In order to pass the “fair use” test, a work using copyrighted material must pass muster on several different elements, one of which being whether the work is “transformative” or not. Not that I’m any sort of expert on the meaning of “transformative” — and, as I learned speaking with copyright lawyers extensively the past few days, neither are they — but a basic example would be something like this: MoveOn’s “Stop the Falsiness” video using Colbert clips = transformative; posting entire segments of the Colbert Report on YouTube = non-transformative.
Some discussion this week revolved around what to make of The Sopranos in 7 Minutes video, which is, by any stretch, not transformative. And yet Sopranos creator David Chase loved the video, and encourage HBO to let it be. But before too much talk could go into touting Chase for being some sort of artistic-merit-championing-copyright-restrction-reducing hero, someone quickly pointed out that, well, of course Chase loves it. The clip — which summarizes 7 seasons of the Sopranos in seven minutes, which snippets of all the major plot lines – is, essentially, promotion. Chase and HBO have nothing to lose from people viewing the video. As one of the more cynical in the room noted, “if there was somehow money involved in this, you can bet Chase would have a different opinion.”
The New York Observer points out that Saturday Night Live clips posted on YouTube — especially the now infamous “Dick in a Box” segment — were helping to user back in a new age of SNL appreciation. Whether this is true or not, I don’t know; but creatore Lorne Michaels seems to agree.
“I think that YouTube is great, because if you do something like ‘Dick in a Box,’ someone in Pakistan can see it,” said Mr. Michaels in a phone interview.
NBC has apparently taken action this week, however, to get all SNL clips off of YouTube.
One could make both of the Sopranos-7-minute arguments on this one. Of course Lorne Michaels doesn’t mind various SNL clips being posted on YouTube, because they’re essentially promotion. Of course NBC isn’t so happy, because if there’s money to be made, they want to make it. And here’s something that … well, is probably pretty obvious, but something I never had thought about before. Whenever I heard this sort of discussion, I always just thought it meant a big TV station didn’t want people watching clips on YouTube because then they weren’t watching them on the big TV station. What I failed to take into account was Web advertising, and how that’s also a form of making money. So a lot of times when networks complain about viewers watching shows on YouTube, they’re not upset that people are watching online instead of on the box, but that people aren’t coming to their own network sites to watch the clips, where they can see the ads put up by the network advertisers.
So, me stating the obvious that previously hadn’t occurred to me notwithstanding, NBC’s SNL-YouTube-purge would make sense if NBC planned to put the SNL clips on its own Web site in an attempt to draw viewers and their expensive eyes to the advertising dollars there. But what is NBC doing?
NBC Universal announced that they were teaming up with the News Corporation to create a new Web venture that would allow executives at the two media behemoths to distribute their own copyrighted shows across some of the Web’s most heavily trafficked sites, including AOL, Yahoo, MSN and MySpace—that is, more or less everywhere except on the Google-owned YouTube. The venture is expected to launch later this summer.
This doesn’t make much sense to me. Am I somehow missing the obvious again?
I never understand all these shady business deals, but maybe Google just didn’t want to “team up” with NBC, so NBC decided that YouTube had to remove all of their proprietary content.
I have a feeling that they’ll make money with the “new venture,” and not with YouTube. Not, I’m guessing, to make it that profitable. I think they’d get more by keeping it on the highest-trafficked of all video websites, YouTube, where people are going to be posting SNL rip-off anyways. Sometimes free exposure is worth more than money. But for anyone who’s watched even one minute of one Studio 60 episode, you know that all networks care about is cash. Right, Aaron Sorkin?
do you watch Studio 60?
studio 60’s a good show. when it’s actually on. so is tina fey’s show, 30 rock.
but i agree with you about the value of free advertising. i think nbc’s being somewhat short-sighted. snl has some unique challenges, in that they are in a terrible time slot and basically require a loyal following, on top of big name guest hosts to draw in new viewers, to get ratings. they’ve done a poor job keeping the loyal following b/c of the turnover in cast members and the content has been poor.
letting youtube carry their snl material allows new cast members and new characters to build a buzz and hopefully convince people to watch more regularly.
trying to create an alternative to youtube for that purpose just doesn’t seem smart. but what do i know, right?