Paramount Thinks That Louis CK Making $1 Million In 12 Days Means He's Not Monetizing
from the does-anyone-take-these-people-seriously? dept
One of the more annoying things about debates on copyright law, is that when we talk about alternative business models that do not rely on copyright, some people feel the need to insist that this means making less money -- or, even, making no money at all. There is just this assumption that an alternative business model means something along the lines of "give it away and pray," when nothing could be further from the truth. Yet this kind of thinking is so ingrained, that even in stories of artists making a ton of money, some maximalists simply assume that they're not making any money. We saw this recently in the comments to one of our recent posts about Jonathan Coulton which talks about how he made $500k last year -- at which point, someone said that such examples are useless since no one will pay.It appears that Paramount's "Worldwide VP of Content Protection and Outreach" Al Perry also fits into the same unthinking mode. We've already discussed Perry's recent talk to Brooklyn Law School, but there was one section that caught my eye and deserves a separate post. It comes right at the beginning:
Perry opened by noting that one has to articulate a problem before seeking to solve it, and he refers to the problem as “content theft.” He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations, and that even if people like Louis C.K. decide not to do so, that’s a choice and not a requirement.Now that seems bizarre and totally unsupportable. Remember, Louis CK made over $1 million in just a few days -- an amount that he admits was much higher than what he would have received just for a straight up performance. In what world does going direct-to-fans, building a good relationship, automatically mean no money made at all? Not the one we're based on.
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Filed Under: al perry, jonathan coulton, louis ck, monetization
Companies: paramount
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See Mike, that's your problem...
- Everyone obeys every law that they are consciously aware of. The reason most people infringe is because they don't know copyright laws exist.
- "Steal" means to take without paying the RIAA or MPAA their fair share (typically 75%-90%)
- "Successful artist" is a creator who has signed a contract with a major media corporation.
and finally, back to the article...
- "Monetize" means "add crippling DRM so that the maximum amount of gross revenue can be extracted from each sale of a copy"
See? Once you understand their "world", it just makes so much more sense...
/the color of my sky is blue... how about yours?
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Typo
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Re: See Mike, that's your problem...
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Re: Typo
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In the world of frightened copyright middlemen.
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Quick story: I'd heard mention of Louis CK before this release, but I'd never heard any of his material. Looking through his filmography, that's no surprise since it's largely filled with writing gigs for TV shows I don't watch and some movies I had no interest in watching, and I don't tend to watch standup from complete unknowns (which CK essentially is where I'm coming from).
However, as a direct result of this experiment I paid the $5 - for various reasons but largely due to it being virtually risk free on my part (no region restriction, no DRM, cheap price, instant delivery). I finally watched it last weekend. Pretty funny, and I'll probably check out his other standup soon.
However, you know what I would *not* have done, ever? Bought a DVD, Blu Ray or DRM infected file. Not only would those have been inconvenient, but almost certainly overpriced and it could even be a crapshoot as to whether I was allowed to play the thing on my chosen devices. So, there would be no way in hell I'd blind buy those in the same way as I did the digital file, and so CK has absolutely received at least $5 that he wouldn't have had by going the traditional route.
Oh, and because I did the above, guess what I didn't do with that money? Buy or rent product released by Paramount. I might continue that trend...
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He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations
"He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations"
maybe he needs to learn what copyright law does and doesn't do? there's no "right" to monetize.
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Re: He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations
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What he meant was...
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One of the best ways of minimizing a threat to an individual's (or corporate) way of looking at the world is to deny that it's happening at all and if it is that it can't possibly be successful. Corporations get the additional "benefit" that they can propagandize their view to anyone that will listen or, even better, legislators.
Al Perry won't go "off message" because that would upset all the lobbying the *AA's have done to convince Congress critters and other legislators around the world that the end of the "content" world is nigh even if there are examples like Coulton's and Louis CK's. Even if it works for those two it can't possibly for anyone less well known. Even worse, they're giving up the "protection" of copyright even if they aren't completely giving it up.
Denial and propaganda can be powerful things, sometimes, even if the face of reality. For the "content" industry we've reached the point where it isn't working anymore on the citizenry and public so now they want to pick their audiences. Legislators and those likely to become legislators like lawyers.
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In Louis CK's "experiment" you'll see the following:
1. $0 - Paid to any of the MPAA members
2. $0 - Paid to copyright lawyers for protecting trademark/copyright
3. $0 - Paid to any company to trace and track unauthorized distribution
4. $0 - Paid to any Legal representation for shaking down and prosecuting fans for sharing
5. $0 - Paid for lobbying effort to protect the copyright industry
See, every one of the paths to monetizing content was ignored. Basically, this freeloading SOB just bent the whole world over so that he could just steal other peoples money.
I hope he's really, really proud of himself.
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Re: He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations
That's pretty much all copyright does and all it's intended to do. It's there to stop others from profiting from your work for a limited amount of time. For some people, this can be an incentive and so it benefits the public. Nobody has the right to be guaranteed a return, but copyright is supposed to ensure that only the original creator can do so to begin with.
