The content control bubble
February 7th, 2007 by David Weinberger
Interesting stuff percolating around the question of how controlled content ought to be, where “ought” means morally, culturally, and for hard-nosed business reasons. Is the issue coming to a head?
We have Viacom sending 100,000 take-down notices to YouTube, including some videos Viacom is pulling out of the public domain without even having viewed them. Viacom’s shareholders ought to start up a suit right now. This is the stupidest marketing move in a long time. Jeff Jarvis puts it succinctly in a post that ends “Damned fools.” Terry Heaton also lays it down. And then we have Steve Jobs asking the music publishers to give up on DRM, although Job’s piece also has some special pleading that (imo) weakens it.
Could the content control bubble be about to burst?
[Tags: media viacom drm youtube everything_is_miscellaneous ]