vid_65db8957af874d2d9006d65a6e8557a2.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-19 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/225/vid_2a975e75dab44baa885c74252914fbfe.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/122/vid_5d0ef0e55c60478b8073ceb2bc796ea9.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-20 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/123/vid_6f5db1b0f1184cf4895844a3cbb6bc17.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-21 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/113/vid_1fe1292c865a49ad95360aec73f8cc95.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-22 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/135/vid_10c157b8c9a340e697538f062cc89c37.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-23 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/224/vid_5d422caa1af7459d9e37f22146ea488e.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-24 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/238/vid_ea68368edccc46b081e762d29fcd10b6.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-25 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/238/vid_a5a3290a71b04d81815415499d336cb9.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-26 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/182/vid_abb9ec8136104981a16882778a9a1064.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/122/vid_cf8b6f72fa86492999c75d828e4e28ab.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/111/vid_2161ec5690a5438c9399f9353c9e8a47.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/139/vid_9cb9e5f430264c4290104c212a2b390b.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/234/vid_1feca74dc4074088b32b2a64d3d1dd19.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/147/vid_773bc52d977948e2a0a13088e393c08e.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/228/vid_d5eacebc023a4042812565202393dd57.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/138/vid_7932dda66ce2432ca14e7626be83ac6e.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/138/vid_7932dda66ce2432ca14e7626be83ac6e.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/118/vid_f690e391e5894ff5b2a27f3e8cbb2620.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/201/vid_d4fb932e49694fc4943cfeda61291449.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/205/vid_fa33bc7732c24913b0616fad86600c66.flv
Happiness ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/95/vid_2fbb2577da014b43a30f00744f055eea.flv
Happiness ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/2/vid_3b596ca5029147479efd3a6ff0d23e37.flv
Happiness ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/86/vid_ce2c247dd77443c8a4df1f95da7b9f70.flv
Happiness ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/35/vid_2d7985753e1545c9a3b998242f18eb05.flv
Happiness ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/88/vid_0e6e7a1a205c4a6691c2e9b0ad5a3eaf.flv
Happiness ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/14/vid_3f9bfbe3135149b88973634b54875f11.flv
Happiness ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/114/vid_5222b35717084c9d96000745957276b4.flv
Happiness ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/6/vid_8d7add7a286d481689bb880a3c5ff13e.flv
Happiness ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/29/vid_10ce59976e8548d286a2d595200395e5.flv
Happiness ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/20/vid_0608bb70b0d6498cb52d510323ff0fc8.flv
Happiness ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/23/vid_c0901a161f474901a6149a4ab2c29b87.flv
Happiness Epsiode 4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/70/vid_8f98457762064b7f87fd6f489cbd8ff1.flv
Happiness! ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/88/vid_0e6e7a1a205c4a6691c2e9b0ad5a3eaf.flv
Happiness! ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/29/vid_10ce59976e8548d286a2d595200395e5.flv
Happiness! ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/20/vid_0608bb70b0d6498cb52d510323ff0fc8.flv
Happiness! OVA http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/93/vid_950640a09d35408ba0df5d9aebcea2c2.flv
Hyakko ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/61/vid_dcbd396b0770810b25d5c779347b176c.flv
Hyakko ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/33/vid_2fee622f4c1d42fdb5d4318c59296907.flv
Hyakko ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/24/vid_da90472286ff443c969110529085f4f5.flv
Hyakko ep-7 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/68/vid_ca96b05784f141bda4b6672fd4d928eb.flv
Hyakko ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/39/vid_1f2fe8b177fd4fa5a3fa504af4e27d73.flv
Kaleido Star ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/237/vid_d4d7060722e64080ab94df77a8bac0ae.flv
Kaleido Star ep-14 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/111/vid_6f52cee1a11c43b78277ae20545dd3d3.flv
Kanamemo - ep-13 [Final] http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/99/vid_94c318ff17bf4fc9a082a60452ebd03b.flv
Kanamemo - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/139/vid_005214b1ea5f4ebda03b4d05645b3a6b.flv
Kanamemo - ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/116/vid_f0965193d6474cadb01c2789326b3e60.flv
Kanamemo - ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/142/vid_c41fdaf182a148768c55a52c77f339c3.flv
Kanamemo - ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/110/vid_46c67fbf4221477f8e9869bdf0763685.flv
Kanamemo - ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/188/vid_2220f942f81945ba9b4a700996bc6d90.flv
Kanamemo - ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/194/vid_b9ae13008f3f4271b07b757812e979ea.flv
Kanamemo ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/128/vid_8a6dbad9b5dd47829b889fb1aaa6b0ac.flv
Kanamemo ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/187/vid_ed7e58da146a443eba19e0ee7ccef69f.flv
Kanamemo ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/206/vid_3175de1bdb664572827332f3a750b3dc.flv
Kanamemo ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/196/vid_00127e22f72243d0a78724f1f18b7339.flv
Kanamemo ep-13 [Final] http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/99/vid_94c318ff17bf4fc9a082a60452ebd03b.flv
Kanamemo ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/139/vid_005214b1ea5f4ebda03b4d05645b3a6b.flv
Kanamemo ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/126/vid_95a1266034924f349affb3f7bd3d0bbb.flv
Kanamemo ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/131/vid_f98fa6b93a284bfcb2b46cafda0c370d.flv
Kanamemo ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/116/vid_f0965193d6474cadb01c2789326b3e60.flv
Kanamemo ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/131/vid_f98fa6b93a284bfcb2b46cafda0c370d.flv
Kanamemo ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/142/vid_c41fdaf182a148768c55a52c77f339c3.flv
Kanamemo ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/168/vid_5240610b8a184804a0a6f1c3f838137d.flv
Kanamemo ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/110/vid_46c67fbf4221477f8e9869bdf0763685.flv
Kanamemo ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/188/vid_2220f942f81945ba9b4a700996bc6d90.flv
Kanamemo ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/194/vid_b9ae13008f3f4271b07b757812e979ea.flv
Kurokami - ep-15 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/199/vid_0fe604f8d9be498c88099e44dba76542.flv
Kurokami - ep-16 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/118/vid_9263f0eb60534f6d970c49aa47c1ddf6.flv
Kurokami - ep-17 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/149/vid_a66f077db49b431f98b4d73c84fc515d.flv
Kurokami - ep-18 http://d3.ac-videos.myspacecdn.com/videos02/196/vid_fbec2d6ea82f4050b10ae342a872424a.flv
Kurokami - ep-19 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/150/vid_141d1b2f43084265b425ae0c588e3451.flv
Kurokami - ep-20 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/147/vid_9a4fd090068341578c4a5f68b057da2c.flv
Kurokami - ep-21 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/176/vid_fc7f00da533c457ca9df05cdc10c4ce5.flv
Kurokami - ep-23 [Final] http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/211/vid_5bcf610b148b405d86f95680a803aed7.flv
Kurokami ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/13/vid_97e3d86fca954bfab9e4e20235f4c463.flv
Kurokami ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/19/vid_c279926184434180b51d8e67d8e73f93.flv
Kurokami ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/79/vid_c7b75026663845b29366ca62c46219c3.flv
Kurokami ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/23/vid_0fc402db5fb44df78004497eafe2d7b6.flv
Kurokami ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/12/vid_e370bb82870e4c9dbb5e49ce9ad6ecbd.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/112/vid_432037b88a86476eb7d8f0af8c3f7d2d.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/193/vid_3d8cf866780d40faa6709ee6f4df48bc.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-13 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/122/vid_cf86e8ab88974554af8afde1bcc21904.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-14 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/150/vid_3a3565a4285c40e082dbb360c0179809.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-15 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/163/vid_0a1c1e405c88428c98979ed23c12cb8c.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-16 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/139/vid_d3f7c6518d2d4bce9dc5af3b39ec7626.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-17 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/222/vid_f3778ba9019348bc8dd694011b54c842.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-18 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/167/vid_3e8f83d1b8a74625b9b4081eb2fda5de.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-19 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/138/vid_959c97307c7d436397d169fc10f8ffca.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-20 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/104/vid_679fdaabb84f4f8bb4aae911387fcec1.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-21 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/112/vid_432037b88a86476eb7d8f0af8c3f7d2d.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-23 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/119/vid_5fea3708d1bf403b80e8eb9858d9b111.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/118/vid_356d0fa405a142119c90115b409df1ce.flv
La Corda D'Oro ~primo passo~ ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/114/vid_ff685fa77df34248bda51d4954255f6b.flv
La Corda D’Oro ~secondo passo~ ep-2 (special) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/193/vid_1f27e7f2f0a040cca9f36a50632cfcd5.flv
Last Exile - ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/53/vid_e09c0d0e20e2a7b15bf985685f70da37.flv
Last Exile - ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/42/vid_0c22c64eed5405a0b37f0a91137edf6f.flv
Last Exile - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/76/vid_8c30e67659e3462497d80ef77ce51eec.flv
Last Exile - ep-24 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/17/vid_d9c6a857c5d84112a176cc5f2a9ba36c.flv
Last Exile - ep-26 [Final] http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/67/vid_8e7b066ee5464ab792ab4e7aeb71b29d.flv
Last Exile - ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/31/vid_2742d3ec09e045f3ac99e7e81cde9433.flv
Last Exile - ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/59/vid_57cf29b3aeae41ef9d769f8ad364bdc6.flv
Last Exile - ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/95/vid_b58bae39c55f4a2daf8c2b15f3c4cdda.flv
Last Exile - ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/95/vid_61db215c72c244bcbd472400e74ccdeb.flv
Last Exile - ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/5/vid_3f7d9675205947e6a79a0138a7a8d94d.flv
Last Exile - ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/39/vid_4f4993f7f8e991f6705f997a8ac08d81.flv
Last Exile ep-1 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/35/vid_2ea7ccbc55ba695171be34e3c6a604d1.flv
Last Exile ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/48/vid_4b252bbd3c7b4b6f9c56260a9d0bc243.flv
Last Exile ep-10 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/53/vid_e09c0d0e20e2a7b15bf985685f70da37.flv
Last Exile ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/53/vid_e09c0d0e20e2a7b15bf985685f70da37.flv
Last Exile ep-11 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/42/vid_0c22c64eed5405a0b37f0a91137edf6f.flv
Last Exile ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/42/vid_0c22c64eed5405a0b37f0a91137edf6f.flv
Last Exile ep-12 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/21/vid_1ba30e1de9303d7f91f3285633516a08.flv
Last Exile ep-13 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/57/vid_ebe5a3135313caad3197b96072e13c07.flv
Last Exile ep-13 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/57/vid_ebe5a3135313caad3197b96072e13c07.flv
Last Exile ep-14 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/26/vid_4b060dab594b51647500568a3a015734.flv
Last Exile ep-15 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/53/vid_335bb08c7058fff735a31b8171a5b953.flv
Last Exile ep-15 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/53/vid_335bb08c7058fff735a31b8171a5b953.flv
Last Exile ep-16 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/54/vid_37ae3a6c535ce4da5b491d6937045b84.flv
Last Exile ep-17 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/27/vid_acb7cf339de8db47268009f65ae47e13.flv