In the corporate world, this has become so skewed that not only is it assumed that money is the sole motivation for any creativity, but if something has no copyright then money can't be made. Both of these are utterly false, but these people have been living in their own echo chambers so long that they're not able to accept the contradictory evidence right in front of them.
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2. $0 - Paid to copyright lawyers for protecting trademark/copyright
3. $0 - Paid to any company to trace and track unauthorized distribution
4. $0 - Paid to any Legal representation for shaking down and prosecuting fans for sharing
5. $0 - Paid for lobbying effort to protect the copyright industry"
If only more people did the same.
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7.Never go to a Theater
8.Support and buy INDIE Material
9.Death to the MAFIAA
You forgot a few things
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Full Headline Should Be:
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/trollbait
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"not rely on copyright"
He took a strategy to reduce unpaid viewing that consisted of making it as easy as possible to pay him for his material, and I imagine he's not going after people with lawyers for uploading the files to Torrent sites or whatever. But if someone else set up a website selling an AVI of that same film for $4.50, I'm pretty sure he'd take legal steps to shut them down -- and he'd be 100% right to do so.
Please don't mix up the current broken system of content distribution with core rights granted by copyright law.
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Re: Re: He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations
It's there to stop other from COPYING your work for a limited time.
Nobody has the right to be guaranteed a return, but copyright is supposed to ensure that only the original creator can do so to begin with.
No. Copyright lies with the copyright holder, which isn't always the original creator. There is nothing in copyright law that states the copyright holder is the only person that can make money from content.
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Quite, these are the people who truly deserve our support and our money.
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Re: "not rely on copyright"
This is conflating two different things.
If copyright didn't exist at all, he would still have been able to sell his work to his fans. In that sense, he is not relying on copyright.
Being able to prevent others from selling his work for a limited period of time is valuable, and may well have increased his profit, but he doesn't need copyright to make a profit in an absolute sense.
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Banana phones are the future.
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This suggests an interesting question: If a movie theatre plays an indy movie under a contract directly with the maker, does the theatre have to pay "royalties" to the MPAA?
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See, 50 years ago we made a lot of movies. Total crap, to run in small town theaters for weekday matinees... now, a film's not worth making if you don't throw $200million at it and prepackage a total lifestyle franchise to go with it, and if you set up a weekday matinee nobody could see it, because the theaters are all huge big-box suburban outlets and the few kids left who are allowed to go outside alone can't drive there... grrr....
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Re: "not rely on copyright"
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Re: Re: Re: He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations
Except it does. If you have exclusive distribution rights (i.e. copyright) to a work then you have the exclusive right to monetize it. That's different from saying no one else can make money on it, but the copyright holder has the exclusive right to set the terms of monetization i.e. how it's going to be sold (digital-only, physical media, etc.) and who is going to sell it (iTunes, Amazon, etc.). You can even sell the copyright to monetize it, but then you lose the right to monetize it further.
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Then again, this is the same industry that moved to the west coast to make it difficult for Edison to collect royalties on his new fangled inventions.
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So those people aren't getting the money, Louis is. Good for you Louis!
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Re: See Mike, that's your problem...
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What a difference a few words make...
Add those few simple words and suddenly you see why they are claiming that his actions don't count as 'monetizing', because from that perspective they're completely right, they didn't get a cut of the profits at all.
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Oh wait! He did hire people to do that for him and paid them for their work. Nice try!
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What does Hollywood know about monitization anyway?
- Forrest Gump (as a result, the author refused to sell the studio the rights to the sequel)
- Spiderman (Stan Lee successfully sued over this one)
- My Big Fat Greek Wedding (most of the cast then sued the studio for a share of the profits)
- Babylon 5 ("Basically", says Straczynski, "by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits.")
- Lord of the Rings (resulted in Peter Jackson not directing The Hobbit, also - 15 actors suing the studio for not receiving their cut of the profits)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (reported a $167 million loss... which is roughly equal to the film's budget.)
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Re: Re: Re: Re: He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations
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DAMN, dude: if I thought you were serious, I'd think you were seriously misguided.
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Louis C.K. is actually talented and funny. So the model he employs can't really be applied to "Transformers VI."
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Re: "not rely on copyright"
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Re: See Mike, that's your problem...
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Should that not be free anyway !
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Re: Re: Re: He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations
Which, at least under the original environment in which it was conceived, means for profit. Nobody freaked out about lending a book to a friend after you finished reading it. Copying a PDF, however, seems to be punishable by death according to some maximalists.
"Copyright lies with the copyright holder, which isn't always the original creator."
Hence why I said "intended". Copyright has been corrupted far beyond its original intentions, but those intentions are still sound.
"There is nothing in copyright law that states the copyright holder is the only person that can make money from content."
Only because the system has been corrupted enough so that copyrights are transferrable to a corporation that had nothing to do with the original artwork, and they still profit for decades after the original holder's death. That's not the original intention.
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Re: What does Hollywood know about monitization anyway?
