There was more posturing today in the big YouTube-Viacom copyright showdown that began around the time that Google acquired YouTube and started talking to big copyright holders about paying them to get their content legally onto the popular video site. It spun out of control from there until it became a billion dollar lawsuit.
Normally I’m on the side of whoever’s against the copyright holders and their agenda of ever-expanding rights on these types of issues. They will stop at nothing to preserve their expired business models.
In this case, though, I’m just as afraid of YouTube, which still aims to get rights to show all, or virtually all, professionally produced television and film content. Their goal is simple – copy the adsense model and get the same stranglehold on advertising around video that they have around search.
That may be more difficult for Google than sewing up search was, since there are so many players determined to stop them before they get a proper foothold. The music guys got hooked on the iTunes fees and still haven’t been able to get off the juice. Their tv and film cousins are fully aware of what happens if a single middleman gets too much power.
What’s Best For The Internet?
The front lines of the copyright war are the ISP and service provider skirmishes. The MPAA and RIAA continue to fight consumers directly, of course, but their only real chance of locking down the Internet and file trading/steaming is to go after the companies that allow it to happen. In 1998 the DMCA made copyright infringement even more illegal than it already was, but also gave service providers a safe harbor to protect them against infringement by their users.
Did/does YouTube properly comply with the DMCA? That’s pretty much irrelevant at this point. What matters is the law going forward. And since this case is likely to go to trial, there’s a good chance that new law will be created. Exactly what is decided, and how Congress reacts, will have a big impact on the Internet going forward.
My position is that it’s bad to criminalize natural behavior. And watching a clip of The Office, whether it’s legally on Hulu or illegally on YouTube is natural behavior. The only question is whether or not people are getting sued, or going to jail, for doing it.
It’s time to rethink copyright laws, and it’s time for copyright holders to rethink their business models. The winners won’t be the companies that win or lose billion dollar lawsuits. It’ll be the companies that throw out everything that’s come before, and build new businesses around the natural behavior of people. Remove friction and win.
I completely disagree, and on many levels.
First, because youtube is committing mass amounts of copyright infringement doesnt mean you change copyright laws. That makes no sense, and I hope Viacom succeeds against Google.
As usual web 2.0 “gurus” only understand a small portion of the real story. The economics of the current web simply don’t support a web 2.0 utopian view of content creation. Great content produced by a business requires real business models, not “put adsense next to it” business models. Adsense is by far one of the most efficient way to monetize reference content, and it simply does not, and cannot, pay enough to create the content.
Also, People are losing jobs in the music industry. Illegal downloading is not a victimless crime: thousands of record label employees have been laid off, hundreds of artists have been cut from label rosters, numerous record stores are closing throughout the country, and due to declining sales, record companies are finding their ability to invest in new artists at risk.
“Did/does YouTube properly comply with the DMCA? That’s pretty much irrelevant at this point”
I dont think you understand what copyright infringement is. Google is not only offering unauthorized viewing of tv shows and movies (1.5 billion views of an inconvenient truth for example) but they are also profitting off of their content. No new law needs to be created to protect this criminal behavior.
IP has been fair game to emulate for all companies for 50 years. The laws currently do not work to protect against infringement. The Dyson example is classic. James Dyson tried to protect his vacuum cleaners with hundreds of patents yet today you can by a ‘cyclone’ vacuum cleaner anywhere ‘made in china’ for next to nothing.
It’s not just copyright law that needs reform, it’s patent law and more importantly it is the LAW itself that needs an overhaul. The law is the evident criminal in these cases because it is the law that profits the most from these cases that arrive due to it’s own ineptness.
Ah, well, I just thought this morning about your stand on copyright. And than I got it. The Washington Post isn´t paying you anything for the syndication of Techcrunch postings. Why should they? That´s the new world without copyrights. Right??
Agreed Jojo.
@1 How much does it take to make music? Artists can make plenty of money by freely distributing their songs and making money from merchandise sales and concert ticket sales. It makes sense that records labels are laying off employees–big labels are an old, dying breed and that business model doesn’t work. The economics don’t support it–the marginal cost of a song is zero, and until the price equals zero, users will skirt the costs.
Suing your customers doesn’t make sense. These people want to listen to the music, watch the movies/shows/etc. Give them increased access to these products and I guarantee your fan base will grow. Your legal fees will decrease greatly as you no longer have to worry about copyright issues. Imagine the possibilities! Fewer lawsuits against your customers, bigger fan base, better relationship with consumers…
Exactly jojo, I wonder how Michael would respond if TechCrunch articles started being copied across the web & on kindles with no credit back to TC at all. Michael, would you react the same way if TC’s traffic and subscriptions started going down because of this activity? What if you had to fire Erick or Mark because sponsors refused to spend the same price for your 145×145 banners?
Its funny how content creators react when the content being stolen is not their own.
“Also, People are losing jobs in the music industry.” The guy who wrote that clarily cant see this from a wider perspective. jeez. This was a great post and i hope it can wake up some of the slow-thinking americans.
If you want to continue the analogy above, Michael, why don’t you take techcrunch.com down, and syndicate your articles to all of the top newspapers & RSS readers? You already have washingtonpost to begin with.
How would you survive? By doing conferences like TC50 and selling TechCrunch T-Shirts of course!
It is about time that the bloated media industry come down to earth. Finding balance will be interesting.
Speaking of IP ridiculousness, VueStar Technologies has been granted multiple patents on image-based hyperlinks, used by virtually every site on the Web (including TechCrunch), and has started sending out invoices.
http://blog.sim...-call-it-a-day/
There is the need to change the law… GLOBALLY.
Copyright is a restriction for new content creation… I’m writing a Master Thesis on this and more I write and find material more I see that the Copyright old Business Model is unsuitable for this new communication mean. I understand the force of the feeling of copyright holders, because they earn millions… and if we change the law they are not going to gain as much money as usual.
Is the same old problem… who has the money now doesn’t want to change things…
Anyway… I think that is quite late for this post Michael… It’s years that people are talking about it… I have a project going on about Internet Global Law… still in open beta.
Armchair analysis!!
I do agree with uhh – being a publisher, how would you react to somebody copying the content w/o any $$ credits?
Freedom of expression does not mean that one can allow copyrighted material to be uploaded (and hurt publishers) – and if Google is so serious about “being clean”, why do they allow porn content in YouTube site?
http://www.plug...e-communication
Dear DMCA folks,
Wake up. Realize that once people have the money, they’re actually surprisingly willing to pay some money for quality material.
The problem is that legal alternatives just suck. Sure, iTunes is convenient, and fairly cheap to boot, but it’s crippled by DRM. I’m an Apple user, DRM doesn’t exactly prevent me from doing what I want with my music, but I’m just opposed to it as a matter of principle–what the hell do you mean, I can’t do with this song as I want? I just paid money for it, it’s MY flipping copy. Hulu? I tried that. I’m totally ok with a few short ads if I can see an episode for free. But selection? Damn, there’s just nothing I want to watch after seeing the paltry few clips of House and Family Guy. It’s pathetic. Why on earth would I bother with that when other means give me a veritable limitless library to choose from?
In terms of music, there are terrible quality issues. Why pay for a 128 kbps copy from iTunes or even a 256 kbps copy from Amazon when a hundred torrents offer lossless quality sound? Given that I shelled out the dough for a pretty decent sound system, and that my headphone-beaten ears can still tell the difference, don’t you think I want the best quality possible if I’m getting the same song? Goodness knows it takes minimal effort (read: no cost) to set your CD-ripping-employees’ computers to “FLAC” instead of “crappy MP3″. In fact, if that kind of thing was available, and conveniently, then yeah, I would consider buying it–given a reasonable price. The moment you went over 99 cents a song that idea would fall off the face of the planet as well.
Oh, and the last beef has got to be timing. TV people, do you realize that by the time it’s prime time on the west coast, someone on the east coast has already conveniently ripped all your shows to h.264 format and put them on TPB for download? And that given broadband speeds these days, they’ll usually finish downloading way before prime time ends in the midwest? Why can’t you just release your entire library on Hulu or some other website and update it the moment it’s available to air? Would I pay a monthly subscription fee? Maybe, if you can beat what’s available on cable TV. Would I mind ads? Heck, they’re on whenever I watch normal TV anyways, just keep ‘em short and sweet like on Hulu. Would this be an amazing success? I’d bet on it.
Just a couple cents from a person fed up with morons in positions of ridiculous power who have no idea what the hell they’re doing.
The law changes in response to law suits, not new technology. As a result, the law is often years behind, and while you can buy things like errors and omissions insurance as a blogger or podcaster, the honest truth is based on what law, in what country, could you reasonably be expected to be held responsible for someone relying on your opinion and advice? And the honest answer there is nobody yet knows, because these issues are far from settled in the law.
