Maybe none of the old-guard protect-copyright-at-any-cost management was looking when elements of MTV Networks inked this deal with MySpace and Auditude to monetize user-generated video. I like to believe that what we saw with this deal (commentary from colleague Andrew Frank and me is here on the Gartner.com site) is that enlightened self-interest rules the day over at MTV Networks and, by extension, Viacom.
There might be something to this approach in as much as we also saw last week an announcement from BayTSP in which five major studios signed on to use BayTSP’s Content Authentication Platform to identify copyrighted content on UGC and video sites. BayTSP’s system includes metrics for tracking viewership to enable serving advertisements against the videos.
Just like birds got to fly and fish got to swim, rightsholders have both a need and requirements to enforce copyright, so the MySpace and BayTSP announcements don’t mean that we’ll never again see another lawsuit against a site for contributory infringement, nor will it mean the end of sites being hit with notice-takedowns.
Instead, these announcements point to the realization by some media companies that monetizing certain behaviors is a whole lot easier than trying to engage in behavior modification on a massive scale.
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