Two Reasons Why the Viacom-YouTube Debate is Important
Just last year I wrote a little bit about why YouTube works. Since then, two major things have happened: YouTube was bought by Google, and large copyright-holding corporations finally noticed it. The almost inevitable result? Billion-dollar lawsuits.
I'll let The Daily Show explain the situation better than I can:
[youtube]w9CRD1COCAY[/youtube]
But really, who cares? Two multi-billion dollar companies duking it out in court surely doesn't effect you or I. But there are at least two reasons why it does matter.
1. It's not about stealing TV shows, and it's not really about YouTube in particular. It's about control and availability of information.
Let me explain: Viacom doesn't offer all of it's material online, but Comedy Central at least has it's "motherload" interface. The clip I posted above - and apologies if it has already been deleted - is available there. They even have a little "embed" link, to help you post the clip in your blog.
Notice I didn't use that embed link, and instead have the same clip from YouTube. No, I'm not trying to be ironic. I tried using the Comedy Central clip but noticed something sort of odd. It says "This video expires 04/22/2007."
One of the main reasons the Web is so powerful, and so important, is that it makes publishing, storing, and retrieving information cheap, fast, and easy. Not a little cheaper, a little faster, a little easier - we are talking orders of magnitude.
In the past, there were reasons why information might disappear, or be difficult to find. Books went out of print because someone had to actually print books. But now, there is no longer any real excuse. Videos don't naturally expire on a certain date, like bologna. Keeping the video around for a while doesn't really cost Viacom that much, and bandwidth and storage prices are always going down.
I'm sure lots of people use YouTube just to watch TV shows without paying for them, but that's not why YouTube is important - it is important because it makes video available for comment, by anyone, basically forever. So when a senate candidate uses an delightfully unfamiliar racial slur, but no major news networks are around, the video still gets out.
So why should we care that clips from a network that has puppets making crank phone calls are available too? There's no way to cordon off the important video from the unimportant, because it's too subjective. In fact, Comedy Central is the perfect example - it has actually been the source for some very, very important video over the past few years.
Steven Colbert's explanation of the concept of truthiness was the most insightful commentary on the current administration and it's backers to be seen on any channel. But I can't find it on Comedy Central's web site. And any video site hosting it, even in the fair use context of commentary and scholarship, is likely to get a DMCA letter to take it down.
If the Viacoms of the world get their way, we will lose something new and amazing - the democratization of commentary and reference in the world of video.
2. If Viacom wins, in the long term Viacom loses.Â
Again, video clips are not bologna. This Daily Show video expires because Viacom doesn't understand the Internet. The Colbert truthiness video is not immediately available for commentary because Viacom doesn't understand the Internet. Some stuffy old guy in a well-appointed office made this decision, and the thinking went something like this:
"Hmm, this video clip thing is hot according to CEO Fad Magazine, but I don't fully understand how to monetize it." I suppose he understands enough to put a billion-dollar price tag on the copyright infringement, but not enough to actually make a billion dollars by putting video clips online. Will this cannibalize DVD sales? Will people stop subscribing to cable altogether? So many scary questions!
Meanwhile, people like YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, sitting where ever they used to sit, were thinking more like this: "Wow, we've done the math and the Internet has made an amazing thing possible that has never been possible before. Let's do it."
Now think back to all of the biographies you've read about inventors, founders of major companies, scientists and engineers. Which mentality, do you think, has driven the American economy to create such amazing amounts of wealth? How many companies stay successful by avoiding change, becoming confused and disoriented by new possibilities, and trying to fight new technologies with lawsuits?
Viacom needs to get a clue and embrace the fact that video distribution and storage has suddenly become easier, faster and cheaper. They don't have to do so by letting YouTube host videos, but ignoring the lessons that YouTube is teaching the rest of the world is not a good long-term strategy.
This is important because there is a lot of money, and there are a lot of entrenched interests, on the clueless side. These companies are sitting on top of a gold mine but more worried about putting up fences than actually digging up the gold.
I don't really care if YouTube or Google Video or iFilm or whoever has clips of this show or that. I'm not interested in whether they paid for them, if so how much, whatever. If this was all just fighting over whether or not college kids can watch blurry little South Park clips for free in their dorms, we could all safely ignore it.
But this is important, and hopefully you are paying attention.
This is one of the best new shows I've seen all year. It's a comedy - a sitcom, even - about Muslims. And I'm not talking it's "about" Muslims like Blue Collar Comedy is "about" rednecks, it actually centers around a group of Muslim people and the goings-on in their daily lives. They deal with their kids, their neighbors, their customers. Oh and yes they do deal with practicing their religion.
The premise of the show, which was written and created by Torontonian Zarqa Nawaz, is that a group of Muslims living in a small Canadian prairie town needed a place to hold their prayer meetings, so they rented the activity room in the local Anglican church. At first the group hid the fact that they were holding prayer meetings there under the guise of using the space as contractor Yasir's (Carlo Rota) office but the Anglican minister and some of the town's busybodies quickly caught on. As it turned out, Reverend Magee (Derek McGrath) didn't really care - membership was down in his church and they could use the rent money.
