These people own everything; Paramount, MTV, Comedy Central, CBS, Simon & Schuster, Blockbuster etc, and they utterly fail to realise what they have before them. You Tube has changed the world, and instead of capitalising on their business methods or expanding into a new market they are throwing their dummy out the pram and complaining like scared little children. Do they honestly think that because I can't find that clip of Boy George in the A-Team I'm going to go and buy the DVD? Do they see every video clip on You Tube as another potential sale, another lost consumer who could be willingly paying the exorbitant prices for media held hostage?
Maybe they're just pissed off that they should be having a turnover of $11b this year, instead of the usual $10b. Or maybe they're pissed off that they've failed to instigate, understand or capitalise on the You Tube model. It could be that they hate the idea of the audience choosing the direction of their industry or, horror of horrors, having some control of what they choose to watch. Or maybe, just maybe, they're a bunch of half-dead businessmen who couldn't give a flying fuck about the audience, about culture, about art or about entertainment and only care about the bottom line... and if some child dares to put a video clip of their favourite singer on a website well then they're gonna sue them for a hundred million billion dollars.
I believe the Ham Fisted Theatrics blog said it best:
"Dude, all the Prince Super Bowl clips have been taken down off of YouTube at the behest of Universal Music and it's the dumbest thing I can think of.
It's nothing but a free commercial for Prince, a Universal Music recording artist. Why wouldn't you want thousands of kids watching that video, going, "Holy shit...Prince is the TRUTH!" and then going out and getting his greatest hits? Do you really think the money is in that eleven minute clip of Prince? You were not going to capitalize on that eleven-minute clip. A person watching that clip was not one less paying customer. A person watching that clip was one more potential Prince fan.
People really oughta think twice before yanking their product away from willing eyeballs and earholes.
People really oughta think twice before fronting on Prince."
The Ham Fisted Theatrics blog, by the way, is written by DC Pierson who is a member of very funny comedy troup called Derrick. have a look at their You Tube page - before Viacom sue them for being better than some stuff on Comedy Central.
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Interested in more commentary on Viacom (one year later)? Be sure to check out this blog post, along with other posts by the same writer on communications and new technologies!
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/28/viacom-wants-to-screw-itself/
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