Sumner Redstone Confused By The Copyright Myth
from the copyright-as-a-crutch dept
A few folks have been submitting stories to us about CBS and Viacom chair Sumner Redstone's comments about copyright, claiming that "If content is king, copyright is its castle." It has a nice ring to it, but by itself it's fairly meaningless. His specific statements on copyright, however, suggest he's been sucked in by the copyright myth. "Think about it: You cannot pay the rent posting videos on YouTube," he said. And, indeed, you cannot... if all you're doing is posting videos to YouTube. However, I could just as easily say: "Think about it: You cannot pay the rent putting the Daily Show on TV." Because you can't... unless you sell ads with it. Which is exactly what Viacom does. And there's nothing stopping people from putting business models around slapping videos up on YouTube as well -- it's just that those business models may be different than the ones Viacom is used to.He then says: "You cannot make it as a musician, you can't make it as a filmmaker or a writer without ... effective and enforced copyright legislation." This is, to put it flatly, wrong. You absolutely can make it as any one of those things without effective and enforced copyright. We're seeing plenty of musicians do exactly that. We've seen writers do the same as well. And despite the cries of the MPAA, we've seen that movies still make tons of money, even when they're widely downloaded (meaning that copyrights were neither effective nor enforced for many). That's in the present day. He's also wrong historically, as anyone familiar with the history of copyright will know. Plenty of creative works were created prior to copyright being around, and weak copyright laws actually helped accelerate the market for books in the US.
His next statement is even worse: "The time and effort spent creating and the months spent producing, marketing and distributing content is an investment; it is not intended to be a donation." The thing is no one has ever said it's intended to be a donation. All we've said is that you can put different business models around it that don't involve treating people like criminals, giving them more content and even being able to make more money from that content, if you do it right. The idea that people who are pushing back on draconian and damaging copyright laws want all content to be "donated" is incorrect. We're saying that it's time to find and adopt new business models that don't involve artificial scarcity. It's really not that hard, except for those who still believe the copyright fairy tales that Redstone repeats here.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: copyright, sumner redstone
Companies: viacom
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Shut Up
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Tell that to Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven my friend.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Libraries
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
While it's clear that ony a few creations are capable of making a lot of money in the "long tail" those few can make a lot and that's the issue.
"And despite the cries of the MPAA, we've seen that movies still make tons of money, even when they're widely downloaded (meaning that copyrights were neither effective nor enforced for many)." Your conclusions here are flat wrong ; while movies are wildly popular you will get so much unofficial downloading that you can't control it but as you say that's not very damaging since the movie is still popular, but after that popularity peak if you gain control again then you've got lots more money to make. And you can gain control again even if your copyright was previously/temporarily violated.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
You sir, are a corporate shill and you should be ashamed of yourself. Go crawl back under the rock from whence you came.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
In future, please read the article before posting here
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Non-copyrighted content
I Can give Many more examples of money I've spent exclusively, as a result of making things available for free. e-books have resulted in my purchase of hard-cover books, even entire series, because the e-book of the first one was good.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/187
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Copyright
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I hope Sumner dies soon, but first I wish a long and painful list of various cancers to eat away at his greedy self.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]