Signal to Noise

In a post at Business Week, Peter Burrows talks about the spat that occured last week when the AP went all USSR Ministry of Deception on bloggers, demanding they remove exclusive content purportedly owned and copyrighted by the AP.  This got me thinking–does this mean bloggers who work for newspapers (who own the AP) aren’t allowed to use AP material?  I have a client with several blog products that IS a newspaper. So what does this mean for them?

Check out what Burrows writes:

In a demonstration for BusinessWeek earlier this year, Attributor executives showed how many times scenes from The Sopranos had appeared on 20 leading video sites since they first aired on TV. In all, 1,500 scenes from 52 episodes had been viewed 32 million times. For Time Warner’s HBO, those viewings might have brought in more than $1 million, said Attributor Chief Executive Officer Jim Brock.

ERRNTT. Wrong. Those viewings would not have happened if they weren’t free. Setting a price for this otherwise freely-viewable content would be the same as telling people not to view it at all.  See, it’s the value perception of old media that’s in question in the consumer’s mind.  Empower the consumer and he sees more value. When the thing he wants is free (the Sopranos episode, say), then the consumer is empowered.  Now–go monetize that concept.   Empower the consumer and you make money–just not by charging him for something there are 5 other ways to obtain for little to nothing (BitTorrent, the public library, Blockbuster Video, NetFlix, etc.).

When is old media going to realize that the world of charging $$ for proprietary content isn’t the only model that works any more?  Traditional pubs and especially the recording industry need to stop fighting the notion that there are other ways to monetize content than to charge for it.  The basic precept of the copyright is at odds with content monetization anyway.  So the struggle between licensing of content and free exchange of information is only made worse when NOBODY is allowed to use content without PAYING for it.

If I had 32 million video views on MY web site, I would find a way to make money, and I would never once charge somebody to view the videos.  MPAA, HBO, you guys basically want to do what porn sites do when you should, instead, find a way to work in the framework of consumer demands–things like democratization and social networking.  There’s a way to make money there, but you’ve got to take off the blinders in order to see it.