We have to find a better way to enforce *any* law than a blatant “because we said so” reasoning- there has to be a reason why people need to comply.
I found Matt Mason’s recent book, The Pirate’s Dilemma interesting on this score, and how the real answer is to compete directly with the pirates- but you should read this fantastic book yourselves.
[...]build new businesses around the natural behavior of people.[...] is the secrect to success!
And what about de news industry? We can´t consider systems like Google News, newswik or similars as criminals. This kind of systems add value doing opinion mining, aggregation, content analytics…
Everyone, have you seen this? A company in Singapore is claiming that they have a PATENT covering embedding images WITH hyperlinks, if used on ANY website. They have even sent out invoices to local companies asking for between SG$500 to SG$5000 (US$1 = SG$1.35). http://ping.sg/...arch/?q=VueStar
The MTV generation LOVE Youtube.
I wonder if the MTV generation know that MTV itself was trying to shut off their favourite site…
Should check out the link about – its an interesting read between Aus and USA copyright law approaches.
Well I found it interesting and I’m from Sweden currently visting Aus.
Bjorn
The best thing to happen is to abolish all control and monitoring from all interactions on the internet. Thats the only way going forward. And thats possible only through pure P2P without using any servers. Countries like china are going to have a tough time getting accustomed to free speech. This brings me to companies like Faroo and MetaASO which are both massively scalable p2p companies. The former has a P2P search engine and the latter has a suite of 20 global scale P2P products some for Realtime Multimedia Broadcast. These softwares put control in the hands of the end users to do what they wish to do on the internet without censorship and middlemen controling everything. It really is time to rethink copyright laws and how we do things on this planet.
copyright, ipr, they all have to go, they limit the species
Copyright laws are OK.. it is the laws designed to protect copyright laws that are failing… DMCA?
Thing is that while it is convenient to watch videos on youtube and so on (Something that content holder should embrace and figure out how to make money off it) it is essentially stealing revenues from them atm.
Point being that Youtube is there to ultimately make profit and it does so by copyrighted material so it is just fair that content owners make money in the process as well…
“it’s bad to criminalize natural behavior”.
I don’t know about the legal stuff, but Mike’s right on that line.
Now all we have to do is agree on what is “natural behavior”. Good luck.
From “P” (#6): “the marginal cost of a song is zero”
Statements like this really anger artists. You realize you’re telling artists and all of the people who work to continually develop that art (the “techies,” etc.) that their work has no value … right? You’re also saying that, because it’s really cheap and easy to copy stuff now, that translates to you having the “right” to copy stuff now. Convenience does not (should not) dictate ethics.
Similarly, the work of journalists becomes “meaningless” (i.e., stuff we’re not willing to actually pay money for), and so we get solipsistic “reporting” through blogs backed by little to no research, supported with little to no context, and verified only by commenters who feel that “first” is a valid use of the comment form.
“JWJ” (#15) does have some good ideas, though. I agree the business model needs to adapt to the technology. I just don’t think that means we should insult artists by telling them their work has no value or corrupt our ethical systems by basing them on convenience.
But then we have “gregory” (#23), delivering this gem: “copyright, ipr, they all have to go, they limit the species”
Bravo, greg … you’ve clearly out-reasoned Thomas Jefferson and the other founders.
I’m with “geomark” on this. People are, pretty naturally, lazy, selfish and greedy. So, how does that fit with your maxim, Michael?
Most of the body of the law is about off-setting with reason that which we would otherwise do “naturally” but that would be harmful to others.
It is natural to speed on highways, it is natural to cheat with taxes, it is natural to take an apple from a fruit stand…. now we are at it, let’s get rid of all laws they are just limiting us.
yo mikee!!
it’s natural for some to rip off your goods. tell me, where’s your car parked. nah, fu*k the car. i want your atm card. and when someone takes your shit, don’t complain…
it’s just natural that someone would do that…
you guys who try to make the claim that there’s some difference between physical items, or elxtraonic items are hilarious.
the fact is.. someone makes/owns the content. if you don’t want to abide by the terms of the “owner”, then go use/buy.view content by someone else..
peace
It costs millions of dollars to make quality tv shows and movies (or software/videogames for that matter). Many of these fail. The winners with their huge profits (the office, Iron Man, etc.) support the ability to make new content.
