Comment Of The Day

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Comment Of The Day

I hate your position on this one Fred... yes, they did good stuff, but they stole their position.

turned my comment into a post:

http://www.calacanis.com/2006/05/11/how-youtube-won-great-seo-stolen-content-or-the-biggest-hit/

Posted by: Jason | May 11, 2006 3:05:00 PM

I don't think YouTube was the thief, if there was even theft. If anything they allowed their users to "steal" but even so I believe that superdistribution, or redistribution, of media is the future and publishers who want to put pandora back in the box are living in the past, not the future Jason.

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Posted May 12, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

It's the devil's advocate here Fred - I don't agree with Jason's tirade but still think your argument is flawed on free distribution.

Consider this scenario:
By your logic, there's nothing wrong with me using your RSS feed to republish your blog elsewhere. Yet when this happened you were (justifiably) pee'd off. Why do you consider video "free" of piracy concerns? Do you believe that all video producers have the responsibility to now create an ad-laden free-to-distro copy of each of their their original works?

Like your blog content, the value a publisher derives from any one video snippet is not directly tied to that content unit - publishers often monetize "around" content, not always "in it" - your approach seems too simplistic and clearly doesn't adress the real-world value of owning the loyalty to the broader publication that owns the content in question.

Posted by: David G | May 12, 2006 12:46:15 PM

This comment is not about the method of distribution, it is about who distributes it and the right that they have to distribute the content.

We deal with content creators who actually care about what they have created on a daily basis. Our content creators are small guys looking to get discovered.

However, just because someone thinks its cool and wants to put it all over the net , whether individual or company, doesn't mean they have the right to, unless the content creator grants them that right.

Content and distribution rights are important, and to neglect them for the "way of the future" is irresponsible.

Posted by: David Dundas | May 12, 2006 12:53:27 PM

I have nothing against Jason, but this seems to be an odd position for someone who previously argued that weblogs (and in particular, his weblogs) have the right to reuse "found" images from the web without the express permission of the photographers.

http://www.calacanis.com/2004/12/08/dealing-with-the-photo-copyright-issue-on-blogs/

http://www.calacanis.com/2004/12/14/fair-use-of-photos-on-blogs-the-photographers-speak-out/

In that case, it wasn't even an issue of "users" posting copyrighted content -- this was the publishers themselves doing it. How am I supposed to reconcile that viewpoint with the argument that YouTube should pay its enterprise value out to SNL because someone uploaded a clip to their service?

Posted by: Tom | May 12, 2006 2:50:24 PM

Youtube's success is attributable to a considerably greater degree to it's ease of use, openness, and resposiveness than to copyright infringement.

Just look at the top 100 videos.... While there are some unlicensed music videos on the site, these were considered "promotional" by their copyright owners just a few months ago. Most of the other content is strictly user generated. And before youtube it was very difficult (for the average user) to post and link to video content.

Youtube may have deftly navigated the troubled waters of DMCA and copyright laws but how is this unethical?

Posted by: Jeff Schrock | May 12, 2006 4:41:45 PM

Calacanis:
If they sellout this will be the Internet industry's hit and run, and I'm gonna write the book.

I thought the greatest hit and run was selling a bunch of SEO-gamed blogs to a company thats major business model was around selling dial up and email to Americans in perpetuity?

Posted by: james gross | May 12, 2006 4:58:40 PM

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC