Viacom Should Figure It Out: YouTube Videos Are Free Marketing, Not Copyright Violation

Not just YouTube, downloading in general does not hurt media industry profits, it builds them, by creating new buyers.  People see portions or even the entire movie on a computer screen and if it’s a good film, they then want to pay to go see it. 

Still Viacom and YouTube are in court in San Francisco trying to prove that the YouTube founders knew they were breaking copyright law way back before 2006.   Google now owns YouTube, and documents from both sides will start being released next Tuesday, in the cases, according to The Hollywood Reporter today.

Since 2006, every other media outlet that shows videos has worked out a profit sharing agreement with Google, based in San Francisco, except Viacom, based in New York.

Online videos end up being marketing for films. 

Viacom should wake up and look at how the internet is affecting the world instead of trying to hold onto Twentieth Century copyright concepts.  For example:

My 21 year old emerged from her room the other day with three friends all of them excited running to see Alice in Wonderland at a pricey theater on the Boulevard.  I said, but Lizzie, you will be spending about twenty dollars, as that’s what single mothers say.

“Oh man,” she gushed, ”we just downloaded it, and it’s so beautful, we gotta go see it on a big screen,” and she and her friends ran out the door.

In L.A. most film executives are figuring it out, based on other stories I’ve read in the industry press.

Movies are making record high profits last few years, just as downloading has expanded.  When people share pirated versions of movies, it actually drums up more interest in seeing the films in theaters.  So, as those of us who have been around since VCRs threatened the TV industry know, opening up new venues, even if some of them are free of charge, ends up increasing business.

In other words, the more you give away, the more you get. 

A lot of people don’t want to throw away twelve dollars on a movie and then ten minutes into the film realize it’s not a good film.  So a lot of working class people had just stopped going to films in theaters altogether.  Now, they can download a part or even all of a film.  It’s not going to hurt film industry profits, as these individuals would not be buying tickets anyway.  Take a walk around an inner city park.   The guys buying and selling piles of pirates movie disks are not first run theater ticket buyers.  But now some will see that a film is really good, and it’s worth the twelve dollars or whatever to go see it.  Or a buck fifty to buy the ring tone, or wherever in between pirate video watchers fall as consumers.

In life and in business, the more you give away, the more you get.  It was the original spirit behind Google, and it should still be able to re-emerge, even after eight years of Bush’s corporatizing America.   Viacom should drop its lawsuit and find more ways to get its product out on the Internet.

Posted by Kay Ebeling, Producer of City of Angels

March 19, 2010