If a company creates something why shouldn’t they have the right to control how it’s used? Software companies sell licenses for the number of users despite it costing next to nothing to add additional users. They do this because this is how they maximize profit. Profit is good. Profit is what will allow me to watch a quality movie rather than some low cost homemade youtube video.
Our company creates no content but we benefit from licensing the content. There are hundreds of sites that do the same thing we do but without paying for the licenses. There’s nothing natural about it at all.
@ Edoardo (and all, in fact)
http://mises.or.../ASC08_Kinsella is an essential introduction to the reasons why IP laws are completely wrongheaded. Some of the above comments display basic ignorance of the issue, but even with a relatively informed grasp of the situation, some folk seem to get it badly wrong. This issue is a political, philosophical and economic one, and it is a shame that many can only see it from a very narrow perspective, which is often limited to how it directly impinges on their work.
About RIAA’s first post… jobs are lost in the music industry, but so are in many industries that are being reshaped by the web. Jobs are lost in travel agencies, real-state agencies and newspapers, because the internet creates great efficiencies. Artists and composers need to get paid by their work, but users should pay a fraction of what they paid 10 years ago, when old physical supplied chains were in place. Record labels are protecting $1 per song, they are not protecting the music artists. Make it Ad based or subscription based. Make it fun, easy, convenient. It can be done with creativity and patience. The need for record labels is clearly much lower today than yesterday (distribution is “free”, long tail is possible, crowd sourcing IDs great artists and helps them do better stuff). If we really think about the artists, composers and fans the problem can be solved.
@ Ted: I tried to access the link you posted. I got an “Authentication Required” error message. Something about this says irony.
@ Jason
Oh. For me, it simply opens in WMP. Try http://mises.or...thor&ID=301 for a choice of audio or video (I’d recommend the video).
What has been lost is the constitutional right of public domain. Copyright had served to 1) protect content from publishers who were changing content to their whims, and 2) allow for Limited time creaters ability to earn income.
Since the 1920s copyright became a tradeable commodities. Public domain died.
Copyright is right, what is wrong is the business model around digital copyrighted material. It is hurting copyright holders.
Some artists,inventors,developers in US with “60s values baggage” claim to be a protected class and view copyright and royalties in perpetuity as an “entitlement.” Under current schema this drives job creation for lawyers and enablers who could give a shit, are overextended and will take the business (and you to the cleaners) while looking to dump a pushy wife or life partner and subprime 2nd in Woodside or Malibu. Globally among those who create one finds less posturing as a mask for intransigence. Globally most folks want change in the US laws. The issue really turns on certain cultural groups (and, yes John Lennon and Michael Jackson did pay dearly for calling them out) and how much more of a bone they agree to throw to “the troublemakers.” It’s still a zero/sum game. Nobody’s going to Stockholm on this one. Like I heard someone say in Vegas about a certain social networking site that morphed out of an Ivy League university software package… genius steals, excellence copies. Where do you assign royalties on that one?
why cant we have a business model based on creative commons license – it can provide huge business opportunity for everyone – its a win win situation for all.
@ Rick … you don’t. A social network is not the same as a song is not the same as a movie is not the same as journalistic reporting is not the same as a novel is not the same …
These are all different fruits, requiring different business models. Still, someone couldn’t create another “Facebook” using Facebook’s code (unless they release it) without penalty. Someone could create a modified version of Facebook, though, using new or open-sourced code, and hope for similar success. What’s the argument here?
Rape and murder are “natural behaviors,” too.
Michael, may I suggest putting your money where your mouth is?
Ironically you have a ‘© 2008 TechCrunch’ at the bottom of every page on your website.
btw, I’m going to start using the TechCrunch trademark since you clearly don’t mind people stealing other people’s property for personal gain.
Also, what kind of car do you drive? I’ve got a deadbeat son in law who might want to share. It’s his natural behavior.
Mike: I’ve given you this before, but for the record:
Extremely high statutory penalties for:
(1) “plagiarism”, ie failure to properly attribute the creator of a work, as well as for any other misrepresentations of who created the work…in perpetuity
(2) any false claims about one’s compensation efforts
Eliminate the monopoly on distribution rights and creating derivative works — anyone can distribute anything in any fashion, and create any derivative works they feel like.
Let the market sort out the compensation issue — some people will be cheapskates, a lot of people would rather buy from something that makes some credible claims to share a portion of its revenues with the creators.
