Paramount Claims Louis CK "Didn't Monetize" 288
Weezul writes "Paramount's 'Worldwide VP of Content Protection and Outreach' Al Perry has insinuated that Louis CK making $1 million in 12 days means he isn't monetizing. Al Perry asserted that 'copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations, and that even if people like Louis C.K. decide not to do so, that's a choice and not a requirement.' Bonus, Slashdot favorite Jonathan Coulton apparently grossed almost half a million last year."
Hold the phones! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And who/what is "Louis CK"? (Score:5, Informative)
Would it have killed the submitter to include about three to five words informing us who the frack "Louis CK" is? Yes, it's just a Google away, but it would have been nice to mention it in the submission. (Or the editors could have added it.)
He's a comedian who released his latest produced video directly to the consumer and DRM-free. He made it extremely easy and friendly to access and made a shitload of money in a very short amount of time.
https://buy.louisck.net/ [louisck.net]
Wait didn't LCK (Score:5, Informative)
turn his work into money while while also giving his viewers get a good laugh. Shit not that I think about it, I got a two for one deal for my $5 and LCK got a new fan.
Thanks LCK!
Also didn't he donate some of the profits and share quite a bit of it with his staff? Good god we should hang him for such charity and make him lose his copyrights.
Re:Monetizing... what would Hollywood know? (Score:2, Informative)
He wasn't for a very long time while he was suing them over LOTR profits.(100+ million if I recall correctly)
They finally relented when Ian McKellen explained he was getting old and wouldn't be able to do it forever.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
In this context "monetize" means transforming the content demand into something that can be resold -- viewer eyeballs are resold to advertisers, thus ad-supported media is "monetized." Youtube is "monetized," Louis CK's videos aren't "monetized" yet but if they continued to move like the first one did it's a possibility, as advertisers see the videos as a useful way to piggyback their messages.
Going to see a movie at a theater used to be the gold standard "non-monetized" form of entertainment, until they started inserting product placements, music, placing ads before the shows, and reselling the movies characters as brands for toys, games...
Re:Monetizing... what would Hollywood know? (Score:5, Informative)
The truth is, not all of this is shady accounting. The problem is, people sign a deal where they get a cut of the theatrical profit, and even the most successful film (especially those that are very expensive to create) often fail to make a theatrical profit. Every cost associated with the creation of the film comes out of the theatrical profit. That includes cast and crew salaries, studio executives salaries, investor payoffs (very few films are financed entirely by a single studio), payouts to people who get a piece of the gross, advertising, film prints, everything. And remember, when they say such and such film made $100 million on a $50 budget, that movie is guaranteed to have lost money at that point. The $100 profit is the gross profit, and ignores that the studio has to split that with the theaters. The $50 budget is solely the production budget, and ignores advertising, film prints, executive pay, investor returns, and gross percentage payouts.
Now, it's at this point that people usually say "that can't possibly be true, or no one would make movies". Well, while the theatrical release splits it's profits and takes the lions share of the costs, the DVD, television and streaming releases share very few profits and take very few costs. The DVD version costs a few hundred thousand to produce, the advertising budget might be decent but it's generally nothing compared to the theatrical advertising budget (and they can reuse a lot of assets), and there's generally no payout on the DVD to anyone on the creative side of actually making the movie. On top of that, the retailers selling the DVD generally only take 5-10%, much lower than the theaters take on the film. So while the studios themselves generally take a loss or barely break even on the theatrical release, if the movie is successful they can make heaping piles of money once it leaves theaters. On a huge release like a Harry Potter movie, you can pull in hundreds of millions on the DVDs, tens of millions or more on Pay Per View, then sell an exclusive window to HBO/Showtime/Starz to be the first pay channel for a few million, then get a few million more selling it to the ones that lost the exclusive, then a few million more selling it to Netflix, then a few million more to ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX for an exclusive window on broadcast. Then, once that's all done, you sell the international TV/Streaming rights to some other entity for a few hundred million more, and you don't share any of that with anyone.
Now, you can definitely argue the "fairness" of this system, in terms of how much the studios make overall versus how much the creators make, but I have a minimal amount of sympathy for the endless writers, actors and directors who work in Hollywood and definitely should know how the studios make their profits, but then sign contracts that they know won't payoff, and still think they have a right to complain about it.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
to monetize is to turn a profit. If Louis CK paid all of the salaries of all the workers (including himself), paid all appropriate fees and whatnot, and sent all of the surplus from the gross proceeds to charity, he didn't monetize. Al Perry is right in saying that he didn't monetize, because there was nobody to turn that profit over to.
Actually, my understanding from wikipediaing is that monetizing is the process of converting some property in some sort of currency. If I dont monetize, lets say, my digitally recorded music, then it's not a crime to copy it because it has no value.
If I do monetize it, then it is a crime to copy it because it's as bad as copying money.
It does not seem to be a popular definition but I think this is indeed how studios see it. They use a word that intentionally sounds luring to creators (we will monetize your stuff!! Does that not sound like you will get money?!) While internally they are telling each other what they actually mean in keywords.
The studios here are just trying to make creators think they would be missing in even more money than CK made if they don't monetize the way they did.
I can see it now: Studio exec talks to creator:
Hey Bob, what you rather do... profit of your music... or monetize your music? Seriously, what sounds like would make the most money to you?
Re:Monetizing... what would Hollywood know? (Score:5, Informative)
"New Line already gave him enough money to rebuild Baghdad, but it's still not enough for him."
It was true that they paid a lot; but Jackson's argument was they didn't pay him what his contract says they should pay him by selling rights internally within the studio for less than the real value.
Re:Monetizing... what would Hollywood know? (Score:4, Informative)
Part of the reason the Hobbit isn't already out is that it took Jackson and the studio a couple of years to come to an agreement. A big part of the reason it took so long was that Jackson was unhappy that we wasn't getting paid because the LotR trilogy somehow didn't make any profit (according to the studio).
They settled it somehow, but I don't know how.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
The TV-commercial-before-the-movie thing, as we know it, started in the late 90's. Before that, all you had were concessions and movie trailer ads. It's possible that they used to do it back before I was born (late 70's)... like when they did little news reels, but I wouldn't remember that. 80's and 90's were largely commercial-free at the theater.
Of course product placement has been around far longer.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Informative)
*I* remember the slides, I used to load them up when I was a projectionist at the UA in Roseville, MN :)
You're right, the exhibitors always did this, it's the production and distribution getting into the game that's sorta different. Also, it used to be that "monetization" was ancillary to the primary goal of selling tickets, but ancillary has become such a huge profit center that it's been re-termed "monetization" and it drives decision making throughout the old-line entertainment and Internet/new media industries.