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P2P and TV
Khuffie writes "According to Wired, Warner Bros. Entertainment recently passed on a pilot of a show called Global Frequency. However, due to a leak on bit-torrent the pilot episode has reached thousands of viewers who are clamouring for more, and has given the show a new lease on life. What's more interesting is what the show creator learned. From the article: "It changes the way I'll do my next project," said Rogers. If he owned the full rights, he said, "I would put my pilot out on the internet in a heartbeat. Want five more? Come buy the boxed set." Frankly, I'm all for this method of distribution, as I barely watch 'regular' TV anymore."
How many really cool TV show pilots are sitting on a shelf collecting dust, never to be seen by the public?
Why? Corporate interests? Copyrights? It's sad how copyright law lets something be shoved under the carpet like that.
I'd like to see media companies do something cool: if the product is no longer generating revenue, turn it loose on the web. Maybe that's just a dream, because they're hoping TV Land will pay royalties to air old TV shows, so since there's a *potential* revenue stream, the shows sit on the shelf.
Hey, here's another idea. Put the pilots on the web, and have a contest to see which one folks like best. *gasp* Imagine that! Having the *viewing public* help you pick out what shows to work on next! Oh, the humanity!
Did you even read the post you replied to? The only legal basis for *copyright* is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. So if people taking your Awesome-o-matic would in the long run promote science and the useful arts more than letting you keep and sell it, that's what should be done. If you don't like it you can move somewhere else, because that's the *constitution*.
I am trolling
Way to totally misunderstand the GP.
He's just saying that if the point of copyright is to encourage more content to be created and released (which it is), then we should consider the copyright system a bit broken if it causes large amounts of good stuff to get suppressed. It's possible that tweaking the copyright system would result in more content getting created and released, which would make it better. GP said nothing about giving stuff away for free.
The choice of what to do with it is in the hands of the creator, not what the masses want.
The construct of "intellectual property" is created by the masses for their own benefit. If it happens to benefit creators, that's great. If the creators get in the way of benefit for the masses, fuck 'em. Copyright is about benefitting society; that the best method of instituting it happens to help out the creators in most cases is incidental. The system can help creators a bunch, that's fine, but the second that interferes with the benefits for the masses it needs to change, because that's not why the masses invented copyright. The creator can choose not to release anything at all; however, if they do release and then seek copyright protection, society better damn well better be getting something out of it for granting them such protection.
We're talking about optimization here. Best possible good for the masses. Odds are the solution gives the creators of content a pretty damn good deal, too, but that's just a happy coincidence.