Lock Her Up!

Okay, so I read online that the new Spider-Man 3 trailer is up. I click the link, which takes me to--no surprise here--YouTube. Lots of trailers end up on YouTube, because with 100 million videos served up daily, it's great for advertising. But lo and behold, the Spider-Man 3 trailer isn't there. Instead I get a banner that reads: "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Sony."

We're talking about a movie trailer here. And the fact that Sony is pulling it from YouTube viewers is interesting and distressing both. Because it's ADVERTISING right? That's what a trailer is. It's to raise hype and awareness. The more folks who see your "advertisement" the better. That's why a 30-second spot on the Super Bowl broadcast costs a fortune. So here I'm actually LOOKING for the stupid Spider-Man trailer and Sony has pulled it because it violates their copyright. Something really weird is going on here.

I suppose trailers have become a form of "entertainment" in and of themselves. But that doesn't change the fact that they're ads, even if they're enjoyable. So Sony clearly wants to control where their ad gets seen. And that just flies in the face of everything that advertising is traditionally about. It's downright bizarre. But above all else it demonstrates just how the studios are turning into Nervous Nellies when confronted with the prospect of Internet distribution. Like they're shouting, "Can you all just slow down a minute until we figure out how to extract every last dollar from your wallet?" They know Internet distribution is worth money, even if no one knows precisely how to get the real gold out of them thar hills. But they know it's there, and I think they're panicking, and pulling their fucking ads for copyright violations as a result.

Okay, and then I get this scary email from my Internet provider. Apparently I violated copyright by downloading an episode of Heroes...which is freely available for download from NBC. But I downloaded it from BitTorrent. I think my key mistake was to leave it freely available for upload. Normally, if I pilfer something, I try not to contribute to the avalanche of piracy by continuing to upload it for other people. I'm a selfish bitch. I do want my video now, and on demand. But I'm not going to risk anything in order for you to get it too. Not yet. Not until it's legal. (Oh, and yeah, like you don't have a single downloaded MP3 file on your computer--or how about those hot pictures squirreled away in weirdly named folders on your laptop? Did you pay the photographer and model for the rights to copy and save that picture? It's all a violation of somebody's copyright somewhere.) Anyhow, the thing is I thought that sharing this Heroes episode was not a big deal. In fact I thought it was legal, because NBC itself was offering it for free download. And the only reason I downloaded it myself was so that I could catch up on this highly serialized show (i.e., you sorta need to know what's already happend to get into it) so I could start watching it on--you guessed it--NBfuckingC! And yet I'm getting nasty warnings from Universal. It's just getting all so weird. Like on the one hand it's becoming part of the popular culture to download stuff--that's just undeniable, regardless of the moral arguments--while on the other hand folks like Universal are trying to limit where and when I can download the very thing I need to get interested in their show. (It's a great show by the way. Highly addictive. And a great way that drug dealers grow their business is to offer good deals on crack so you get fucking hooked. You keep coming back for more.)

I know NBC/Universal fear losing revenue from downloading. For good reason. But I think they're missing the opportunity of a lifetime. Embed some advertising in the show itself, either by way of "bugs" (those litle floaty things in the corner of your screen that say things like NBC, or CNN, but which can just as easily say "Purina" or "Toyota") or embed product placement right in the show itself, then watch it go viral. Again, like the trailier for Spider-Man 3, you WANT viewers. Because the more viewers you have, no matter how they're getting it, the more you can sell your show to advertisers.

It's certainly the craziest of good times. See y'all in jail.

Peace.