Last Exile ep-18 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/55/vid_d9695501c29154ad49c255d96aa3585a.flv
Last Exile ep-19 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/58/vid_d783b729941c2c0170f210019230af7b.flv
Last Exile ep-2 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/21/vid_b0719f7d38f898d9ca060d8e930cc10a.flv
Last Exile ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/76/vid_8c30e67659e3462497d80ef77ce51eec.flv
Last Exile ep-20 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/54/vid_91dfc8beebad150b253127cafba6c815.flv
Last Exile ep-21 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/39/vid_5811b305a59842f0af556d7d1d2575d5.flv
Last Exile ep-22 (Dub) http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/78/vid_f85405a055dd42cfbdca3245414429e7.flv
Last Exile ep-23 (Dub) http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/72/vid_edb58952393c4f15a9212def79fc2607.flv
Last Exile ep-24 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/17/vid_d9c6a857c5d84112a176cc5f2a9ba36c.flv
Last Exile ep-25 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/40/vid_5ea7c8829f0c4e9eb6a3128ea57035c5.flv
Last Exile ep-26 (Dub) http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/67/vid_8e7b066ee5464ab792ab4e7aeb71b29d.flv
Last Exile ep-26 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/67/vid_8e7b066ee5464ab792ab4e7aeb71b29d.flv
Last Exile ep-3 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/18/vid_cea97f39cb25f891f55fb7f985f98ee0.flv
Last Exile ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/31/vid_2742d3ec09e045f3ac99e7e81cde9433.flv
Last Exile ep-4 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/3/vid_1d7467a349c6c91b06433b04ebc14e56.flv
Last Exile ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/59/vid_57cf29b3aeae41ef9d769f8ad364bdc6.flv
Last Exile ep-5 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/28/vid_3cfa05a60b6717373683032e113bfc2d.flv
Last Exile ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/95/vid_b58bae39c55f4a2daf8c2b15f3c4cdda.flv
Last Exile ep-6 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/2/vid_3a65ad5bd05719db5b6866915ab3a1f1.flv
Last Exile ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/75/vid_98576d67f5824805a0a2e2831c14b437.flv
Last Exile ep-7 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/16/vid_a3d973715fa9a3911a24c44ebf58f828.flv
Last Exile ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/95/vid_61db215c72c244bcbd472400e74ccdeb.flv
Last Exile ep-8 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/14/vid_696cac08ac04a7ee00bf34a551d3179c.flv
Last Exile ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/5/vid_3f7d9675205947e6a79a0138a7a8d94d.flv
Last Exile ep-9 (Dub) http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/39/vid_4f4993f7f8e991f6705f997a8ac08d81.flv
Last Exile ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/39/vid_4f4993f7f8e991f6705f997a8ac08d81.flv
Letter Bee / Tegami Bachi - ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/216/vid_b87a08dc166f44e9988045bf65b7ca03.flv
Letter Bee / Tegami Bachi - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/162/vid_6f883c57bdd642d8a463fc6fbddee42f.flv
Letter Bee / Tegami Bachi - ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/162/vid_6f883c57bdd642d8a463fc6fbddee42f.flv
Letter Bee / Tegami Bachi - ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/183/vid_87010e899618422aa39685b6b10a4d3c.flv
Letter Bee / Tegami Bachi - ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/129/vid_847e798312c142768498a99f93721ded.flv
Letter Bee / Tegami Bachi - ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/107/vid_c1279f0218e14ae189a756f039d2b0e5.flv
Letter Bee ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/183/vid_507c7882740444f1894c8ae0e92f9926.flv
Letter Bee ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/216/vid_b87a08dc166f44e9988045bf65b7ca03.flv
Letter Bee ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/151/vid_930a22aec97c4edbad8c7431a99d0968.flv
Letter Bee ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/228/vid_f93e5834f4b24a74ace005bb1ba8141b.flv
Letter Bee ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/166/vid_324cdec66cc34531a80f9533013283ec.flv
Letter Bee ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/184/vid_ec33035cde1a444ea00b1bd822ae8e17.flv
Letter Bee ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/119/vid_83c2cc0abd8d4741b43cb52c769476ba.flv
Letter Bee ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/228/vid_57652fe722134036a8e1478bb0f31cde.flv
Letter Bee ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/129/vid_847e798312c142768498a99f93721ded.flv
Letter Bee ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/103/vid_95d533253bd349ddad4aedd9928e664a.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/123/vid_b83c4c05a60949efbe883c6b5119cb15.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/225/vid_8206ef29202c44ff80d8cb34c177b538.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-11 [Final] http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/209/vid_9409f1776d4544f89bb5642aa5a0ea57.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/171/vid_588c3da8edb740cdbbd45b09e5f9f057.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/227/vid_e46d16a8f85b46d2aca9bacca5dfadf5.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/223/vid_040499678ec94f458c2bc053f09780b7.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/188/vid_86f189c90a31479eb6b2af0d0e637984.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/231/vid_45fb1ea658a54773901669988804c985.flv
Ristorante Paradiso ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/189/vid_312c575dc26a477ca3a9f241bb56eae4.flv
Shigurui ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/129/vid_382202c12aa0419f9ac753f141a0707b.flv
Shigurui ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/128/vid_c5bf2d07be4641e48f088932bdff5078.flv
Shigurui ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/158/vid_d92785a0496e4fb8aa0dca98881f2ba4.flv
Shigurui ep-12 [Final] http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/234/vid_d1ea5a65b4c64586ab6524898322ee24.flv
Shigurui ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/97/vid_b069f59bc73042bd9194833026afe163.flv
Shigurui ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/227/vid_dafd108c63104180824b921be23b5f1a.flv
Shigurui ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/211/vid_7faaa9afb4df4a9884d1fd3495115010.flv
Shigurui ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/220/vid_c663e346451e41239ed81489de15ff7e.flv
Shigurui ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/175/vid_9a1c3b4f04364ff29241b73812dce5f0.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/1/vid_9f99c2c2d6a240c2bb2d686abe215067.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/2/vid_dd124819cd4f4f1b83708cc9d36ef364.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/17/vid_2d5e6aa8e36a4ecda8c91d0b4d369d1f.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/40/vid_73dff7b2e3474dd3a20f7baff9f017f6.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-13 [Final] http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/32/vid_7e2d927e96b741e38e6be3a6e0f30e0f.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/69/vid_d4f37c22ec9349f89dfd79c768ff146c.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/87/vid_2f491316979843e3bba73ecafd43d25f.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/22/vid_8c37ded632c84f33a26be4318af85d5d.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/42/vid_eb9503ff4979496e9ee9f97234ed7961.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/43/vid_d515463e40d44f87bbe44a6949ae6c5d.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/20/vid_3a23ee34cbac4658bfab5c02f17cee91.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/79/vid_749555e1875e460481380f827b1e3db4.flv
Sketchbook ~full color'S~ ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/68/vid_f1a1374e915e4bbcbb5c1998fe65fd39.flv
Sora no Otoshimono - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/178/vid_30b22f7f4edc45af9fea3df888844cb3.flv
Sora no Otoshimono - ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/122/vid_5ccc8a2b766a43eca720b2a441136afa.flv
Sora no Otoshimono - ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/98/vid_546c54e17a044fafa9a2a5e465b07d53.flv
Sora no Otoshimono - ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/121/vid_be9ede8e0e884a21a1678669b75aa9fe.flv
Sora no Otoshimono ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/113/vid_0d5d0533dd604889824e15de97bbc54e.flv
Sora no Otoshimono ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/218/vid_ba3f5089ad20400bbc49984dcc3c98d2.flv
Sora no Otoshimono ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/169/vid_99a4a57fc18f4a3499bfcfd149add988.flv
Sora no Otoshimono ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/187/vid_24966863d88943a9adbc7c30389aa4ef.flv
Sora no Otoshimono ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/98/vid_546c54e17a044fafa9a2a5e465b07d53.flv
Sora no Otoshimono ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/99/vid_61517c89cb224fb6983db90b62308b7f.flv
Sora no Otoshimono ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/121/vid_be9ede8e0e884a21a1678669b75aa9fe.flv
White Album 2nd Season ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/199/vid_2ae06ddcd4c14af0b052194bf9a2655b.flv
White Album 2nd Season ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/151/vid_f5a74443bc40454dab17cd348332b6c7.flv
White Album ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/72/vid_48e71c024c9340e1b363a30b8a75e33d.flv
White Album ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/13/vid_a80c2f81c74a440a93496e6e0b9945a1.flv
White Album ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/66/vid_a08a715abbc7421ab8ce08301a862331.flv
White Album ep-13 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/34/vid_74ba6cd257ef4197a6990b019243d7fa.flv
White Album ep-14 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/199/vid_2ae06ddcd4c14af0b052194bf9a2655b.flv
White Album ep-16 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/106/vid_23dccfb2ec93401aaf19337b652ea3e2.flv
White Album ep-19 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/131/vid_ccdd74dbc0674637b47c35bd1431ad6e.flv
White Album ep-4 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/70/vid_48a0ef0bbf9d48859ddfad2f679102b4.flv
White Album ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/28/vid_b1d63bc185df4bbdad8f75ce065b752f.flv
White Album ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/38/vid_29f18cc9ee4b4ea29868e9a68328cfb0.flv
White Album ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/5/vid_71eb0ee09521438889cee6145e3a2dcf.flv
White Album ep-8 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/6/vid_cfd033df892d4e1b9f4444e294fa2017.flv
White Album ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/19/vid_2eb1961c34424c0e8fce27d05272ae48.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Maho - ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/114/vid_0e662cc863b940ac83b76b3541f8ad9f.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Maho - ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/110/vid_1f78cb7772db4ba18d337a657656c5a8.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Maho - ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/171/vid_b2d10c2a30af4e7dbe776f6476af9ba0.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Maho - ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/188/vid_84c2835c618b40a788fbd81ccbcd28e5.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/167/vid_1ddf22503eb247dfa9fd89f785445942.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/153/vid_95d2de7978994b988079fbfa42654db6.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/110/vid_1f78cb7772db4ba18d337a657656c5a8.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/154/vid_d0f53b5522174c0da6f743eb5e45321d.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/205/vid_0ac0a02bbfd44e27975e879be95e57c9.flv
Yoku Wakaru Gendai Mahou ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/188/vid_84c2835c618b40a788fbd81ccbcd28e5.flv
Yumeiro Pâtissière ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/184/vid_28a43b6228b84bff93c7670470c49597.flv
Yumeiro Pâtissière ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/122/vid_e80010404aec49a6ad1088fafb710a04.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/26/vid_ef79111a2b1b4d31a5e82ba3f8ab9800.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/71/vid_00b9319f51414e15b013037679a057fc.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/71/vid_1eb306f349884276bf403208a400bcf0.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/59/vid_b3a6627c7a494ec49ecfe58034d9744d.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/12/vid_34c24e8fb300402ab8a50dba070fa351.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-13 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/79/vid_7b4086e07cfe41998a151972d30569ad.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/40/vid_7d555f2b93d244bbbf33da45b555ef8a.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/7/vid_e2eaf4fb06b54f38b9f3e946fa421838.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-7 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/35/vid_af36c19e14564509aa5f7d6c95ef6280.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-8 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/86/vid_167eae3484fc4727ba426b77d95148d0.flv
Zoku Natsume Yuujin-chou ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/27/vid_4d602da7225c4987a1a3f9ad8579d9f6.flv

