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Viacom Turns to Joost, Spurns YouTube
Vincenzo writes "Viacom has signed a deal with Joost that will see content from MTVI, Comedy Central, and CBS distributed on the new P2P distribution service. The move comes just two weeks after demanding YouTube pull over 100,000 videos offline. 'Joost's promise to protect their copyrights was a major factor in Viacom's decision, and also a stumbling block in their discussions with YouTube/Google. At the moment is it quite easy to download and store video content from YouTube, but no such exploit for Joost is known to exist.' It's also a 'secure' distribution medium in the eyes of many in the entertainment industry, since users can't upload content themselves.'"
One of the nice things we see in music these days is the little guy creating and distributing high-quality audio. I'd like to see the same for video. The problem so far is that only these behemoth companies own the current content and can afford large production and distribution. If finally we'd see some significant competition from startups then Viacom and others might be forced to let go a little. If some hot new show distributed freely over the internet took eyeballs away from Viacom content maybe they'd be forced to come to their senses. Maybe.
Developers: We can use your help.
although the summary focused on the "guarantee" of security joost represented for viacom, i think the one-sided distribution model is the big difference. i think, fundamentally, google's business plan revolves around letting end users become the content providers, and google just indexes all of the content -- they make it possible to navigate. this is a view orthogonal to what we're seeing with the media companies, of course. they want to create the content, own it, and control it. they don't want to sell it, but to license it.
the problem, of course, is a matter of generating quality content from the user side.
1/3 of the content i "consume" is probably user-generated. if it weren't for movies/netflix, and television bits on youtube, it would be much closer to 100%. i can certainly envision a future where it becomes more and more fragmented as the tools to generate content become cheaper and cheaper.
mr c
"Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it." - R. Feynman
Realisticly, it's an attempt by Viacom to place pressure on GooTube to do what they want. What they want is for Google to offer ultra-restrictive access to their... [my] precious... video content. Furthermore, they want Google to invent a foolproof copyright checker (as if such a thing is possible) to prevent average users from uploading Daily Show and Stephen Colbert clips. They're using the Joost deal as a bargaining chip to make Google do what they want.
In reality, this will end one of two ways:
1. Google will reply with a big, "So what?" and Viacom will only pay lip service to their Joost contract. A year down the road, Viacom will come back to YouTube with a cry of "me too!" when they notice how well the advertising is working for their competitors.
2. Google will appease Viacom with special features like: Prominent display of their content on the YouTube front page. Viacom will gruffly agree (when that's really one of the outcomes they were hoping for), but "only if you guys crack down harder on copyright violations!" Joost will get dropped like a rock.
Now if this was the Google of old, I'd say they will go with the first option. But given the slow progress of Google toward becoming Just Another Big Business(TM), I'd say it's just as likely that they'll take door #2.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm working on something that is exactly what you describe, but I need an answer to the question that will take this from hobby to Viacom-killing profession, and that question is "How do I see money?" Who pays for it? Sure, I can get investors once, but after they don't see their money back, I'm sunk. Is this the type of thing that I can pay for with Google ads? Only if people can't scrape the video and watch it offline. Only if they can't post it on YouTube.
Nope, the distribution model is fucked. All hail technology, making it easier and easier to distribute content for which there's no commercial incentive!
Let me start of by saying, I don't mind paying for watching programs. If they're reasonably short, I don't even mind the occasional ad. But I also don't have unlimited resources. Buying content from iTunes still seems too expensive to me. I'd like to get The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Battlestar Gallatica, Mythbusters, and possibly Psych. That very quickly comes close to just getting cable TV. Which I don't want for several reasons (one of them, is I'm unable to do a 1 year contract).
.. their sales model is based on the fact that with old-style TV, you have to watch the crap they want you to watch. You have to watch the ads, you have to watch a specific time, and if it's crap, you'll watch anyways.
So I've been waiting for IPTV. Technically, I don't understand why it would be so difficult to do. I mean, Comedy Central's Motherload already does it. Only crappily. You can't actualy get the full show, and the picture is *really* *really* small. But I guess there are other reasons that I may never fully understand. Though, in my naivate, I'm going to suggest greed as being on the top of the list.
And as the article pointed out, Youtube and Joost serve two different purposes. I mean, I guess it would be nice to get anything I wanted on Youtube, but the clips I've seen are never the full show, and once again, that is what I'd like. Watching short clips of a funny show just aggrevate me.
And so I'm actually excited about Joost. I mean, I still am not exactly sure how it will work, since the details seem to be a bit skimpy, but at least it has the potential. Then I skim over some of the shows that Viacom is releasing, and it all looks like crap. Especially since I don't see the Daily Show on their list. It's a 'will include' list, but that usually means what they don't list are only crappier crap.
Perhaps it's something as simple as them testing the market, and not wanting to release their 'prized possessions', but that seems stupid to me. The shows they have listed, I, nor do I suspect most people, care to see. So they'll run it for a while, claim low viewership, and end the program. And then they'll cite the stats as to why they'll never do anything with the interweb again. Assholes.
It's not that I think all their claims are invalid
It's not that it's impossible to come up with a new sales-model. They just have no interest in doing so.
Actually, it's all about money. They want control of their own media artifacts so that they can make money off of them. Whether that will actually come to pass is extremely unlikely. Nobody is going to care about Joost for the exact reason that Viacom likes it: because random people can't post videos there.
Have you read my blog lately?
Sure but that show would be lonelygirl15, and uh... all I'm saying is that because of what's catchy to males on the internet, the transition is going to be embarrassing.
Relax I just want some peanuts.
This distribution deal is a move that is good for the Internet media revolution. For one, it establishes a real competitor to YouTube with content people will actually want to watch. Without bundling that content with the network: Joost is just the distributor, owning no rights.
But more importantly, it puts copyrighted content into a YouTube competitor that can challenge YouTube if YouTube has the content. That means that YouTube's copyright enforcement doesn't happen in an vacuum of arbitrary claims and baseless decisions. When Joost complains, it will have a copy of the content and a copy of the contract with the content owner. The process to enforce copyright between the two corporations can take place in the well understood realm of corporate negotiations and lawsuits.
Of course, it would be better for everyone (including Viacom, and especially YouTube and Joost) if copyrights didn't slow down every media transaction. But until copyrights actually are peeled back to a legitimate scope, duration and enforcement regime, getting competitors with paper trails to manage it is the best we can do, and better than nothing.
--
make install -not war
Have you visited ABC.com or NBC.com lately? Actually, I wouldn't blame you for missing it, because they haven't exactly been sounding the trumpets about this. They've buried it under piles of throwaway interview clips and crapisodes, I mean webisodes. But if you click around for a while, you'll eventually come across the fabled Full-Episode player, where you can actually, really, right now watch the entire current season run of all of ABC and NBC shows, free with ads.
Ignoring the player app (a typical Flash monstrosity), ABC is actually doing everything right: There are 3-4 commercials per show, which you can choose to watch at any time (by skipping forward). Some commercials are longer than 30 seconds; if you're interested you can keep watching it, but if not you can skip the rest! Once you've watched a commercial, that part of the show is "unlocked", so you never have to watch the same commercial twice (Hallelujah!). It's actually possible to watch all the commercials upfront and then see the entire show with no breaks.
It's amazing to me that this made it through the corporate innovation-crushing machine. If ABC's player had a decent full-screen mode, and better quality video, it would basically be my perfect ad-supported-TV-watching experience.
Firebug. It will make your jaw hit the floor.