Forrest Gump: $677,387,716 ($55 million production budget)
Spiderman: $821,708,551 (production budget $139 million)
My Big Fat Greek Wedding: $368,744,044 (production budget $5 million)
HP/Phoenix: $939,885,929 (production budget $150 million)
But yeah, it's those evil pirates causing these "losses", of course...
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Re: will that now over-served group have enough money to go around?
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He even said so in his letter that accompanied the site that Anonymous Coward apparently didn't read. He specifically said that the video cost him $170,000 to make, which meant that he paid someone (many people) that money. Of course, he also said that the original $170,000 spent to make the video came from the cost of the tickets he sold for the live performances. But he still paid a bunch of people for the help.
He also handed out bonuses from the million plus to those who helped. Just wish I had a chance to help...could have used the bonus.
Just Anonymous Coward not paying attention, as usual.
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"The second 250k is going back to my staff and the people who work for me on the special and on my show. I'm giving them a big fat bonus."
That's *after* he states that the first $250k has paid back the production budget and advertising/distribution costs, which presumably includes the original wage packet.
But no, none of these people got paid. This is the fantasy the ACs have to maintain to spout their lies, they can't deal with facts.
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What we have here is a failure to communicate...
Louis CK made money, yes. But he failed to MONETIZE.
By which it's meant that he failed to make the most out of the process.
Not the product, mind you - the process.
Louis had a very simple proposition: Pay me money, I give you something funny.
Louis CK viewed DRM as a cost that wasn't worth it, and that alone is a threat to the MPAA's reality. It's also what most people here have focused on, because of this guy's job title.
But we need to ignore the job title, and remember that this guy is steeped in an industry. Language shapes how you think, and I believe we can see more than just DRM being referred to here.
Louis CK didn't sell plushies, action figures, and clothing. Or re-release earlier goods with a little sticker on them that advertised the new product whilst pretending to be a reference of quality ("From the man who brought you...")
Louis CK didn't do that not only because he didn't have the rights to previous works, but because that would be a waste of time and money. He could - nay, should - be writing material or working on the new product.
He also didn't choose to get paid for holding a particular brand of soft drink whilst he did his act.
A smart move, because even if $sponsor were to pay for him to be using their product during the filming, the costs of lawyers to land the deal would leave him with little money.
And the sponsor would no doubt want some "creative control", to ensure he didn't say anything that they don't want their brand associated with...
Which is effectively self-censorship for the project. And when you realise that the deal will probably land him no more than minimum wage (given how long it will take to do the project), suddenly he needs more sponsors, which means a death spiral of more censorship...
Basically, Louis CK is smart. He saw what people wanted, he budgeted it out, he delivered JUST WHAT THEY WANTED, and didn't waste time doing much else.
But that's not what Hollywood does. Hollywood doesn't just sell films to customers, it sells advertising space in those films too. It doesn't just sell a film, it sells merchandising - or at least the rights to it. It doesn't just sell a medium with the film on it, it sells the rights to distribute those films.
THAT'S monetization.
That's how the MPAA thinks. Total control for maximum profit. Don't take risks, and do whatever it takes to get the most money from every stage of the process.
Who cares if the film is sanitised by sponsorship requirements? Who cares if the distribution chain creates artificial delays that encourage piracy? Who cares if merchandising is shoddy? Who cares if DRM means buyers are annoyed by unskippable adverts?
Not one of those is a concern to this man.
The business he lives and breathes in a "monetized" world. He may not quite understand how the new generation of Connecting-With-Fans and Reason-To-Buy artists can make money without doing this.
Subconsciously, he's almost certainly wondering why Louis CK didn't "monetize" as I've described. Because such monetization is all he sees, every day.
Which is slightly frightening.
But what's also slightly sad is that he probably hasn't even considered the downsides I've listed. He's not even capable of seeing them as serious downsides, because everyone around him sees only the upsides - the bottom line from the deals.
I've always wondered if Hollywood execs are just unscrupulous salesmen. They often seem to share one key quality - they only care about the money that they, individually, bring in. If the sale hurts business reputations, or damages future sales, then they don't care. "Just look at this quarter's bottom line! I'M ON FIRE!"
That's monetization. The pursuit of many individual bottom lines, with no care for the effect on the final product.
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Though I doubt it would do much, it would be kinda funny to see them try and wiggle out/justify their actions in the face of that sort of info, given they're always going on and on about how 'people deserve to be paid for the work they do!'
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Re: What we have here is a failure to communicate...
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I stopped buying,watching,playing, ect anything that was enabling morons to chip away at my freedom. I respect what CK is doing a lot. I will buy myself a copy for sure!
FUS RO DAH
God I love saying that now. Not because I love skyrim I hate it. It just gives me pleasure because I know how anal their trying to be over a word. Also I know if I get into some scuffle with a skyrim player I can just shout FUS RO DAH and send them flying. Who says you need a stun gun?
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Re: Full Headline Should Be:
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It's all philosophy
If a comedian makes a million bucks in a forest and no MPAA executive is there to profit from it, did he actually make any money at all?
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Re: Re: Re: He pointed out that copyright law gives creators the right to monetize their creations
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