Sunday Train: Rescuing the Innocent Amtrak Numbers from SubsidyScope

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

A few weeks back, SubsidyScope, "launched by The Pew Charitable Trusts, aims to raise public awareness about the role of federal subsidies in the economy", pursued its mandate into transport subsidies, coming out with a study with the headline figure of $32 subsidy per passenger for Amtrak.

Why Amtrak? Why not provide a headline figure on federal subsidy per motorist or airplane passenger? Critics of the report suggest that the answer is simple - consider, for instance, Charleston WV mayor Danny Jones:

Jones admits Amtrak relies heavily on subsidies, but so do other modes of transportation, he said.

"I think it's just easier to see how much of it's subsidized with Amtrak," he said.

And there is a lot of merit in that. Further, SubsidyScope is not focusing on Government subsidy, but on Federal subsidy. Not only is it harder to analyze government subsidies to driving and flying, given how many direct and indirect subsidies there are to take into account - but many of the subsidies are at the state and local government level, so for SubsidyScope's purposes they "don't count".

Even granting the grossly flawed mandate of looking at government subsidy without considering social benefit and of looking at only the Federal portion of that subsidy - SubsidyScope's analysis have a further glaring flaw, in that they do an entirely static analysis. This was pointed out shortly after the release of the study by Robert Cruickshank at the California HSR blog in his post of 27 October, 2009, How Much Per Driver Did US Freeways Lose?:

The number one flaw of the Pew report, by far, is it does not compare 2008 numbers to previous years. The report merely examines Amtrak route performance in 2008 alone. As you all remember, 2008 was a rather interesting year for American transportation. Most passenger trains - from Amtrak to the local subways and streetcars - experienced significant spikes in ridership as a result of the spike in gas prices.

Any study of 2008 passenger rail that does not take into account these effects is not credible. At all. And a study that doesn't even compare to past years is a joke.

Robert Cruickshank uses information from the Capital Corridor Joint Power Authority to show that even before the spike in ridership due to the Oil Price Shock in 2008, a 100% increase in state subsidy over the past decade has been met by a 269% increase in ridership, with four times the number of trains and the state subsidy per passenger mile dropping from $0.33 to $0.18.

Of course, the SubsidyScope analysis further confuses the issue by headlining subsidy per passenger, rather than subsidy per passenger-mile. This is, of course, absurd: it treats trips from Harrisburg to Philadelphia, from Washington DC to New York, and from Chicago to Seattle as each delivering identical "travel" benefit.

Indeed, Amtrak's figures themselves (p. 11, right) reveal that Federal subsidies are a declining share of Amtrak revenue.


Focusing on the Amtrak Routes

SubsidyScope extends its analysis to routes by by taking Amtrak figures on route performance, and then allocating costs that are not allocated by Amtrak to the routes, with a principle cost being depreciation.

The way that Subsidyscope does this is by working out the total unallocated costs, dividing by the number of passengers, and subtracting those from the per passenger profit/loss derived from Amtrak route information.

That is, if one passenger travels from Chicago to Fargo, North Dakota, Mayor Jones travels from Charleston WV to Chicago, and a third passenger travels from Providence, Rhode Island to Boston, each of them are considered to be participating in the same depreciation of Amtrak equipment and right of way.

This is, of course, absurd. Some services run in Amtrak corridors, others run in private railroad corridors paying an access fee. Charging depreciation of the Amtrak owned corridor to the passenger where the access fee is included in operating costs is obviously absurd. Charging the same depreciation of Amtrak trains to the passenger between Providence and Boston and the passenger between Chicago and Fargo is just as absurd.

Considering passenger miles instead of just passenger counts is better - indeed, it may be the most reasonable rough estimate for depreciation of Amtrak trains. But it still suffers from the problem of counting the access fee paid to operate on private rail corridors, and then allocating the corridor a share in the depreciation of the rail corridor owned by Amtrak.

Clearly SubsidyScope's analysis is grossly and obviously biased against those routes that run in private corridors and in favor of those that run on Amtrak-owned corridors. It makes a mockery of any pretense of SubsidyScope that it is analyzing the "profit and loss" of specific routes when it makes these capital adjustments.

Indeed, one wonders whether there is an ulterior motive in this gross analytical mistake. For any going concern with some business lines relying on its own infrastructure and others relying on paying access fees for infrastructure owned by someone else - just spreading depreciation uniformly between the different business lines is either gross incompetence or an effort at deliberate deception.

Not having any information to the contrary, I will make the charitable assumption, and presume that SubsidyScope is merely being lazy and grossly incompetent in their adjustment for depreciation.

Whether ascribed to incompetence or to malice, Subsidyscope's analysis is clearly useless for improving our understanding of rail capital cost issues. However, this does not mean the analysis is entirely useless. They do collect the Amtrak route information on operating revenue per corridor and match it up with profit/loss per corridor prior to engaging in their absurd gymnastics in allocating depreciation.

That means that they have collected information that can be used to infer operating recovery ratios by route - that is, the ratio of operating revenues to operating costs (Amtrak's "operating ratio" is cost/revenue, rather than revenue/cost).


Pity the poor numbers, they didn't make SubsidyScope do it

So this is a boring old data report posting. I earnestly apologize for that, but after grasping what a hatchet job SubsidyScope did in terms of their reporting on profit/loss on a per line basis, I just had to go in and see what I could do to recover some information from their shambles.

With respect to operating recovery, there is one flaw inherited from the slanted frame within which SubsidyScope operates. Since they ignore state and local subsidies, that means they treat state subsidies for state-subsidized services as part of revenues. For purposes of computing operating ratios, they should be excluded.

Now, I am going to do something similar to what I have just blasted SubsidyScope for doing, and do a simple pro-rata allocation of the total state subsidy share of state corridor route revenues to each state corridor route. In my defense, I will say:

• first, I know this is less than ideal, while SubsidyScope writes up a much more egregious pro-rata allocation as if it gives a precise answer;
  
• second, if anyone has the specific subsidies on a specific corridor, I will happily enter it into that corridor, and adjust the balance of pro-rata shares to reflect that; and,
  
• I am doing this analysis for free on a couple of Sunday afternoons, while someone got paid to make this kind of rough, back of the envelope calculation for SubsidyScope
  

If you are looking for something over and above looking at the operating ratios that I have rescued from SubsidyScope's numbers abuse - well, I hope you have already found it. The balance of this post is just a glance at these numbers.


The Northeast Corridor

The Northeast Corridor trains stand on their own. Of course, when running on track owned by Amtrak, access fees will be lower - and at the same time, this is where the bulk of capital depreciation on corridor infrastructure itself will be located. Still, according to SubsidyScope's figures, the entire Northeast Corridor yields an operating surplus.

The tables are set up with routes with operating recovery ratios at or above the total for the group in the left hand column, and those below the group's operating recovery ratio in the right hand column.

Northeast Corridor	Op Ratio	Northeast Corridor	Op Ratio
NEC Overall	158%
Acela	183%	NE Regional	139%

The State Corridor and State-Subsidized Routes

Corridor trains include the largest number of services that are eligible for direct replacement with an Emerging/Regional HSR service, as well as services that can be started relatively early in the development of the Steel Interstate system.

The most striking feature that emerges from SubsidyScope's information is the cluster of corridor service that are in the neighborhood of 60% operating recovery. A package of structural improvements - and, obviously improving effective trip speed will be a critical improvement - that can bring a "typical" corridor service from 60% to 100% operating recovery would bring the majority of routes and the corridor services as a whole into or close to an operating surplus.

The reasons for setting up the table into columns relative to the average for the group is for exploring the factors that help explain operating ratio. The table can be split in terms of above and below average length, or frequency, or population per route mile, or population per hour, or average on-time performance, and it can be seen at a glance when a factor tends lines up with the operating ratios. But that analysis will wait for some later set of Sunday afternoons.

While the average operating ratio for the State Corridor trains is not affected, bear in mind that the following involves a pro-rata distribution of state operating subsidies.

Corridor Route	Op Ratio	Corridor Route	Op Ratio
Corridor Services	58%
Chicago-St. Louis IL/MO	79%	Blue Water MI/IL	55%
Newport News DC/VA	77%	Zephyr IL	54%
Carolinian NY/NC	71%	Vermonter VT/DC	54%
Illinois-Saluki IL	70%	Albany-Toronto NY/ONT	54%
Adirondock NY/Quebec	69%	Capital CA	53%
Heartland TX/OK	67%	Piedmont NC	52%
Hiawatha IL/WI	66%	Empire NY	48%
Ethan Allen NY/VT	65%	Missouri River MO	45%
Downeaster ME/MA	64%	Pennsylvanian PA/NY	43%
San Jaoquins CA	61%	Wolverine MI/IL	39%
Keystone PA	61%	Springfield Shuttle MA/CT	32%
Cascades OR/BC	61%	Hoisier State IN/IL	15%
Pere Marquette MI/IL	59%
Pacific Surfliner CA	59%

The Long Distance Services

The long distance services are the ones that can gain the most converting the Strategic Rail Corridor Network into a network of Steel Interstates. Faster and more reliable Electric Rapid Rail service might be more important in terms of reducing cost per mile as in increasing ridership. Wages and salaries are 54% of long distance operating costs, and wages are paid per hour, not per mile - the faster the trip speed, the lower the labor cost per mile. And fuel and utilities is another 17% of operating costs, where electricity is less expensive on an equal-energy basis and electric locomotives are more energy efficient.

The Auto Train stands head and shoulders above the typical long distance route in terms of operating recovery, and would seem likely to have an operating surplus if run on a Steel Interstate.

Of course, our two main long distance transport systems run on operating subsidies, so that it would be biased to expect that long distance trains ought to break even when cars and planes are not expected too. However, even if we expect to continue subsidizing these operations, raising the operating recovery ratios allows us to leverage more transport service with the same level of subsidy. That is, consider a service operating on the basis of 40% service revenue, 60% subsidy. If that same amount of subsidy is maintained, then in terms of operating costs alone:

• 50% operating recovery allows 1.2 times as much service
  
• 60% operating recovery allows 1.5 times as much service
  
• 70% operating recovery allows 2 times as much service
  
• 80% operating recovery allows 3 times as much service
  
• 90% operating recovery allows 6 times as much service
  

I am not sure what combination of fuel prices and service improvements are required to get these services up to operating break-even - or even whether we ought to be targeting operating break-even. However, it seems quite likely that the operations on a Steel Interstate system would allow the majority of the routes below to get into the range of 70% operating recovery.

Long Distance Route	Op Ratio	Long Distance Route	Op Ratio
Long Distance	49%
Auto Train VA/FL	85%	Silver Meteor NY/FL	47%
Empire Builder	61%	Capital Ltd DC/IL	45%
Palmetto NY/GA	55%	Coast Starlight WA/CA	45%
SW Chief IL/CA		Crescent NY/LA	44%
City of New Orleans IL/LA	49%	Texas Eagle IL/TX	43%
		CA Zephyr IL/CA	43%
		Silver Star NY/FL	41%
		Lake Shore Ltd MA|NY/IL	41%
		Cardinal DC/IL	34%
		Sunset Ltd LA/CA	23%

Conclusions

I have few conclusions, other than dismay that Pew would finance work like the work that SubsidyScope has turned out without demanding its money back. However, I do expect that I will be able to take these tables and find the key factors that tend to drive operating recovery up toward the direction of operating break-even.

Midnight Oil - River Runs Red
   Unauthorized Protest Concert at Exxon HQ

Weekend Bike Blogging: Bike Boxes I Can Believe In

In the store, or at the airport, a "bike box" is a box that is supposed to have a bike inside of it.

However, at an intersection, a "bike box" is when you make a space at an intersection ahead of the "traffic stop here" line. They are often combined, as in the picture, with a "protected by paint and optimism" bike lane. In some cases for traffic lights that are tripped by stopped vehicle detectors, as in the YouTube clip below, they include a more sensitive stopped bike detectors in the bike box, so that the sensitivity of the regular vehicle detector does not have to be adjusted.

