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Viacom Nudges Some Premium Content Online, For Free
Posted by
timothy
on Thu May 29, 2008 12:01 PM
from the another-detention-for-mr-stewart dept.
from the another-detention-for-mr-stewart dept.
amplt1337 writes "Debates about the profitability of 'free' continue to rage, but at least one major media conglomerate — Viacom — is pushing forward with releasing paid-for content for free on the Internet. Of course, the prospect of free and easy full-length Daily Show episodes has caused some tension with cable providers, who pay a hefty premium for a heretofore-exclusive right to distribute the conglom's content (there are obvious parallels with the conflict between labels and musicians). What strikes me as really interesting is that even an old, entrenched company like Viacom has enough vision to see the opportunity for increased profits through free distribution — provided they can control that distribution (see their YouTube lawsuit) and have discretion over just how free they go. Of course, the NYT itself has had its own experience with expanding access to previously fee-based content ..."
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Technology: YouTube Fires Back At Viacom 183 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "As we say in the legal profession, 'issue has been joined' in Viacom v. YouTube. In its answer to Viacom's complaint (PDF), filed Friday, YouTube says Viacom's lawsuit is intended to 'challenge... the protections of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") that Congress enacted a decade ago to encourage the development of services like YouTube.' It goes on to say that the suit 'threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment, and political and artistic expression.'"
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So, remind me (Score:2)
Re:So, remind me (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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It'll be interesting to see what models they try to monetize the content - something established like banner ads and video commercials or something a little more experimental. Regardless, I think it's good for the industry that bigger companies are trying to adapt.
Re:So, remind me (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a remedy in law for Viacom: tell Google to take down the offending content.
If Viacom doesn't like the law they subverted democracy for, they really shouldn't whine like a spoiled child.
Parent
Given the YouTube lawsuit... (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes sense. If I'm going to give away a resource for free, I want to be the one (and the only one!) who makes money off it. If that means I have to restrict who/where/when this free content can be distributed, so be it.
Trouble is, trying to give something away for free and then restrict where and how that something is used, doesn't quite work. They're not losing any money off the sale of that product.
...So how can they sue YouTube for damages when they're planning on giving it away free anyway?
Re:Given the YouTube lawsuit... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Given the YouTube lawsuit... (Score:4, Interesting)
Advertising is put in the video, Youtube gets a cut, Viacom gets some.
As far as the loss of free copies...I could see some arguments. For one, if you want to pull an episode (want to drum up DVD sales or something), you can do that if you publish the content- you can't just pull other copies. They probably want copyright information included, station, producers, etc.
Personally, I'm glad that Viacom is embracing such an idea. I don't mind a little advertising if the quality is consistently good, in sync, and I can send friends links/bookmark shows without worrying that they'll be pulled for copyright in five minutes.
Parent
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Re:Given the YouTube lawsuit... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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As long as they are going to stick with DRM (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As long as they are going to stick with DRM (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Very Subtle (Score:2)
Its own reward (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, if Moses, Jesus and Muhammad were to spring from their graves and start imposing high license fees on the distribution of their creative works, does anyone seriously think their power and influence would become greater?
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i) They're crap
ii) You know it
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Furthermore, copyright does not in any way "screw things up for the vast majority of us". Poorly done copyright screws things up, not copyright itself.
Oh, and to address your original point, it's complete bs to say that if you want copyright on your wor
Re:Its own reward (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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It's simple. If we take copyright law off the books, we can give a copy of the entire sum of human creativity to every man woman and child on earth for a penny each. And, we have the practical means to actually do it.
If we don't take the copyright law off the books, it would cost billions of dollars for each disc each, and we would be unable to do it, not due to any practical barrier, but because of an unfortunate side effect of the clumsy mech
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Wouldn't that be better than the status quo?
No, because this is a matter of principle. The author of a work has the right to try to sell it if he so chooses, and no one has the right to use it without buying it if that's the case. I don't particularly care if an alternative syst
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seriously?
how do you pay the rent then?
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Personally? I get paid upfront by people who want me to create something specific. My entire career has been that way, I've done very well for myself, and helped billions of people along the way.
I'm one of those creators of intellectual works copyright is supposedly in the best interest of, but really isn't.
