Viacom Sues You Tube blah blah blah

I just think it's really sad that the people in charge in of these huge, monolithic companies are so shortsighted and so stupid. Suing Google for over $1b for copyright infringement. I mean, what kind of anally retentive, foresight lacking, buttoned down, moronic prick fuck accountant is in charge of the worlds biggest entertainment company? What genius made that decision? "Yeah, lets try to cut off the greatest ever promotional tool for our products, let's sue the people who are giving us billions in free advertising and let's present ourselves as cash obsessed lawyers to our potential audience of 70m a month."

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.

Second Life Goes Political

This is one of those stories that no matter how many times you read it, you still can't quite grasp A) how utterly bizarre it really is and B) quite how much this represents the decline of Western civilisation.

From the Guardian Unlimited website: Minister upsets Italians

"Italians seeking respite in cyberspace from the surreal world of Italian politics are fighting plans by a minister to build a campaign headquarters in the virtual reality community Second Life."

Basically, an Italian minister bought an island on Second Life to get up a virtual headquarters, and he is being blocked by people who don't want him there. The really interesting thing about this article is the last paragraph;

"The virtual campaign office created by US presidential candidate John Edwards was reportedly vandalised on February 26, while shots were fired in January as anti-racist avatars besieged the virtual offices of Jean Marie le Pen, the French rightwing politician."

Ok, read that again. Anti-racist avatars besieging virtual offices. The Metaverse has now come of age, a make believe world has become real, the future has arrived. I don't know whether to be terrified or to celebrate the social, political and technological advances that this could bring. I think it's the former.