Looking at the overall concept, as [http://bikexprt.com/bikepol/facil/stopline.htm John Allen does in A LOOK INTO THE "BIKE BOX"], this is yet another case of, probably subconscious "if only we could kill off these cyclists we wouldn't have to worry about them" thinking by traffic planners.

One thing the bike box does is amplify the encouragement of the regular "protected by paint", aka "kill the cyclist", bike lane to pass stopped motor vehicles on their right side. This is a practice that you can get away with day after day, but sooner or later you are going to end up trying to go straight when a car is trying to turn. And given the fact that the car is risking its pain job and you are risking an extended stay in the hospital, that is a monumentally stupid habit to pick up. Its bad enough that "protected by paint" bike lanes encourage this habit - the "protected by paint with a prize at the end" is even worse.


Watching the Danger Live on YouTube

The second thing the bike box does is allow the cyclist to get to the left hand side of the lane "in the safety of the bike box" - which is to say, "protected" by the paint of the vehicle stop line. Picking up the Bike Box Youtube in the third example, we can see how effectively the main vehicle stop line protects the bike box from incursion by motorists - as in, not at all.

At 1:00 into this clip is a safe passing on the right - because the car is turning left. But in a single share traffic lane, if the left turning car is in the left part of the lane, the cyclist can pass just as safely without requiring a bike lane at all.

At 1:15 into this clip, and then again at 1:40, we see the key to designing Bike Boxes as if we want cyclists to live.

In the first case (1:15), a cyclists could have used the bike lane to try to sneak around the car to get into the bike box to get in front to prepare for their left turn. But then, what if the signal changes "mid-sneak"? Either they try to get the car a left hook - and the cyclist of course loses whether they are receiving or delivering a right or left hook - or they have to wait until traffic is clear to merge left. Safer, and worst-case-quicker, to simply merge left behind the car and wait to turn left.

Indeed, lots of cyclists sneaking around the right to get in front of cars for left turns, and sometimes getting caught, could well encourage drivers to encroach on the bike box to prevent it.

In the second case (1:40), a cyclist arrives at the bike box, stopping on the bike indicator to trigger the signal. A car pulls in behind, and then a cyclist pulls in behind the car - instead of trying to sneak unsafely into the bike box on the right hand side of the car.

So while the bike box is a death trap, an aware cyclist can easily avoid the trap. For the expert cyclist, who uses it optionally and when appropriate, it offers the convenience of being able to trip the traffic signal. On the other hand, an inexperienced or confused cyclist is more likely to be killed.

Surely a bike box that is less likely to kill the inexpert cyclist can be designed?


Painting a Safer Bike Box

The idea of using the bike box to enter from the right and then get positioned for a left hand turn is a clear kill-the-cyclist idea. Consider the example from John Allen, pictured to the right. The bike box in the top right, which is already occupied, is not likely to have a car seeing a new green and driving through a cyclist lining up to turn left. The bike box in the bottom left, though, which is empty, is more inviting for a cyclist to go around right to get left - and sooner or later, there will be a car that is looking up to see green and then down to see the cyclist too late.

So that is the first thing to get rid of. That does not mean the bike box should not exist on the left hand side. It is safe for a cyclist who has already merged left to occupy that slot waiting for the light. Its just encouraging death or injury to try to sneak in "over the top" of traffic waiting on the light.

This means, of course, that there should be two boxes - with the space between barred to cyclists.

If there is a "protected by paint" bike lane, the solid line should not extend to the box. Instead, left turning cycle traffic should be warned to merge left safely for a left turn, and then straight through traffic warned to merge into the traffic lane to pass through the intersection. Before the start of the bike box, a cycle lane should be marked "right turn only" - and only of there is a cycle lane to turn directly into - because the only time it is even plausibly safe to pass cars on the right is if turning right inside of the traffic lane.

Indeed, in a "turn right on red with caution" state like here in Ohio, there is no need for a traffic indicator in that case - a right turn only bike lane turning into the a bike lane is a cyclist that can look out for crossing cyclists heading to the bike lane. Its only the through and left turn cyclist who needs the signal tripped.

So, that's my idea of a better bike box. It does not encourage habits likely to get novice cyclists killed before they have a chance to become experienced cyclists. It retains the advantage of having a dedicated cycle trip detector. It supports left turning cyclists positioning themselves so through motor traffic can pass them safely to their right. And it allows marking between the left and through bike boxes that indicates far more clearly to the driver not to encroach on the box.

REM: Stand Thing about Direction
 : : :Wonder Why You Haven't Before

Friday Hours of Action against Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp

Burning the Midnight Oil for Breaking the Silicon Cage

This is week 3 of the Hours of Action against bootleg streaming by servers from inside Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp media empire.

Act on Friday, 4pm and 10pm Eastern, 1pm and 7pm Pacific.

Part of the point here is to Call Out Rupert and NewsCorp on their institutionalized Hypocrisy, as Rupert goes around lecturing countries on Copyright Piracy while various crevices of his media empire are passively streaming bootlegs in competition against serious and audience-friendly efforts to adapt to the New Media economy.

Part of the point is just to attack Rupert and and the senior executive management of Newscorp for being a bunch of dirtbags.

Part of the point is an experiment in whether the blogosphere can be of use for more than a talkshop and campaign season ATM machine for politicians claiming to be "progressive".

And part of it is curiosity - I am, after all, one of the minority of economists with an interest in how the real world economy works and evolves, beyond the blinkered confines of calculus-based models of non-evolving mechanical systems.

If you want to know more, there's a remote chance I've already said it, so check out the "story so far" links below.


What the Action is and How to Participate

The Action consists of charging the MySpaceCDN servers, owned by NewsCorp Subsidiary 20th Century Fox, a "tax" by requesting that they do the same thing for us that they are doing for the bootleg anime streaming sites - stream the file. Bandwidth costs money, and while any one of us as an individual cannot use a noticeable amount of bandwidth, if we all do it at the same time, and bring our friends in on the action, it can start to add up.

How to participate. Note that you should be sure that you are on a broadband system without a bandwidth surcharge - the point is to impose a Direct Citizen Tax on Rupert's media empire, not to impose a tax on participants.

What you do is emulate the process that the streaming players use - except by skipping the streaming playing, you have greater ability to download multiple streams at the same time. Right click on the links and save them to disk. For the first one, create a temporary directory to save them into. Then when they are downloaded, delete the temporary directory.

Each file will be about 60Mbyte-80MB, so if your hard drive space is limited, you could, if you wished, download a batch, delete the downloads and empty your trash, then repeat.

I've already emailed Hulu.com, copied to MySpace and 20th Century Fox, to alert them to the bootleg streaming taking place from MySpaceCDN servers. So you could also, if you wish, send an email to media@Hulu.com and ask them whether they are serious about continuing as an ad-supported free streaming, and if they are, whether they have been forwarding these links to the copyright owners for action, or else requesting that NewsCorp, one of their owners, takes action itself to remove the bootleg streams they provide in competition with Hulu.com's licensed streams.

The links are a long list below the rundown on the diaries posted on this issue over the past three weeks as I have been learning things and passing them on.

Act on Friday, 4pm and 10pm Eastern, 1pm and 7pm Pacific.


The Story So Far

Episode 1: Can the Teaspoon Model stand up to Bloodsucker Streaming Sites?:
I relate my encounter with the free anime streaming site, as their complaining about being forced to stop linking to FUNimation streams hits twitter streams that I follow. When the complaint hit twitter, it turned out that there is a segment of the anime fanbase that is opposed to bootlegs anime streams in competition with the licensed streams that actually provide revenue back into the industry - which is facing much of the same turbulence in the evolving New Media economy that the magazine and newspaper publishing industries are. I speculate on whether a fan-based system might be able to protect the ability of legit anime streaming sites to make a go of it.

Episode 2: Direct Action against Fox ...: In investigating the economics of bootleg streaming, it struck me how many of the streams seem to be hosted at 20th Century Fox servers - part of Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp media empire. And so came the idea of Operation Direct Action Citizen Starving Artist Protection Tax, OK! (Operation OK! for short). 13 people vote to go ahead, so I decide to charge ahead.

Episode 3: Rupert Murdoch has the Biggest Pirate Base in the US Anime Market: I did further exploration, sampling the first episodes in each series on the site from the #'s and A through F (for FOX). It turned out that MySpaceCDN and MySpace were not just common free streaming hosts - they were the most popular free streaming hosts. It has since become clear that calling it a Pirate Base is confusing - Rupert's servers are more accurately a Pirate Support Base. That is, they do not do the piracy itself, they just either tolerate or are incompetent at suppressing the use of their facilities by people that they themselves label as "Copyright Pirates".

Episode 4: Direct Action: Charging Fox Noise Owner Rupert Murdoch a Pirate Base Tax: In the second week, I did not do a lot of writing, as I was learning how to script the process of datamining for more efficiency in harvesting links. I did, however, share a video on the debate at the leeching anime stream site by MarzGurl.

Episode 5: Is Rupert Murdoch Picking His Partner's Pockets ...: After harvesting the links for all the series I can find that are competing against legit streams, it becomes clear that I underestimated the importance of MySpaceCDN, at least for the case-study site. I speculate whether these servers are so open to streaming bootleg anime because there is some financial incentive more critical than the success of the Hulu.com joint venture - the "Pickpocket" hypothesis - or whether its just because NewsCorp is not structured to be able to cope efficiently with this kind of issue - the "Dinosaur" hypothesis (NB. the Dinosaur of the meme, not necessarily the Dinosaurs as they actually existed). I lean toward the Old Media Dinosaur explanation.

Episode 6: The Teaspoon Model Versus Rupert Murdoch's Pirate Support Base: I report on the results of an experiment I conducted on Monday, emailing NBC/Universal and Disney/ABC for their comment on what might be motivating NewsCorp to be so lax in controlling for bootleg stream competition from NewsCorp's own servers, including as "proof" a long list of links. The email was also cc'd to the copyright control addresses of many of the primary hosts that the bloodsucker streaming site streamed from. Veoh.com, Imeem.com and Megavideo.com emerged as "White Hats" that pro-actively cleaned out the bootleg files without having to be forced to do so by threat of lawsuit.

In this episode as well, I passed on the news that traffic at MySpace has fallen off so much that Google appears likely to be paying $100m than originally expected in its exclusive search advertising deal with NewsCorp when NewsCorp bought MySpace. Some might feel this makes the "Pickpocket" hypothesis more likely, but I still lean to the "Decrepit Old Media Dinosaur" hypothesis.


The Legit Anime Streaming Distributer

I previously intermixed links to the corresponding legitimate streams with the list, but this week, I will instead put the links to the series from legit Anime streaming distributors being undermined by NewsCorp here, and the (long) list of MySpaceCDN links itself below.

Crunchyroll series:
11Eyes, The Book of Bantorra, Aoi Hana, Asura_Cryin, CODE GEASS: Lelouch of the Rebellion, Fairy Tale, Hanasakeru Seishonen, Miracle Train, Naruto Shippuden, Sasameki Koto, Shugo Chara, Sora No Otoshimono, Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee, White Album.

Full financial interest disclosure: I am a Crunchyroll paid subscriber, so if they go bankrupt, I am out some part of my $7 monthly subscription fee.

Many of these series are also available at Joost, where you can also find FUNimation titles.

Hulu.com Exclusive: Bleach


The List

Act on Friday, 4pm and 10pm Eastern, 1pm and 7pm Pacific.

