Commentary
If You Can't Stop It, Monetize It
- by Susan Kuchinskas , December 2, 2008
Entertainment companies have had little success stopping fans from illegally uploading their content. Now, MySpace has a way to ease the pain: Slap ads on the
stuff.The fan-oriented social media site has partnered with tech provider Auditude to identify user-posted video clips that are under copyright. But instead of sending an infringement notice, Auditude adds an overlay that can be either advertising or e-commerce.
Once a site publisher enables Auditude, every piece of content gets a unique ID. First, a content owner has to supply Auditude with copies of all content it wants "fingerprinted," and Auditude adds it to a database. Once deployed on MySpace, for example, the technology can scan every digital file queued for uploading to see if there's a match within the indexed content. It can then take any action the content company prefers, including blocking the upload. MTV Networks is one of the first entertainment companies to sign up for the MySpace service - and it's going the ad route for content from BET, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.
Auditude works for audio-only content as well, but MySpace hasn't mentioned using this for its recently announced MySpace Music service.
Now that pirated files can be turned into ad inventory, MySpace has even developed a more polite term for it: "audience-syndicated media."
That's all good, but I forsee the next battle shaping up in terms of exactly where do these ad dollars go? I'll bet the recording artists, movie companies, and the like will want their fare share of ad dollars generated over "their" content. By the time MySpace and the other sources have to start monitoring and dividing revenue and perhaps seek approval of advertisers (don't laugh!), they might find it not worth it to bother with this.
I wouldn't count on this happening for a while yet, or if it does, it could stop pretty quickly.
I agree Dave, and would think those revenue sharing agreements would have to be in place before deployment. I would also think both advertisers and artists would want approval before a partnership is cleared with anyone. Any revenue beats none and I think this is a very smart way around many issues, but the diplomacy to make this happen is going to be legendary and fun to watch!