Right now buying consumer-level intellectual property is buying, eg, 50c of artist support and $18.00 in bundled distribution network expenses; that is neither an efficient way to compensate creators nor something that’d last a moment in the free market…it only survives due to forcible bundling.
Something like the above captures the best attributes of the “copyright tax” proposals that get floated — opening up competition in the packaging and distribution markets — while avoiding the problems involved in having some corrupt committee out in DC figure out exactly how to slice up the revenue pool.
Something like the above also seems inevitable just as a sensible way of keeping up with changes in how people express themselves: photos, music clips, video snippets, and so on are becoming as-easy-to-use as words and letters; there’s a brave new territory of massively multimedia works waiting to get made that’ll never see the light of day if they get mired down negotiating a couple thousand sample clearances, image releases, and so on.
The above proposal, if implemented correctly, will after the initial shock result in a healthier market for creative works, but it will not be well received by self-styled artists and so forth, as it runs contrary to their self-image: they seem to think they are all such special sunbeams with such special gifts that it is natural and right that they be showered with money and adulation, forever, for whatever ideas they happen to crap out.
I have a very simple proposition.
The creators should be free to put a copyright, CC, or no right on their products. And their right should be protected.
You can call them smart or dumb, but that does not mean they should not be given the option.
I agree with those above who question what ‘natural behavior’ is supposed to mean.
I’m with Paul Carr –
http://www.brin...e-mr-arrington/
I think the topic of copyright/patent reform implies that we should look
at another topic, “reputation systems”, as part of a system to replace
whatever business models currently dominate for info-products.
Maybe we should get rid of patents and copyrights, and switch to a
federal proposal-based economy, where people are paid based on what they
propose to do (and their reputations), since once an info-product is
developed, in reality it costs almost nothing to copy and distribute it.
Here are some fairly simple reasons that come to mind:
(1) Under a (central) patent/copyright system, mini-monopolies are
constantly being intentionally created, along with all of the
fascist-like qualities of monopolies. However, with an ideal
proposal/reputation system, resources are smoothly distributed in a
fair, democratic, merit-based manner.
(2) Non-military info-products are immediately applicable by everyone
with almost no distribution cost, so everyone should be paying for
them ==> their development should be federally funded. For example,
if highways (which are *not* cheaply copied) are already federally
funded, why not at least fund all information products?
(3) Even with patents and copyrights, it’s often very difficult for
private entities to fully profit from info-products, due to piracy or
quickly developed free generic alternatives; see (2) ==> most “basic
research” is already currently federally funded.
(4) For sufficiently ambitious proposals, there will be failures ==> fund
development in advance of completion to maintain ambition.
For existing work on reputation systems, from Wikipedia I’ve read about
Whuffie, which is the currency in a reputation market from a free sci-fi
book. There is a social news site, which I’m not very familiar with
yet, jaanix.com, where “Whuffie controls what you see”. I think people
would naturally only stake their reputation-capital on things they
understand and care about. I think if it’s an important info-product to
some group of reputable people, then democratically it should be
federally funded and made freely available.
(#44): “Right now buying consumer-level intellectual property is buying, eg, 50c of artist support and $18.00 in bundled distribution network expenses; that is [not] an efficient way to compensate creators…”
I agree strongly with this. My concern (and I believe it was the concern of the founders, as well) is that creators have a genuine economic incentive to create and to share their creations. (Or that reporters have a genuine economic incentive to conduct research and to validate their information, etc.). I don’t much care which solution gets imposed, so long as it fairly balances the ability of creators to benefit from their work with the right of the public to benefit from those creations. “Free as in beer” doesn’t seem to do that, though, and the public should be willing to support (at a reasonable rate) the work of the creators.
The length of copyright is far too long (and most seem to agree), and the corporate greed surrounding all of this is offensive.
When I questioned the notion of “natural behaviors” I was not agreeing with the notion of copyright. I understand the basis for it well. And it is fundamentally bogus, and only serves people’s greed. Information is not depleted. It is precisely the opposite of a depleted resource, it increases with use and distribution. The notion that information is “property” and can be “stolen” has been developed over history, arriving at the current high level of criminalization. Those who argue for it are operating at a base level of greed-driven existence. All those arguments that say you must protect ideas so that people will invest in developing them accept greed as the primary driver, a fundamental mental flaw that serves to drive greed further into people’s psyche.