11 Eyes ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/227/vid_2efe0de4c3624cf59de17cbd5950b399.flv
11 Eyes ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/178/vid_b959ed011b8442a585e9f4d7a7a68622.flv
Armed Librarians: The Book of Bantorra ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/140/vid_952b79e569a54cd69c6c00078280e33d.flv
Armed Librarians: The book of Bantorra ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/199/vid_5c4dd294f806414da629d5e93295bc92.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-12 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/114/vid_a9ade428de84445b9c83f9ced317409e.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-11 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/176/vid_bbba16750165472d925628206e0d17c7.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-10 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/148/vid_59b9ec299ac24983a9a5c8263b7c19eb.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-9 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/140/vid_b33490ed48e14b9db8be41e3f7e6e0f7.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-6 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/123/vid_b2a0db2bdb23478688852f72053a5ae1.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-5 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/234/vid_15a9efe835794c4d8a97a7d3664ec0a6.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-4 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/124/vid_d5b01cc47243425a9a5b0a4cb3637550.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/167/vid_6d492fdd5f5d4c8da0d88f636c370352.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/98/vid_1729385c8f864416a3cfae177cf58855.flv
Asura Cryin' ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/124/vid_3622c8db50264463bdc2179195ac5c15.flv
Code Geass 24 and FINAL http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/25/vid_17b938a32bb4b54e49b04e584f00fb1e.flv
Code Geass ep-22 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/33/vid_142b9ab034b342a5affea9fe9fa3b039.flv
Code Geass ep-21 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/71/vid_a49dff28a91a4b0d811dddc38c6c2bc4.flv
Code Geass ep-17 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/94/vid_2380a32f12bb4e5db5b171e2b01d67e8.flv
Code Geass ep-15 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/65/vid_753ac55a47824092a692f215d333cdf2.flv
Code Geass ep-7 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/67/vid_2f046b61bcde4971b5b155a7f19efc77.flv
Code Geass ep-3 http://cache02-videos02.myspacecdn.com/81/vid_b1b14079297a4b0ca4996399133fd78f.flv
Code Geass ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/26/vid_3cb84c50773ee6e7c8613443755a96e5.flv
Code Geass ep-1 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/22/vid_afe26aa5e49fe5cb77fbef25eac14e4f.flv
Fairy Tail ep-3 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/176/vid_a1fa4b76325b44dcbe611390159d480f.flv
Fairy Tail ep-2 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/211/vid_1d948466bef443769e32331e58c5b30f.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-24 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/238/vid_ea68368edccc46b081e762d29fcd10b6.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-23 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/224/vid_5d422caa1af7459d9e37f22146ea488e.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-22 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/135/vid_10c157b8c9a340e697538f062cc89c37.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-21 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/113/vid_1fe1292c865a49ad95360aec73f8cc95.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-20 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/123/vid_6f5db1b0f1184cf4895844a3cbb6bc17.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-19 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/225/vid_2a975e75dab44baa885c74252914fbfe.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-18 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/169/vid_081ddd07f13d46c58c24d6b2f0fdafd8.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-17 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/231/vid_09722c4f66be4dbe9c0390fe469d76d8.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-16 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/101/vid_ddf85e2ce3fa4d9cbcc30915d84ed94a.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-15 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/131/vid_eadb43798b5248ff9d3f99481e6518f2.flv
Hanasakeru Seishounen ep-14 http://cache01-videos02.myspacecdn.com/174/vid_872b32d812734bd696e0cadadb99b437.flv
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The Teaspoon Model Versus Rupert Murdoch's Pirate Support Base

Burning the Midnight Oil for Breaking the Silicon Cage

Two weeks ago, I speculated on applying the "Teaspoon Model" to the problem of protecting small, niche, video streaming markets faced:

• on the one hand with Copyright Protection laws focused on protecting the cash flows of large media distribution middlemen; and,
  
• on the other hand, with a plague of bloodsucking bootleg streaming sites, surviving on miniscule revenue flows because they leech off of everyone - not just the creators of the work themselves, but also fansub and video-rip groups that make the content availbale for download, and free stream hosting sites for the streaming itself
  

Refer to the lovely Shakespeare's Sister for the teaspoon concept itself - the idea of this application is:

So this is what I was thinking. Perhaps a small, struggling company that wanted to reduce the density of the cloud of bloodsucking flies draining the work of the artists who create this material of market value could gain leverage not by trying to find the Super-Teaspoon - but by recruiting a supporting group, each armed with ordinary teaspoons.

There'd have to be at least one person at the company actually sending out the letters to the sites streaming the bootlegs - but they would be far more effective if backed up by ten or twenty people contributing a couple of hours a week tracking down where the material is located. Indeed, the "white hats" could drop in info on where to get the material legally while at the bootleg bloodsucker streaming sites, including the proliferating opportunities for legal free streams.

Tonight, I consider an experiment on the Teaspoon Model in action.



The Sunshine Experiment

What I did at the beginning of the week was to send an email for comment to NBC/Universal and Disney/ABC on whether they had any comment on the hosting of bootleg streams by FoxNews servers (specifically, MySpaceCDN and MySpace domains) in competition with legit streams from Hulu.com, their joint venture with NewsCorp:

Dear Disney and NBC/Universal,

I am sure that you are aware that there are severa reports of Hulu.com joint venture partner executives saying that Hulu.com will be forced to move to a paid content model.

As an economist engaged in research in the New Media Economy, I have been looking at the competition with legitimate streaming sites from bootleg streaming sites. These sites rely on off-site free hosts for their bootleg streams. My research of these hosts indicate that they collect stream links from anywhere they can find them, but that when videos are taken down, they upload videos to their preferred free video hosting site.

I was surprised to find that the preferred free video hosting site for these uploads at the bootleg site that I am data-mining for their streams is the MySpaceCDN servers, registered by 20th Century Fox, a subsidiary of NewsCorp, a joint venture partner for Hulu.com.

While I am sure that the administration of the MySpace servers takes down videos on receiving a DMCA notice, they do not appear to act on other forms of information to remove bootleg material competing against Hulu.com.

My working hypothesis is that in their business model, being pro-active in identifying and removing bootleg media streams in competition against Hulu.com is not worth the trouble, as it costs resources while the fact that MySpace is less aggressive in identifying and removing bootlegs than YouTube and Veoh attracts traffic to MySpace that might otherwise be at risk of moving to FaceBook.

However, I cannot find any public comment by their joint venture partners, Disney and NBC/Universal in particular, on the apparent contradiction of Hulu.com moving to a paid content model while one of the joint venture partners appears to have a tolerant approach to bootleg material streamed freely in competition with Hulu.com.

I include below the links to bootleg streams in competitition with the Hulu.com streaming shows "Naruto Shippuden" and "Bleach". You will note that these are two of the four most popular streams in the:
http://www.hulu.com/channels/Animation-and-Cartoons/Anime
channel. In my research, I am focusing on Anime as the anime fanbase have been early adopters of video media technologies from the 1980's and the first fan-subtitled animes circulating on VHS tape.

I previously brought some of the streams hosted at MySpaceCDN servers to the attention of the registered owners of these servers, to no effect. By contrast, a number of the Veoh.com links that this free streaming site links to have been removed in this past two weeks.

You can confirm for yourselves that the MySpaceCDN servers and other MySpace have in the past year become the dominant streaming source for both of these series, taking over from an earlier reliance primarily on video.google.com, and combined with a pattern of filling in for earlier individual shows that have been taken down at other streaming sites.

Note that the bootleg streaming site in received an order to Cease and Desist linking to bootleg FUNimation streams, or else there would be far more Hulu.com series represented at this site. I also include samples of series streamed from the legitimate streaming site "Crunchyroll", including both series currently airing in Japan and being simulcast at Crunchyroll, as well as examples from their back catalog.

I also include two examples of less popular Hulu.com series that are primarily hosted elsewhere.

Yours,

The Sunshine element was that I cc'd the email to the ownership and administration email of the MySpaceCDN domain as well as the various Violations, Support and DCMA email addresses I could glean of free video streaming hosts providing the bulk of the streaming that the bootleg anime streaming group relies upon.

And of course, the balance of the email was a list of over 580 links to bootleg anime streams. Less than a week later, 368 of those streams are no longer live.


The Video Streaming White Hats

What I found remarkable was that many of these video streaming hosts shut down almost all the clips in the list. And while I have not received a single email in response, there are a number of indications that this was in response to receipt of the email - for example, videos added after I compiled the original list are not taken down, or a link in a series accidentally omitted remaining live while all the surrounding videos that appears in the stream are taken down.

From the perspective of a small niche streaming site, directing a part of its narrow margins to paying license fees to the creators of the work, these are the real "white hats" - streaming sites that are pro-active about taking out the garbage, so that there is no need to go through the process of issuing Cease and Desist orders. If the four hosts in the White Hat Honor Roll continue to behave in this way, as small but determined fan support group could quickly teach bootleg anime leech sites to not even bother with any videos appearing on these sites:

• Veoh.com: 48 streams in the list, all 48 removed, for a 100% hit rate
• Imeem.com: 76 streams in the list, 75 streams removed, for a 99% hit rate
• Megavideo.com: 71 streams in the list, 60 streams removed - and of the remaining 11, 9 are directed to a domain that appears to be licensed to stream the material, for a 97% hit rate
• YouTube.com: 19 streams in the list, 16 down and 4 remaining up, for an 84% hit rate. For YouTube, all of the streams remaining up were from a single series. Given the attention that YouTube receives as the one-time Bootleg Video Central, this might be just the turnover that occurs with YouTube streams. On the other hand, with their automated video fingerprinting system, it may reflect the video producers that have signed in to have their content protected.
• Honorable Mention: Broadcaster.com had 17 streams in list, and I recorded 15 streams as unavailable. However, as this site comes up as "presently unavailable", the question is whether those other two streams are streaming from Broadcaster.com, or were instead already replaced by other streams between the time I harvested the links and the time I checked which episodes were still streaming.

The Hit and Miss Parade

However, there is also a substantial Hit and Miss parade, where a substantial number of the streams have been taken down, but a substantial number remain up, which may well indicate that the site is receiving official C&D notices from the rights holders. Some look like it lines up with the list of individual series, so that the rights holder may have been forwarded the list - others are in a more random pattern.

The Hit and Miss Parade includes:

• The MySpace.com domain itself had only 21 streams in the list, with 14 down and 7 remaining up, for a hit rate of 67%
  
• MySpaceCDN.com: 241 streams in the list, with 110 streams removed and 131 streams still up. However, of the 110 streams removed, 43 have special circumstances - for instance the streaming page was in the process of being updated, so it may have been an stream that was already down. Of the 191 streams with no special notes, 67 were removed and 122 remain up, a hit rate of 35%
  
• Guba.Com was very lightly used, of only 7 streams, 4 are down and 3 remain up, for a 58% hit rate

The Black Hats

The Black Hats are the sites that showed no turnover of files whatsoever. These are the sites that a fan-based Teaspoon Brigade will have to be collecting stream links and forwarding the streams to the rights holder for batch Cease and Desist orders to halt streaming of bootleg material:

• LiveVideo.com: 30 streams in the list, all 30 remain up, for a 0% hit rate. It should be noted that LiveVideo was omitted from the original cc list and was notified in a separate communication. However, while LiveVideo is one of the few sites that claim to accept communication regarding copyright violations from people other than the copyright holders, there is not yet any evidence that it acts on that information.
• Google.com: 85 streams in the list, 14 now down, 71 still up for a hit rate of 16% - and the streams still up include an extensive portion of the back-catalog of Naruto Shippuden, the most popular series streaming at Hulu.com. Google.com was the only recipient of a cc' that responded - with a form letter response regarding the information required for a formal copyright complaint, indicating that they glanced at the email and put it into the form-letter queue.
• SevenLoad.com: with only 8 streams in the list, this is either a host that gets around to scrubbing bootlegs eventually, or simply not a preferred host for the bootleg anime streaming site providing the information, but of those 8, only 2 went down, with 6 still up, for a hit rate of 25%.

