Hi. Very nice blog. I\’ve been reading your other entries all day long..lol….

AM I THE ONLY ONE THAT IS DOING YOUR MOM GOSH DAMNNNNNNNNNNN.

FUCKERS DANG IM PRE-FUCKED

i hate you

fucker

The worst thing of all is how horribly slowly some of these old media companies are to coming around to the fact that this type of “infringement” increases the value of the brand beyond any promotion they’ve ever done.

Look at overhyped ratings non-performers like The Daily Show and Colbert and how youtube/digg have increased their brand value. I don’t have the exact numbers, but at one point I thought the weekly cume for these shows wasn’t even a million viewers. Some of the “infringed” online segments must have had more views than this.

Even without directly monetizing these hits, the boost to their brand’s value has to be much more valuable than they are capable of grasping. It’s certainly done more for their brands than the advertising and promotion that they had to PAY for.

Big new media needs to keep licensing and promote the hell out of proactive companies and leave idiots like this in the dust.

They’ve owed me USD 4100 since 1997 and refuse to pay.

I think the most interesting thing about the debate over copyright law in this day and age is the double standard that many people apply. People don’t like big media. Its tactics and practices are widely criticized and there’s an emotional tendency to dislike billion dollar empires the same way populations have always resented the kings and queens that rule over them. But the bottom line is that these companies own the rights to content and you cannot logically make the distinction between copyrights owned by billion dollar companies and small companies/individuals. We either accept copyright law or not. It might be very foolish for big media to not leverage MySpace and YouTube as promotional platforms, but they own the rights to their content and get to dictate how that content is used and by whom, even if we think their decisions are counterintuitive. It’s clear that YouTube and MySpace are directly profiting from the distribution of copyrighted content and I think there’s a very good argument to be made that they do not fall under the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA for quite a few reasons. At some point, one rights holder will take this issue all the way and we’ll get a precedent that gives more clarity on this issue, which will benefit everybody.

The question to ask people that think MySpace and YouTube are doing nothing unethical, if not outright illegal, and proclaim the death of big media is: if big media is dying, why is everybody so fond of big media’s content and uploading/sharing it on such a massive scale? The answer is obvious: while there’s a lot of hype around user-generated content, for the time being, the professional content being produced by big media is what people primarily want to consume. For all the people that don’t want to consume this in a way that financially benefits the producers, remember this: if the economic incentive for companies to produce this content is significantly reduced, the content you love won’t get produced anymore. Imagine an unlikely scenario just for the sake of argument: if the revenues from producing The Daily Show, for instance, are made so uncompelling, there won’t be any Daily Show episodes to share on YouTube. It’s imperative that big media recognize that consumers’ habits of media consumption are changing in this digital age and that the ability to time shift content is being demanded, but consumers cannot have their cake and eat it too. If you want big media content, you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds it to you. In any economic system, it is in the interests of all parties to ensure that the producers of goods and services are compensated appropriately for that production or production will eventually stop.

>Actually MySpace can be stopped with a stroke of the pen.

Since it’s all resulting from not having reached a similar agreement to the one with YouTube, let’s hope it will end quickly.

>Settlement irrelevant. The precise scope of the DMCA safe harbor will be litigated. And I believe Congress did not intend to protect a business such as YT.

MySpace will introduce another meaningless tool that will not really solve anything. More importantly, they will agree to respond better to Universal and will somehow figure out a way to pay. More lawyers will make a living from interpreting the DMCA and life will go on.

>Yes, YT and MS will pay the content owners or they will be sued. And probably lose.

However, UMG is playing with fire. This can potentially introduce a dangerous halt to the digital media industry.

>That’s too funny. It’s YT whose market worth is at stake.

One draconian ruling and the whole websphere will work under a going concern. While this industry is seeking for a sustainable equilibrium, I don’t think the legal tools are the right one. The law can’t chase technology, making judges and lawyers de-facto business negotiators and even legislators.

>Incoherent babbling.

I certainly hope UMG can find it in their heart not to be penny wise and pound foolish.

>They produce content; they will be paid for it.

However, UMG is playing with fire. This can potentially introduce a dangerous halt to the digital media industry. One draconian ruling and the whole websphere will work under a going concern. While this industry is seeking for a sustainable equilibrium, I don’t think the legal tools are the right one. The law can’t chase technology, making judges and lawyers de-facto business negotiators and even legislators. I certainly hope UMG can find it in their heart not to be penny wise and pound foolish.