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One of the projects I'm most proud of was to build the supporting infrastructure required to transform a gaggle of several thousand work from home translators who specialize in medical translations into a coherent team, then to build infrastructure to allow them to be integrated into the corporate structure of several of the worlds largest pharmaceutical and medical equipment manufacturers as though they were just another internal department. I think I did pretty well for a guy working out of his livin
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but that doesn't really translate to the movie and TV industry does it?
Because a business model works for what YOU do, it doesn't mean it work for everyone on earth.
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Nice backpedal. Worked for William Shakespeare.
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Free is overrated (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd still gladly pay for this content -- just not $2 per episode that I'll only watch once. What I can't imagine I'm alone in really wanting to see here, and what I have yet to see tested, is a nice, simple subscription model like Netflix that lets me pay a single monthly fee to watch a reasonable amount of new programming.
Netflix almost offers that right now for a number of shows, except that the streaming of shows is tied to their DVD release, so you can't watch anything until the season's over. But all that's keeping them from becoming a genuine alternative to broadcast viewing is a bit of licensing, for which I'd gladly pay a few more Washingtons a month.
All things considered, isn't skipping a few beers each month worth not having to deal with ads?
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This is about the daily show then? (Score:5, Interesting)
But I quit watching during the writer strike and coincidentally I moved and started working more during that same time.
When the episodes had come back, I didn't get the memo and didn't want to go through the hassle of catching up on the week or so of shows I'd missed using bittorrent.
So I just quit watching. To viacom: you want to know why? Because it would just kill me to watch something so good by myself (or occasionally with a lady) and not be able to send friends links to particular segments on youtube. You want to selfishly hoard all your copyrighted content? Fine by me. I just won't watch it (even though I'm paying for it in some way). I won't tell my friends about it. And I won't buy anything on the commercials I'm not seeing.
Jon and Stephen could do better. Personally I'd like to see them operate without viacom and have control over the content, but I know the challenges in making that work and making it profitable.
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Took a couple seasons before I liked Stewart but in the end he was a good replacement.
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can somebody tell me why..... (Score:2, Interesting)
There is at least one company already doing it (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and yes, it works with Linux.
I've submitted feature requests to them, one of which is to be able to opt out of certain advertisers. For example, I'm not going into the military so I should be able to opt out of those ads, and I don't do fast food so I should be able to opt out of those. This would make advertising less likely to be ignored, and would actually increase the value of each ad delivered to the viewer.
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I don't have a TV, and recently I've been experimenting with watching TV on my computer. A number of networks have some of their shows online, available via Flash players (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, etc.). Some problems I immediately noticed were:
1. Most sites are heavily Flash-based, making it very difficult to navigate (or bookmark) the content you care about. I understand using Flash for the actual player, by why the navigation elements
For some shows... (Score:2)
- it's time-sensitive, so there's not much of a demand for reruns or DVDs. Maybe there are things like showing The Daily Show at 11pm and again at 5 or 6pm the next day. In that cas
Old tech vs new (Score:3, Interesting)
Viacom, like the RIAA, is only powerful because it controls a distribution system. But as far as delivery goes it makes about as much sense to deliver content via a one-way pipe to a dumb terminal (which is what television basically is) than it does to deliver music on plastic disks via the Interstate.
Right now many cable companies are also ISPs so increasing Internet bandwidth is likely viewed by them as a conflict of interest because greater bandwidth is likely to draw viewers away from television to a more competitive Internet. But as time goes on consumers are gonna view more and more content on the net.
Looks like Viacom vs. YouTube are the first shots in the revolution of old tech vs new.
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Deep end (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Deep end (Score:5, Interesting)
Its brilliant. They pay virtually nothing for a few servers to seed it until the swarm takes off. They get their adverts out into the open. There's very little reason to track down some ripped version with no commercials as you can get the legit one 8-12 hours sooner!
Where is the downside to this?
Heck, they could even require a DRM license(which would be given to anyone for free) and track exactly how many views it gets! They can do a pay per viewer model with the advertisers.
Parent
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bothered to program their Tivo (or are just disinterested in the
technology in general) will gladly sit through those stupid commercials
if they are embedded. If they are any good, they might even get ripped
out and distributed indivdually (like the Mac 1994 ad).
The equivalent of a dump from a Tivo or MythTV box with all of the
commercials still intact would probably still get as many meaningful
eyeballs.
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