Moving Forward

One thing that is clear is that a 100% hit rate is by no means necessary in order for the Teaspoon Model to work in this particular shadowing fringe lying outside the US Anime market.

This is one key difference between this area and peer-to-peer downloading. With peer-to-peer downloading, if some well-organized crackdown was to miss a single potential seed, once the existence of that seed would made public, the community of those interested in the material would quickly re-create the copies.

With the leech bootleg streaming sites, what they offer is the organization and easy access to a stream from some central streaming site - if the stream is taken down, their only recourse is to either find another copy or to upload a copy of their own. But if they find another existing copy, that only helps hunt down the extant copies on streaming sites around the net, while far more time and effort is required to upload a new copy then is required to note the link address and report that information to the rights holder and streaming host.


The Puzzle Regarding MySpaceCDN - and One Possible Answer

It is still a puzzle that MySpaceCDN is not in the ranks of the White Hats. Indeed, if MySpaceCDN was to simply take down the bootleg streaming it does competing against Hulu.com, a NewsCorp Joint Venture, it would have shown a hit rate above 80%.

In Is Rupert Murdoch Picking His Partner's Pockets ..., I adopted the working hypothesis that the enterprises in Ol' Rupert's media empire are just Old Media Dinosaurs that just are incapable of reacting at the pace required to keep up in a field like this.

However, recent news will likely add fuel to the fire of the "Pickpocket" hypothesis. And that is that a lack of hits at MySpace is likely costing MySpace on the order of $100m. See, the purchase of MySpace was financed at a profit with an exclusive contract with google - except there were guarantees required MySpace's hit traffic:

MySpace Traffic Drop Costs News Corp About $100 Million, By Eliot Van Buskirk, November 5, 2009
The MySpace social media network’s traffic has dropped so much that it will fail to satisfy a minimum traffic level crucial to parent company News Corp’s three-year $900 million advertising deal with Google, inked in 2006, that made Google the exclusive search advertiser on MySpace — then the world’s most popular social network.

News Corp. executives bandied about three different estimates of how much of the Google’s $900 million MySpace will not take in, due to the shortfall, but a consensus emerged that the penalty will be in the neighborhood of $100 million.

As the Financial Times points out, this Google ad deal covered News Corp.’s estimated $580 million purchase of MySpace. The site’s failure to provide the deal’s minimum traffic level is bad news for News Corp., which otherwise reported a generally positive outlook due to its movie studio and cable channels, which currently generate 85 percent of the company’s revenue.
...

Under the PickPocket hypothesis, MySpaceCDN servers are not taking the aggressive, pro-active attitude to "taking out the trash", because it does not want to alienate users in the fight for market share with FaceBook. The story from Wired, however, casts a different light on the issue - the conflict between long-term, strategic goals and short-term revenue.

After all, MySpace has conceded defeat in the market space it once dominated, and is trying to leverage an advantage it build up for another market space:

Rather than compete against those social networking heavyweights, MySpace intends to double down on what has always been a core strength: the millions of artist pages on the site, which dwarfs the catalog of other music services, because it includes so many unsigned (and, for that matter, signed) bands. MySpace’s new strategy, already known before the earnings call, will be to realign the site as an entertainment destination rather than a place where people keep up with friends and family.

If the strategy works, it will likely involve MySpace leveraging video in addition to music. MySpace Video currently boasts over 20,000 music videos, television shows and other videos, but faces entrenched competition from YouTube that could be even fiercer than Facebook and Twitter are on the social networking side

In the short term, being more passive about copyright protection than YouTube and the main second tier video streaming sites will drive a larger number of hits in the direction of MySpace, reducing the penalty it faces in its advertising contract with google.

However, it is clearly not in NewsCorp's long term interest to encourage the proliferation of bootleg videos on its site. One the one hand, bootleg videos cannot attract the mainstream video ad-streaming that, at the very least, pays the web serving and video streaming bills for a video streaming site, so that whatever other income it attracts does not have to cover those basic operating costs. With MySpace's long term strategic direction, they need to encourage the creators of original work to use MySpace to publicize themselves - they certainly do not need to be streaming bootleg anime on behalf of leach sites where a link to MySpace does not even appear.

Indeed, if the MySpaceCDN servers were in the hands of a media empire that was not such an Old Media Dinosaur, anybootleg anime that it learned off streaming in competition against its own joint venture would be replaced with a short trailer advertising the legitimate stream on site - and a bootleg that was not streamed at the joint venture would be replaced by a trailer for MySpace as a video and music entertainment stop - an a Google link to search for legitimate streams and other legitimate sources of the anime title, to make Google happier with MySpace.

I am still skeptical that NewsCorp is deliberately adopting a passive attitude toward cleaning up the trash at MySpaceCDN, putting its financial interests in MySpace traffic ahead of the financial interest of its Joint Venture with NBC/Universal and Diensy/ABC - but the news that a shortfall of MySpace hits is costing Rupert $100m certainly does add to the plausibility of the alternative working hypothesis.

The candy store paupers lie to the share holders
They're crossing their fingers they pay the truth makers
The balance sheet is breaking up the sky
So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night
And if the blue sky mining company won't come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won't save me
Who's gonna save me?

Is Rupert Murdoch Picking His Partner's Pockets ...

... or is NewsCorp just an Old Media Dinosaur that cannot keep up?

Burning the Midnight Oil for Breaking the Silicon Cage
In Orange 5pm Wednesday, EST

Breaking the Silicon Cage is for breaking down those barriers that prevent us from leveraging the full potential of the netroots for progressive populist action - whether that involves using the internet for collaboration on works to be delivered live on the street, or breaking down barriers between different social networks on the internet itself.

The latter is what we have here. The progressive blogosphere, if people are to believe our words (though not always our actions) is an enemy of Rupert Murdoch and his Iraq-Invasion-supporting, Conservative-Politician-electing multinational media empire. We in the US know him primarily for the Faux News Channel, but in the UK and Australia they know him for his grossly biased newspaper oligopolies.

Now, if Progressives were indeed intent on taking power (something Cassiodorus questions), we would be eager to take any shots at Rupert Murdch's Media Empire that we could.

Now, I'm game, and a few others have expressed their interest, but for the most part the reaction of the blogosphere is a big, "why should I become outraged by that in particular". If the thousands of US service members and hundreds of thousands of lives disrupted - hundreds of thousands of Iraqis kills and millions of Iraqi lives disrupted - is too big a reason to grasp for being outraged at Rupert Murdoch and his media empire ... then be outraged for the mother (above right) of Cpl. Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, killed in action in a War of Choice that Rupert Murdoch loudly banged the drum in favor of choosing.
__________________

Because rather than being serious in our antagonism with Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp, rather than owning our antagonism, rather than recognizing that sometimes, some people are just committed to opposing almost everything you are committed to supporting and so much be attacked whenever they present a target of opportunity...

... it may well be that many members of the "progressive blogosphere" are only comfortable in acting when they have been manipulated into outrage. If someone else can push our buttons, and tick us off, then we can join in expressing outrage. If, on the other hand, we have to pursue our revenge against Rupert Murdoch's media empire with cold calculation, that's not the same. And, no, its not the same - it would be an indication that we are serious about taking power.

Because this is an issue that on its own merits is not likely to be a big button pusher in the progressive blogosphere. The eternal online temptation to sneer is too strong, and the opportunity to land a punch on the enemy is lost in the joy of being smugly superior to the line of the attack.


The Line of Attack

Because the line of the attack is US translations of Japanese anime. US distribution of bootleg anime has long been on the bleeding edge of the New Media economy, with VHS tape bootlegs of fan-subtitled Japanese anime series circulating in the 80's, early adoption of computer digital video in the 90's, and early adoption and a strong presence in peer-to-peer networked file sharing.

This was a fringe of the anime audience that the industry ignored in the US growth period of the 90's and early part of this decade. However, an industry that had become increasingly reliant on US licensing fees, with US sales reaching a peak of around $500m earlier in this decade, has been hit hard in the second half of this decade. The distribution of bootlegs through free streaming sites has cut growing swathes of the fanbase out of the audience for licensed work, and US sales have slumped to a figure closer to $350m.

Particularly hard hit have been the higher end US distributors that dub Japanese anime with US voice actors - considered essential for packaging a series for US broadcast, but representing a substantial fixed cost for a US distributor to take on with no guarantee of recouping the cost from increased sales. In the past few years, one long time US distributor, Central Park Media, has gone bankrupt, and another, ADV, restructured as Section 23 Films and spun off its dubbing division into a separate company.

OK, so what does this have to do with Rupert Murdoch?

One of the ways that the anime industry has been trying to cope with the rapid distribution of bootleg fansubs on streaming sites has been to make legitimate licensed streams available to fans, in a mix of ad and subscriber supported business models. Examples include Joost, with over 30 anime series available, and Crunchyroll, with over 100.

But of course, legitimate sites can only stream what they can license, while the bootleg streamers can stream anything they can find available on a free video stream host site. For example, Hulu.com focuses entirely on North American rights, and has a running fight with services that allow overseas access via US-based Internet addresses, while Crunchyroll.com faces constant irritation from overseas members when a show they want to watch is not available for streaming to their country.

And the bootleg streamers can survive on the miniscule revenues of web ads and donations, because they contribute nothing back to the creative artists, contribute nothing back to the "fansub" groups that translate and subtitle works as a community activity, and indeed do not actually do the streaming of the material itself.

The flipside of that, however, is that the bootleg streamers can only exist due to the tolerance of their activity by the free video stream sites or due to the ineffectiveness of enforcement efforts.

Which is what raises the question in the title: is Rupert Murdoch's MySpace video streaming tolerating bootleg anime streams, in order to attract more users in their ongoing fight with FaceBook (note if you click through to [http://www.joost.com/epg/us/shows/animation/anime/ Joost], you can sign in via Facebook) ... or is NewsCorp just an Old Media Dinosaur that is incapable of being fast enough on its feet to cope?

Because, as I began to document last week, and finished working out just this last weekend, Rupert Murdoch's MySpace servers, owned by 20th Century FOX, are the Pirate Support Base of preference of the particular bootleg streaming source that I have been datamining for stream host information.

In particular, looking at all series on the site that are available in a licensed free stream at either Hulu.com, Crunchyroll.com, or the AnimeNewsNetwork.com, the count of links as of 30-10-2009 by host server is:

• MySpaceCDN.com: 461, MySpace.com: 47, Total: 508
  
• imeem.com: 100
  
• google.com: 85
  
• megavideo.com: 81
  
• Source Hidden behind Local Link: 47
  
• LiveVideo.com: 39
  
• Veoh.com: 22
  
• YouTube.com: 18
  
• SevenLoad.com: 14
  
• TwitVid.com: 1
  
• Zoopy.com: 1
  

So in one part of his "trying to into the New Media Economy" strategy for his media empire, it turns out that Rupert Murdoch's MySpace is a major free streaming hosts for bootleg anime. Those in turn undermine the efforts of production houses and US distributors to provide US access to content shortly after Japanese airtime, while providing some income stream to keep the creative artists, producers, and translaters employed.

