Sumner Redstone: YouTube Won't Pay The Rent
At the Dow Jones and Nielsen Media and Money conference in New York today, Viacom and CBS chairman Sumner Redstone pulled out all the stops in defending the sanctity of copyright. "If content is king, copyright is its castle," he reportedly said. "Copyright compels creativity, it furnishes the incentive to innovate. If you limit the protection of copyright, you stifle the expression of self."
The 84-year-old Redstone, whose company is in the midst of a lawsuit against Google's YouTube seeking $1 billion in damages for what it terms "massive intentional copyright infringement," was coy about the video sharing site, but did make some pointed remarks about what he thinks of YouTube's current business model. "Think about it: You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube," he said. "And most aspiring novelists do not aspire to self-publish. You cannot make it as a musician, you can't make it as a filmmaker or a writer without ... effective and enforced copyright legislation."
Redstone, though, does see a future for monetization of online content via advertisements. "Advertising will pay the way," he told the crowd.
While I don't think I agree that looser copyright laws will lead to the demise of creativity, Redstone makes a fair point about the importance of control for media creators. Without control of distribution (and thus compensation), media producers simply can't afford to continue creating quality content. The content creator deserves to be compensated for the consumption of content no matter where it takes place -- especially if someone else is making money from it.
On the other hand, content producers need to be more accommodating of changing consumer viewing habits. More and more people are getting video, audio, and textual content online, or doing things like timeshifting television programming with Tivo. Big media needs to get on board and realize that consumers want to be able to view their media whenever and wherever is most convenient for them. Giving consumers a choice of where and how to consume media would be beneficial to media producers in the long run.
The problem for media companies, though, is that even with explosive growth of online advertising, it likely can't match the profits they get from other mediums. The Law & Order franchise, for example, reportedly rakes in over $1 billion in profits from rerun licensing rights, DVD sales, and overseas licensing. That's a lot of money that content producers might feel hesitant to potentially cannibalize by bringing content online.
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I know there are many you tube video's that are in violation of copy write infringements! but i doubt there will be much done about it... There are many music video's that people make there own version and there are many videos that use copywrited material and i think you tube should try to fix the problem!!.
One last time: there IS NO COPYRIGHT. There is no such thing as "intellectual property". The constitution does not allow it. The founders didn't intend it. And the 1st amendment trumps any law that says otherwise.
The copyright clause of the constitution says that AUTHORS and INVENTORS (not corporations, not anyone else) can have a LIMITED monopoly because it ENCOURAGES them to do even more.
Nowhere does it say or imply that it's OK for the government to limit our freedom of expression -- even if it's originally someone else's expression -- because the expression is "owned". Sorry, but that right is protected.
Die already, you ignorant old pig.
It will be interesting to see what sort of changes will have to start being made to Youtube. I think they are starting to catch onto the problem, because it seems like there are more and more videos being taken off the pages because of copyright.
Good post, It's about time that people acknowledge that there are 2 sides to this debate not just the consumer who wants everything for FREE and who get overly upset when content creators want to protect their hard work from theft!
There has to be a middle ground here. I'm sure with time these things will all get resolved.
@Agent Zero: Remixing someone else's work to create something new is not the same as uploading copyrighted work for public display verbatim, in my opinion.
Perception of copyright is really interesting. On the one hand you have content producers such as blogs and software developers, on the other hand you have music producers and movie/tv producers. The software content crowd crow and crow about how information wants to be free, how innovative ideas cannot be patented, how pirates will bring the evil RIAA and MPAA down by stealing their wares, BUT if anyone violates the gpl, or steals a photo like happened yesterday there is all hell to break loose.
Its such a double standard its not even funny, and ANY post like this on a mainstream place gets modded out of existence. Pretty funny really!
Freedom of speech and expression is the first right - guaranteed by the constitution.
Copy-right comes second - with a desire to protect the creative and to foster innovation.
When it clearly affects the author from continuing to be creative - then rights obviously it makes sense. If copying furthers the author's cause, then it should not be seen through the same perspective.
