Viacom & Google – win the battle, lose the war?

Viacom could win their lawsuit against Google for copyright infringement but lose the war on digital distribution of content.

I just finished reading a fascinating book called "The Starfish and the Spider" by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom about the power of distributed, leaderless organizations. It is a "must read" for anyone in a company whose content, product or service is delivered digitally.

One of the case studies used in the book is the fight between the Music Industry (represented by the Record Labels) and Napster over copyright violations resulting from illegal sharing of music. The music industry won their battle against Napster but it did not stop music sharing. Worse, in a real world instance of Whac-a-Mole, it spawned successors to Napster that were increasingly more decentralized and harder to stop.

The book contains a number of other case studies and a comparison of the advantages of building a hybrid business model that can be profitable in todays distributed environment.

Paul Kedrosky has an op-ed piece in today's WSJ that draws a parallel between Music Industry v. Napster and the issues faced in Viacom's lawsuit against Google. Winning the lawsuit will not alter the fact that the consumer wants content packaged in new ways enabled by digital distribution.

There's no putting the Genie back in the bottle – digital distribution of all forms of content is inevitable and at some point, the content owners will have to embrace the change.

Comments

[Stu Phillips]

Joslyn,

I agree with you! There's little defensibility for YouTube other than the reach of their distribution.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago (the last link in this post) at:

http://1vc.typepad.com/soaring_on_ridgelift/2007/03/embracing_chang.html

I think the natural result is that the content owners take back the distribution and brand their own ways for consumers to remix and redistribute content.

First they have to embrace digital distribution - the point of this post is that the more you fight it, the stronger it becomes (and the faster you lose!).

The key to the consumer's mind share is the content - not the distribution channel - plenty of new opportunities for startups to play in helping the content owners with this transition.

Stu

[Joslyn]

Stu,

Sure, users want a YouTube-like service. But that web site isn't so incredible that no one can build a YouTube knockoff. Viacom could simply build their service just like it, and keep all the advertising revenue from it. Why not?

I mean really -- I think YouTube is in a rather precarious position, and no one is pointing out. They have nothing! Napster had just as many users, and now they are nothing. People are assuming that YouTube will be around forever. I am leaning the other way.

I must say, I like Viacom's agressive move. It's bothered me that no one has been standing up for content.

I think Joost is way better than YouTube, and Viacom go on board. They also will let users remix MTV videos, and do all sorts of Web 2.0 stuff:
http://advancedmediacommittee.typepad.com/emmyadvancedmedia/2007/03/mtvs_new_web_st.html

So, don't count on YouTube being around, and don't count Viacom out.

- Joslyn