There is nothing that can be done to stop peer-to-peer file sharing, and so the market for DVD's is the market for people who want the DVD's. That genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back in. But clearly, not everyone wants to or can work out where to download bootlegs, or how to get them playing on their system - that is why the bootleg streaming sites exist and attract an audience. There are those who prefers the simplicity of just browsing to a site and watching the show.

And that is the potential audience that Rupert Murdoch's MySpace is helping to divert away from the legitimate streaming sites.


The Pick-Pocket Thesis

One of Rupert's other ventures in trying to buy his way into the New Media Economy is Hulu.com, a free streaming joint venture between NewsCorp, NBC/Universal and Disney/ABC (there may be others - I'll be happy if you can add to that list of joint venture partners in the comments).

Which is where it gets weird, because when you look at the top four shows on Hulu.com by popularity, the list is topped by Naruto Shippuden - also available at Joost.com and Crunchyroll - with "Bleach" at number four. Hulu.com seems to be the sole source for legit streams of "Bleach".

Bleach is important for the bootleg streaming sites as well - in one it features as one of three series with direct links provided at the very top of every page.

And it is argued in some quarters that Hulu.com definitely needs more audience if it is going to be a successful venture. The Silicon Valley Insider at The Business Insider:

We have been skeptical that Hulu will receive enough of a revenue cut from its content and distribution partners to cover what we believe is a high cost structure. After conducting more research, we remain skeptical. It is not impossible that Hulu's model will work, but we continue to think it will be challenging for the company to turn a profit and build a sustainable business.

And there may be a fight over the business model brewing between NewsCorp on one side, and NBC/Universal and Disney/ABC on the other:

Here’s the skinny: A story on B&C’s Web site says Carey “hopes that it will move to a subscription model,” While Entertainment Weekly said Carey firmly stated the site would start charging in 2010. Whatever really happened, it was enough for a Hulu spokesperson to speak up — which hasn’t happened in the past over this issue — pouring cold water on the paid idea, at least for now:

Hulu’s mission has always been to help people find and enjoy the world’s premium, professionally produced content. We continue to believe that the ad-supported free service is the one that resonates with the largest group of users and any possible new business models would serve to complement our existing offering. There are no details or timelines to share regarding our future product roadmap.

So, if Rupert Murdoch and NewsCorp are trying to push Hulu.com into some form of subscriber model, and at the same time they are faced with the power-law distribution of social networks in their fight for market share against Facebook, the "Pickpocket" thesis is:

• NewsCorp tolerates bootleg video except when required by law to act, because it serves their interests, even if it undermines the interest of Hulu.com under its current business model.

After all, the argument would go, they are not entirely troubled by the prospect of that market model failing if they expect it to fail anyway. Why devote effort to protecting the market audience of a lost cause?


The Dinosaur Thesis

Only considering a single hypothesis leaves a risk of looking for confirming evidence and overlooking contradictory evidence. And there is, after all, a second hypothesis that should be considered.

Suppose NewsCorp is simply an Old Media Dinosaur, is competing against itself through simple incompetence, which is just one more signal that it is doomed to fall as the oligopolistic market structures in both press and broadcast media that it was built upon are torn apart as we build the New Media Economy.

One of the tests of the "tolerance" scenario is whether any action is taken when information is passed on by someone other than the rights owner. The streaming host is legally required to act on a Cease and Desist order from the rights owner - but they are certainly permitted to investigate and take action no matter what their source of information is.

And so I have been passing my results on to the various streaming sites, to see what their reaction is. Many of the "minor sources" above react quite quickly. Indeed, if I had taken the count a week earlier, the count of Veoh.com clips would have been 50% higher, amd from my exploration yesterday and today, the count would be substantially lower again today.

Some sites show a splash screen that content was taken down due to copyright infringement. Others, such as Imeem.com, simply bring up the embedded video player with no content for it to stream.

The most interesting reaction is that of MegaVideo. Many of the MegaVideo videos have been replaced by a "copyright infringement" take-down notice. However, at least two bring up an entry portal into the iReel.com site - which appears to be a site for licensed streams of movies and shows, and which might indeed have a license to stream that particular show.

Exploration of the "Bleach" show, where Hulu.com has exclusive streaming rights, shows that some but not all of the MySpaceCDN streams have been taken down. In particular, those links referred to in an email to the site registration owner and administrator at the end of last week seemed to be in the process of being taken down - but while sites like Megavideo.com and Imeem.com have a reaction time of a day or two - the reaction time for MySpaceCDN.com seems to be more in the range of a week or two.

So, myself, I lean toward the "Dinosaur" thesis. Indeed, it would appear that few streaming hosts are as well placed to replace streams of bootleg anime with a pre-packaged stream that advertises the series availability on Hulu.com. At the very least, they can get rid of bootleg streams of episodes that they are hosting in competition against themselves in a timely manner. However, in practice, they are clearly slower in reacting than Veoh.com, Sevenload.com, Imeem.com and Megavideo.com - I had inadvertently omitted LiveVideo from the cc: list of the email I sent to NBC/Universal Disney/ABC, but I would not be surprised of LiveVideo.com is also quicker on their feet than NewsCorp.

They might defend themselves that I am using the wrong email addresses to contact them, but on the other hand I am just using publicly available registration, copyright violation, or Terms and Conditions violations contact addresses.

Still and all, they are, slowly, reacting. They just do not seem to have the ability to react as fast as the little mammals scurrying around their feet.


So, What Are We Supposed to Do About It

In the end, while anime fans might feel compelled to work out why NewsCorp is acting the way it does, the progressive blogosphere really does not. Whether they are one of the biggest Pirate Support Bases in the US streaming anime market because they are pursuing a dishonest game against their Hulu.com joint venture partners, or because they are simply not as competent at shutting down bootleg streams as their smaller, nimbler, New Media Economy rivals ...

... they still remain one of the biggest pirate support bases, which is a great big glaring contradiction with NewsCorp's aggressive and noisy public attacks on "copyright piracy". Indeed, Rupert Murdoch (note that the picture at the right is not from the event itself) has just recently lectured the Chinese on the subject:

"The embrace of the digital is as vital to China today as its decision 30 years ago to take its place in the global economy," he said. News Corp owns Dow Jones & Co., which publishes The Wall Street Journal. "Chinese media and entertainment companies have a remarkable opportunity to expand their international influence and revenues." But Mr Murdoch said "piracy will make it difficult for them to generate the profits at home that would fuel growth abroad."

... while he himself owns one of the biggest Pirate Support Bases for anime streaming in the Internet!

So the reason number one for the progressive blogosphere to make a big noise about it is simply that its a vulnerable point.

And if its publicized broadly enough, NewsCorp will have to take action to shut the Anime Pirate Support Base. If it is pushed hard enough to be picked up by any of the mess media, NewsCorp will have to come out denying that it is intentional, and declaring that they will take steps to shut down what they had no idea was happening.

After all, whether they are doing it because they are a Pickpocket or because they are an Old Media Dinosaur, they have to pretend to be a New Media Not-Pickpocket once the question is asked publicly enough.

But then there is the question - do they just shut down the streaming they are doing in competition with themselves? If they decisively defend their own streams, but do not take the same decisive action to stop infringing on the rights of Crunchyroll.com, Joost.com, or the AnimeNewsNetwork, then we have them on the hook for another kick of the story.

And then if we force them to take decisive action to shut down the Anime Pirate Support Base for all legitimate streaming anime - well, then we win. If the solution requires ongoing organized action by anime fans in defense of the modest income streams available from free streaming, as I suggested in The Teaspoon Model - that's for the mature segment of the anime fanbase to take on. The progressive blogosphere would declare victory and move on.

OK, now suppose that we raise a ruckus but not enough to make the Dinosaur move its feet. We still will have been on the right side of trying to defend the livelihoods of the creators, against the Digital Millenium Copyright Act which is of course biased toward the big media middlemen. And, indeed, whether we force Murdoch to act or not, any ammunition we can give to any of his enemies is a good thing. After all, much of the evil that Murdoch does is in the realm of propaganda, and if he does not change MySpace's status as a primary Anime Pirate Support Base, that is something to snipe at him with every time he sounds off on the issue of copyright.

And win or lose, working in coalition in support of the growth of a New Media Economy is a useful networking exercise. After all, these are people with skills that the blogosphere needs very badly when we hit the campaign trail. We have got an ocean of words, but to get through to more than 30% of the electorate, we need effective moving images with sound. And the fans of the section of the New Media Industry we would be coming to the aid of here - include numbers of people with effective image creation and video production skills.

Well, at least, if progressives are serious about pursuing power. If being "progressive" is about sitting on the sideline and complaining, not so much.

If you are interested in joining the fight, keep a watch out for the "PirateCorp" tag, do what you can to publicize the direct actions in the fight, and to push the story into the media.

And if you can come up with additional / better direct actions than the Friday download-a-thon, be sure to pipe up.

The rich get richer, the poor get the picture
The bombs never hit you when you're down so low
Some got pollution, some revolution
There must be some solution but I just don't know
The bosses want decisions, the workers need ambitions
There won't be no collisions when they move so slow
Nothing ever happens, nothing really matters
No one ever tells me so what am I to know

You wouldn't read about it, read about it
Just another incredible scene, there's no doubt about it

Sunday Train: High Speed Rail - The Recruiters

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Note This is a repeat of one of my train diaries from 2007 that I wish to add into the Sunday Train knowledge base. Unless there is major rail news in the next week, Sunday Train next week will be considering the limitations inherited by the recent SubsidyScope report on Amtrack subsidies that they inherited from an uncritical acceptance of the limitations of traditional mainstream marginalist economic theory.

The big knock against high speed rail is, of course, that it does not run door to door. This is, of course, why the passenger air transport market is such a strategic target ... it is an existing fuel-inefficient mode of transport where everyone travels as a pedestrian. And a well designed high speed rail system will deliver the target market among pedestrian travellers from as close or closer to their origin, and drop them off as close or closer to their destination.

But those are not the only passengers that HSR will be catering to. A term I have heard railfans use for this type of activity is "recruiting" patronage, so, after the fold, I step through some of the important current, and potential, recruiters.




Ubiquitious Marginal Recruiter: Da Car

People today in the US normally get to the airport by car, so the first reaction of most people in the US when an airport-substitute becomes available is going to be to drive there.

This means that substantial parking will need to be provided in the vicinity of any outer suburban HSR station, for traditional park-and-ride use of the station.

However, we should never look at a fuel-efficient mode of transport, decide a strategic core market, and then stop there! A substantial benefit of high speed rail is that it brings rail outside of the inner-metropolitan core and through the outer suburbs, where a high speed rail stop can act as a support to a wide range of pro-Energy-Independence local transport.

In the balance of this piece, I am going to assume that about half of the eighth-of-a-mile zone surrounding the HSR station entrances will be devoted to the car ... access, egress, and parking. Often this will be two-level parking with covered walkway access directly to the station, making it easier for the individual park-and-ride users to avoid getting killed by the other park-and-ride users as they access and egress the station parking.

Hopefully, as the mode share of private vehicle use declines over the next two decades, some of the space devoted for car parking can be recaptured for a more intrinsically useful purpose.

Core Recruiters

There are a number of established transport technologies ... though not all of them established in the United States in this particular role ... that are inclined to act as very effective recruiters for a High Speed Rail station, because HSR provides them with an effective complement for the local transport services that they provide.

The five that come to my mind are walking, bicycles, neighborhood electric vehicles, local buses, and local rail (of all sorts).