The point is that we live in an era where you can access the same information in a myriad of ways - and all not exclusively. In olden days a book was a book. A painting was a painting. A movie was projected on an exclusive wall.
A web page is different, a bitmap is different, a video is different. It is not all delivered through single-channel pipes or exclusive rectangular tubes anymore.
Ideas/restrictions/laws that were created when current electronic access techniques were not even thought of, need to be adjusted to the new era.
content isn't king. attention is.
I find it ironic that studio chairs come out in favor of copyright, by declaring it the defender of creativity. Redstones quote, "Copyright compels creativity, it furnishes the incentive to innovate."
Studio's are not creative entities. Just like the current Writer's Guild strike demonstrates, studios pay for creative and prefer if they don't have to pay at all. They are more than willing to benefit from the creativity of others. The 'someone else' making a profit off of the consumption of creative content is the studios. They take the copyright with little regard to fair compensation to the writers, musicians, and artists.
It's really too bad when media studios start believing their own hype. They are copyright owners or holders, not content creators.
@kid mercury: spot on. Attention is king, queen and jury.
@allgood2: I agree with all your points.
However, media studios were formed out of the necessity for a larger corporate entity to 'monetise talent' (and I use those words very, very loosely) better than the writers, musicians and artists could do on their own as individuals.
Until there is a level playing field where creatives can enagage with audiences directly without depending on the marketing muscle of 'content owners', large media corporations will have the upper hand.
It is coming though. And much sooner than a lot of people realise.
This is why Facebook’s SocialAds and OpenSocial are so disruptive.
Trusted recommendations by word-of-mouth will trump scatter gun, ‘shout advertising’ like radio and TV in effectiveness every time.
When attention is king, content has to be trusted to be heard.
Apologies, I meant:
a level playing field where creatives can engage with audiences directly
and *not*:
a level playing field where creatives can enagage with audiences directly
I agree with Redstone
I think the most interesting point here is how he says a Musician can't make it without effective and enforced copyright.
I know they didn't "start" this way - but recently both Trent Reznor (and Saul Williams under the moniker "Niggy Tardust") and Radiohead put something out there for nothing... If you don't want to pay.
I think that music piracy is most common - but every downloaded song is not necessarily a lost sale. If the person likes it and doesn't buy it - yeah then it is, but if they don't... Well they probably wouldn't have shelled out the money for it anyway.
Where the musician needs to make money is on merch, tours and extras they can package with "premium" versions of their content. The fans will pay... Everyone else won't, but seriously, were they ever going to?
I think movies are a slightly different kettle of fish, only because getting decent quality on them means huge file sizes (and i'm a fan of lossless audio - so i'm used to something chunky anyway) and the studios are still in a good position to package extras as a reason for sale through offline channels... If they're actually add any value and are worth anything.
I think in the case of youtube, people can't lament a time gone by... Kill youtube and there is still metacafe, yahoo channels, revver and a thousand more of the same out there. It's a little like bittorrent, once it got a foothold, you can't really eliminate it. Obviously a piece of the pie would be nice for Mr. Redstone - who clearly doesn't have enough money anyway - but even ignoring this, the person who works out how to make sure these services act as an advantage and a differentiating factor is the one who's going to make a lot of money. Not the guy who sues everyone else into oblivion (though I guess it still doesn't hurt to be him either ;-) ).
An intelligent comment from a prior commenter (Kid Mercury) was "Content isn't king. Attention is." And this is completely true.
Everyone is missing the issue on freedom of speech--
While I have the freedom to post anything I want from my point of view, do I have the right to copy and paste your posts, leaving your name or likeness attached, and perhaps even alter the content to say something entirely different?
Would you like to post something completely harmless and have the police show up at your door tomorrow because you made threats or posted child pornography--even though it wasnt you and was really someone who stole your online work and altered it?
Even if your creative content was shown in its pristine state, what would give another the right to speak for you...or to put you in front of unintended audiences?
Freedom of speech protects one's own personal speech, expressions and ideas..not the ability for anyone to hijack another's expressions.