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April 6, 2008
Global video rights
Global video rights: Over the past three years casual video has become easy to distribute globally. But big-budget video creators have to abide by different tax, legal, and marketing agreements in different regions, in order to realize a profit on their investment in creating that content. From Times-Online today: "Joost, the online television service launched with a fanfare last year by the founders of internet telephony firm Skype, is preparing for a major retrenchment after failing to attract enough users and top-flight broadcasting rights. The company is expected to rein in its global ambitions to focus solely on the US market. It has struggled to convince media and sports companies to sell it global rights, which are normally parcelled out to broadcasters country by country." Joost had difficulty supporting and attracting creators. Regional rights is a very tricky problem, and we're only just starting to realize the user-experience implications. How do you maintain local rights when people travel globally? What happens to associated advertising when crossing regions? If a local cable operator has exclusive rights to a popular show, and it's blacked-out online, then how does the video creator handle the complaints of discrimination? A transaction only occurs when both creator and consumer consent... we need a variety of video rights contracts available, to handle the diversity of global needs. A very tricky problem.
Posted by JohnDowdell at April 6, 2008 9:21 AM