Core Recruiter: Shanks Mare


The first recruiter is the transport mode called "Registration 11" in Grenada and what by those running the railroads of Oz are mostly thinking of as "self loading freight" ... that is, pedestrians.

The appeal of pedestrians is that they are a core market. A very large number of the people who rely heavily on foot power to get around locally will have a strong preference for the train over any other form of longer distance travel ... so market penetration by the high speed rail service among pedestrians living in the vicinity of a high speed rail station will be very strong.

On the other hand, it would seem as if we could disregard pedestrians in outer suburbia, because nobody in outer suburbia lives within walking distance to anywhere ... ... well, at least, practically nobody (after all, a handful live in small towns that have been swallowed up by outer suburbia).

In urban settings in Oz, where more people are accustomed to walking a few blocks, the high intensity pedestrian recruiting range for a train station is taken to be about a quarter mile, with a lower intensity recruiting range of just over 0.6 of a mile (and, yes, I have done the conversion from metres for you).

A quarter mile radius gives an ideal circle of around 19% of a mile. At 640 acres per square mile, that is about 120 acres within the high intensity recruiting range. With half acre blocks, that's merely 240 households ... with area wasted on streets, less ... with one acre blocks, only 120.

As suggested in Retrofitting Outer Suburbia, the key step in building pedestrian traffic is in actually building places for those pedestrians to live.

Rezone the area around the rail station so that inside an eighth of a mile radius, half of it is mixed ground floor streetfront business, 2/3 floor townhouse residential. Rezone the balance of the quarter mile radius so that it is three story stacked townhouse residential. If a townhouse occupies an eighth of an acre, that is about 1,400 households in the quarter mile to eighth mile ring, surrounding about roughly 120 households in the eighth of a mile radius ... more than 1,500 households in an short walk to the HSR station.

Of course, the zoning does not create the buildings ... building pedestrian traffic will be an ongoing, incremental process, over ten to thirty years, once the zoning is in place, and as the price of energy continues to rise. But permit a suburban village to emerge around a high speed rail stop, and in the energy cost conditions we will be facing over the next twenty years, it will emerge.

It is important to ensure that access to the station is pedestrian friendly ... in part for the direct use of the station by local residents, and in part to maintain the connection between the station and the small commercial precinct surrounding it. This has to be built in from the ground up, and certainly warrants funding as an aspect of the station infrastructure itself.


Core Recruiter: The Bike


To get improved mode share for cycle-and-ride transport, there needs to be infrastructure support. As was discovered in the first bicycle boom at the turn of the last century, effective bicycle transportation requires paved roads ... dirt or gravel roads are not nearly as ineffective. Luckily, most of outer suburbia is equipped with a suitable network of bike paths, connecting to each household in the area ... these bike paths are called "streets". So the infrastructure is already in place.

Some cyclists on arriving at the station will bring their bike with them on the train. However, others will require parking, and a generous amount of both cycle-post parking and cycle lockers must be provided.

The greater range of the bicycle means that it can provide a useful supplement to pedestrian traffic, even if only a relatively small share of the population adopt it. Taking 5 times the pedestrian recruiting range as the core bicycle recruiting range gives a radius of 1.25 miles ... the ring from a quarter to one and a quarter miles is about 4.7 square miles, or 3000 acres. With half acre blocks, that is 6000 households.

Even without infilling, if bicycles can gain a mode share of 5%, then that adds 300 households to the self-powered recruiting range of the station, more than 15% on top of the core pedestrian households ... raising it to over 1,800.

Further, the effective range of the bike is dependent on the strength of the rider. Assuming the same 5:1 ratio for the outer recruiting zone, then the outer recruiting "ring" is 1,600 acress, or 3,200 households, plus, with half acre blocks. If 1% of transport mode share was taken up by these "strong riders", then that would push the effective non-motorized transport market to over 2,000 households.


Core Recruiter: Neighborhood Electric Vehicles


This core recruiter is newer technology than the more than century old bike, and the Shanks Pony from as long as we have been around (how many millenia is, of course, is subject to some debate among the Republican Presidential candidates) ... but in the niche of getting around complexes, sprawling stadium parking lots, and similar tasks, it is a well established technology.

Neighborhood Electric Vehicles have a substantial part of their niche defined by the National Highway Traffice Safety Administration definition of a "low speed vehicle":

low-speed vehicles (as defined by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) are capable of up to 25 mph. Low-speed vehicles must have seatbelts, windshields, turn signals, headlights, brake lights and other safety equipment that golf cars don't require. NEVs are designed to be used in residential areas with low density traffic and low speed zones. With a top speed of 25 mph, low-speed vehicles can be used on streets with a posted 35 mph speed limit or less.

NEV's are street legal on 35mph or less streets, but unlike bikes are not normally legal to operate on higher speed avenues and highways. This makes it important to ensure that there is access to the train station via a network of 35mph routes.

The train station can encourage the use of NEV's by providing special parking close to the station for ultra-compact vehicles, and providing a charge station were a driver of a NEV can park&plug&ride.

Assume an average operating speed of 20mph, and a core recruiting radius of 15 minutes ... or 5 miles. With half acre blocks, that gives more than 100,000 households in the core recruiting radius. Turn 1% of those on to NEV's, and that is up to 1,000 additional core market households ... turn 5% on, and its up to 5,000.

Variety, of course, is the hallmark of a focus on high energy efficiency, since one-size-fits-all tends to be one-size-wastes-always. Also lying within this general niche are electric bikes and communities including a dedicated alternative path network for golf-carts.


Core Recruiter: Local Bus


Of course, some people are not in a position to walk a quarter mile to the station, and we will be building up both cycle-and-ride and park-plug-and-ride use of the HSR station over a decade or more to get the types of mode shares described in those sections.

Meanwhile, the first resort for providing an alternative to cars in outersuburbia is bus service. From personal observation, this is presently very heavily biased toward a mix of college, very low income, and wheelchair riders, but our experience in the US seems to have been that bus ridership can shift toward the mainstream as gas prices hit unaccustomed levels.

And it is in this respect that local buses and a HSR station can often be the best of friends. Part of the very successful re-introduction of commuter rail to Perth, Australia, was a system of short local bus routes tightly integrated to the service schedule at the local rail station. For some reason, people that would not dream of getting on a bus to go shopping will not blink twice at hopping onto a bus for a five minute ride to the local station.

I'm not sure why the stigma associated with riding the bus is so easily waved off with, "I've got a train to catch". This may be mysteriously connected to the psychology in which someone over the age of 30 riding a bus to get downtown is a failure (to specialized Maggie Thatcher's famous turn of phrase), but a fifty year old in a suit and tie will readily hop on a downtown free circulator bus in distinctive livery to get to a lunchtime eatery.

On the one hand, the local bus has a greater top speed than the NEV ... but on the other hand, there is scheduling leeway required if it is going to arrive reliably in advance of the departing train. So as a rough guestimate, I'm happy to take the 100,000 houses in the radius of the LEV, and aim for a similar 1%-5% mode share in people who would use the bus to reach the HSR station.


Core Recruiter: Local Rail


A major advantage of local rail is that it can often share the HSR station, allowing on-platform transfers between the HSR and local rail. Local rail that does not run on standard rail can normally be integrated comfortably with dedicated transfer stations.

Of course, one of the benefits of local rail is that the local core recruiter net surrounding the HSR station can be replicated around each of the stations of the local rail system:
* Each can be zoned for a donut of higher density stacked townhouse housing surrounding a mixed commercial/residential core
* Each provides the center of a wider ring of cycle-friendly access to the station
* Each provides the target for NEV's in the vicinity
* Each provides an traffic driver and interchange anchor for a system of short, local bus routes.

Of course, the Route Matrix Revolution applies to local rail at the HSR stop as well. If one local rail line is along the corridor that is carrying the HSR, then the HSR station is a natural location for another local rail to intersect from a different line of travel. The local transport centers focused on a local rail station can radiate out from the HSR station in multiple directions.


New Recruiter Technologies

Of course, these are just established technologies. There are a number of new transport systems coming down the pike that could serve as effective recruiters for HSR stations, but there are three that I would like to single out for mention.

Pluggable Hybrid Electric Vehicles
Regular HEV's gain two advantages from the battery-electric component of their drive train. The first is the greater efficiency of running combustion engines at a steady pace, and second is the energy recycling from recapturing energy while breaking that can be used again when re-starting.

Pluggable hybrid electric vehicles also gain from the greater energy efficiency of all-electric traction and from the cost savings available when buying electric power off-peak ... but only for the portion of the journey that takes place on stored electric power.

This means that if the normal drive to the station and back, plus sidetrips, falls within the normal all-electric range of the PHEV, the HSR station offers a natural complement to reliance on the PHEV for local driving. Just as with NEV's, this can be extended further and made sticker by providing park-and-plug-and-ride parking, in which the HSR user would pull in, deposit funds or leave an authorization for the electricity stored by the car, and head off to catch the train.

Aerobus / Elevated Suspended Local Light Rail
I have mentioned the Aerobus system previous, in Retrofitting Outer Suburbia. In essence, the system involves laying light rail on suspension cable, with the vehicle consisting of a passenger compartment suspended below an enclosed pod that contain the motors and wheels. This allows for a suspended vehicle with capital costs similar to a light rail vehicle installed into an already available right of way.

This system never got beyond pilot test status in the West, but its cost advantages and the relative simplicity of crossing water with the Aerobus has won the company two contracts in China ... one in a "Three-Rivers" urban setting, and another to connect an island city with the neighboring mainland.

This is an especially appealing option for providing a local rail system that cuts across the HSR corridor, where there is no suitable Right of Way available. Individual pylons about 600 feet apart provides for the lowest capital costs, but if there are tricky clearances, its possible for individual pylons to be up to 2,000 feet apart.

Running an Aerobus system across a rail corridor would allow an Aerobus island platform to have direct ramp / stairs / escalator and elevator connection to two or more rail platforms underneath. Since it is common for major employment centers like Hospitals, Universities, Shopping Malls and Office parks to be located at some distance from existing rail corridors, and an Aerobus system can provide service closer to the door than the average car in the parking lot.

Rail/Bus
This vehicle, being developed in Japan, functions on the same principle of track maintenance vehicles that can get around track breaks by driving on the road. It has rubber wheels for running on the road, and steel wheels for running on the track. A short access siding would normally be the only new infrastructure required.

This, of course, can get over the passenger home side of the "door to door" equation, allowing a service that a passenger could book to stop in front of their house, to be let off directly at the HSR station platform. It is also appealing for small towns that have grown away from their original rail-orientation ... instead of bringing a new rail line to the people, bring the people to the existing rail line.

On-call mini-bus


This core recruiter was brought to my attention by das monde, who diaried on it on 31 January (2007) in A transport service to reduce CO2 emissions.

The On-Call mini-bus combined the conventional Dial-A-Ride with an on-call taxi service. The conventional dial-a-ride simplified the logistics of the process with notional routes served by the dial-a-ride service and lead times of a day or longer. The On-Call mini-bus uses modern logistics mapping and GPS tracking technology to create the bus route on the fly, in response to demand.

From the user perspective, the next available service or service with a target pick up time will be available from mobile phone or internet, or by conventional telephone ... and the bus service can automatically inform the user of when the service will be picking up by SMS or email.


Your Turn

Now I throw the floor open. What are your ideas for effective Recruiters for HSR system ... and, yes, irrespective of my framing of this as a hypothetical outer-suburban HSR station, you can place your HSR station where you like ... in the middle of downtown, in a traditional cross-roads small town, or even, if you wish, in a tunnel station underneath the main terminal building of the international airport.