OK, that’s an inflammatory headline if there every was one. Let me see if one of my recent practices is something that you share.
I’m zooming through a blog entry, a website, an email—and I see a reference to a video on YouTube. Perhaps it’s an interesting campaign ad that someone thinks makes a point or is particularly clever. Perhaps it’s a stupid pet tricks video. Or perhaps it’s a clip from an episode of the “The Colbert Report,” the “Daily Show with John Stewart,” a clip from CNN, or something else excerpted from a TV show. I might watch the stupid pet tricks clip once, but if I like “The Colbert Report” clip, I’ll bounce over to iTunes and buy the episode of the show that it comes from so I can watch the whole show. Or I’ll tune into the show at night. I do the same thing with an interesting clip I see on my Google start page.
Do you do the same thing? I ask because I know a lot of people who spend time on the Net who do.
Mind you, I’m not talking about watching a whole show on YouTube‑I’m talking about watching a couple minutes-worth of video, often grainy and not very high quality. So let me pose another theoretical question. Suppose you had content that people were sharing in this way, wouldn’t you be pleased? You wouldn’t have to spend a cent marketing it or promoting it, you’d just have to let it happen. Would you view this as a threat to your business model, or would you look at it as free, viral marketing: the world of the Net promoting your content, allowing you to take advantage of the long tail of your content?
Well, if you have that attitude, you’re not cut out to be a TV executive. YouTube is purging content from Comedy Central (with other sources to follow, no doubt)-and 30,000 clips were taken down after the Japanese Society for the Rights of Authors, Composers, and Publishers complained. I have no quarrel with those who don’t want extended, copyrighted works distributed without compensation. But I’m spent too much time in adademia not to value fair use of a limited amount of content, such as an excerpt of a particularly good bit from “The Colbert Report.” Report here from the New York Times; registration required.
Michael Stoner Co-Founder and Co-Owner Was I born a skeptic or did I become one as I watched the hypestorm gather during the dotcom years, recede, and congeal once more as we come to terms with our online, social, mobile world? Whatever. I'm not much interested in cutting edge but what actually works for real people in the real world. Does that make me a bad person?