alternative hippopotamus

There’s an old adage among folks who’ve treaded the boards, both real and virtual: “It’s called show business. No show, no business. No business, no show.”

If you’ve never tried to put money together for a play, a short film, etc., you might not understand the slings and arrows of financing an artistic project. It’s one of my complaints about YouTube, though they’re not the worst offender, just one that happens to be in vogue right now.

I haven’t commisioned a poll, but I’ve spoken to a few people offline, and it’s clear to me that folks don’t see why taking somebody else’s video and putting it online hurts anyone. The argument goes: Isn’t that helping the video producer create buzz through viral marketing? When someone puts up a clip from the Daily Show, doesn’t that get more people to watch the Daily Show?

Let’s put the argument as favorably to YouTube as possible. Let’s say you’re Viacom, and you have an advertising budget of $1M dollars for the Daily Show. If through YouTube promotion, that budget can be reduced to $800K, isn’t that fair compensation? Obviously, I’m making up the numbers, but you get the idea.

Viacom, who owns the Daily Show and Colbert Report opted for what was behind door #2: cash and other prizes. While the exact details of the agreement between Viacom and Google haven’t been released, it’s speculated that Viacom will now be compensated based on Google/YouTube advertising returns. If Viacom is smart, and inside sources tell me that they are, they’ve also negotiated to put clips up for shows that aren’t landmark, run-away hits.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Google offered a similar deal to indie film producers who don’t have the resources to push YouTube to the mat? It would be nice, but it’s not the Google/YouTube model. The Google/YouTube model, as far as I can make it out, is to profit from advertising revenue. The audience for the site is generated by users uploading copyrighted material plus negotiated material from players like CBS and Viacom (also, as Jon Stewart pointed out, clips of someone riding a bike after you set them on fire).

Some of that uploading is from the folks that shelled out money to produce the video, some not. Take the case of the French indepent studio Flach Film. They put together what sounds like an interesting documentary on the Bush family called “The World According to Bush.” As this Reuters article describes, someone uploaded the documentary to one of Google’s video sites (the article doesn’t say whether it’s YouTube or not), but apparently that someone wasn’t the producers:

French production house Flach Film said on Thursday it had issued a writ against the U.S. Internet search engine and its French arm, Google France, for copyright infringement before a Paris commercial court.

“The World According to Bush” is a two-hour film investigating President George W. Bush’s administration and the Bush family, including its connections with the Bin Laden family.

In a statement, Flach Film also warned that a legal Internet video market could not develop if such practices were allowed.

I would add that such actions hinder not only a legal internet video market, but anyone operating outside of the big studios.

I understand that many, if not most, aren’t that concerned with the legalities. (I’ll note that there’s some big issues with US copyright law, and I’m very sympathetic to arguments that say the law needs to be reformed. Frustration with that law may be one reason why people are uploading clips to video sites like YouTube.)

I’m hoping that many, if not most, will be sympathetic to the idea that independent video can’t exist without financial support.

I also believe that people have an inate sense of fairness. If they start to get it that YouTube’s practices are at the expense of sites like current.tv who compensates producers, and plays by the rules, then they’ll start to pressure Google to pony up to the content creators.

I’d also argue that this is not a politically neutral issue. Over the last 2 decades private benefactors helped to set up a right-wing media machine that includes books (Viguerie publishing, who gave Coulter and Malkin their starts), websites (Drudge, Tech Central Station), talk radio (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.), which ultimately lead to the creation of the Fox News Channel. If you’re not familiar with the Fox News Channel, that’s where you can go watch Coulter, Malkin, Drudge, Limbaugh, Hannity, and authors associated with Viguerie. More recently, private donors started Pajamas Media- a trial balloon for right-wing media on the web.