The mosque's standing prayer leader, Baber (Manoj Sood), was the Muslim equivalent of a "fire and brimstone" minister - speaking vehemently against Western culture (such as American Idol) and pushing the congregation towards an extremely "right wing" view. The mosque members weren't too keen on him, so they sent for a new imam in the form of young Amaar, from Toronto, who was the polar opposite of Baber.
Other cast members are Fatima (Arlene Duncan), the strict African Muslim woman who runs a halal lunchcounter; Sarah (Sheila McCarthy), Yasir's whiter-than-white, Muslim convert wife; Rayyan (Sitra Hewitt), Yasir and Sarah's hip young doctor daughter - who declares herself a "conservative feminist Muslim;" the town's mayor (Debra McGrath), Sarah's sympathetic boss; and Fred Tupper, the anti-Muslim loudmouth radio personality in town.
The show's cast is an amazing representation of a Muslim community. The young imam has to deal with both the conservative and liberal members of his mosque as they argue with what is the "right" way to do things. Often, Amaar finds himself seeking guidance from Reverend Magee who has some of the exact same problems in his congregation.
"Feminist" and conservative Muslim Rayyan deals with her convert mother who is still learning the ways of the Muslim life while on the other side she deals with Fatima who is very strict in her faith but holds much more traditional views than Rayyan. Her father, Yasir, would rather not have to think about such things - he just tries to keep the peace between the two women in his life.
Both Fatima and Baber, the most conservative members in the mosque, have teenage children (Fatima a son and Baber a daughter), and the show touches on how Muslim parents with traditional views struggle with how they decide to raise their children in a modern Western society. One of my favorite lines from the show so far was when Baber accused his daughter of looking "like a Protestant" when she wore a slightly revealing shirt. "You mean a prostitute?" "No, I mean a Protestant!"
The entire Muslim community also has to deal with "town mouthpiece" Fred Tupper, who often berates the mosque during his radio show. The townspeople, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, seem to take Fred's rantings with a grain of salt (Fred often dines at Fatima's diner, often playing - and losing - games of wit with her). Mosque members sometimes end up having to appear on his show to defend certain misunderstandings, but the town learns pretty quickly that the mosque poses no threat.
The writing and acting on the show are not anything spectacular - it's at the level of, say, Yes, Dear or King of Queens. It is in fact creator Nawaz's first go-round with television and I believe it might even be her first attempt at comedy. However, the first few episodes have been solid and entertaining, and if nothing else, educational. It is more than refreshing to see how Muslims in North America truly live - and how your typical Muslim is no different than your typical Christian - without focusing on any extreme behavior that is meant to shock and awe.
The show has an enormous amount of promise. There are many, many avenues to explore - conflicts between the different "types" of Muslims who worship at the mosque, conflicts between the Muslims and the rest of the community, having to live a strict Muslim life in modern times, and the old sitcom standby of man vs. woman.
Unfortunately, even this show has gotten plenty of press and "buzz" in America, I am not sure that any of our stations will be picking it up any time soon. It's either way too "controversial" for the American public or just not as exciting as Deal or No Deal. But I urge you to seek it out at soon as it's on DVD or better yet, find it at your favorite torrent site. It's a sitcom about Muslims! What will they think of next?!
By the way, if you're wondering why I equated this show to 24, it was the only show I could think of that has any Muslim characters in any sort of starring role (Carlo Rota actually has a recurring role in 24). If anyone could point out some others, I'd like to know. And no, the Kumars At No. 42 are not Muslims.
So, a few years back when Lost first aired, I didn't care. I am not much of a TV watcher and so I don't believe that I even knew it existed until someone else (a friend) told me that it was possibly the "Best Show Ever". Mind you, I am currently using that previous term in the most loosest and quote-like sense possible. I was told this "quote" back right before the second season was due to air and required upon my friendship with said quoter to watch the entire first season so that I could become a member of her "Lost Circle".
What can a girl like me do? I gave into the peer pressure because I want to be socially accepted by my peers and I have no life. In the course of five grueling days, I had watched all 26 forty-one minute long episodes of the first season. Five days. Get that through your head. Five days of nothing but watching Lost. Let's calculate the amount of time i spent on watching Lost in five days:
-the entire watching period covered 1066 minutes
-that means it was 17.76 hours of pure entertainment pleasure
-I watched (on average) 5.2 confusing and beguiling episodes a day
That's a lot of Lost. And, honestly, I loved it. I hate sitcomy shit. I don't like the generic comedy shows. I like me some cartoons and some funny weird stuff and I loved me some Lost. Please note the past-tenseness of the last statement.
I mean, the second season started to slow down a little, but it was still pretty interesting. But now, third season, yes I am talking to you, you are boring and contrived. I just want something to happen in this show, for us to find some other weird factoid out or something but what do you give me? Cancer. You kill my favorite character Mr Eko just when I think you are going to do something interesting. Where the heck are Sun and her Husband? I mean, after she shot that girl, where the crap did they go? How about Michael and his son? Oh, and now Desmond can see the future and you aren't gonna talk about him at all, either?
No, I think it's a great idea to center on the most boring plot points right now. Good move, third season. Like we care if Sawyer and Kate are now in love. Do we really even like either of those characters very much? Not really. We like Hurley. Where did Hurley go? Who knows. How about, what is Lock doing? NOTHING. What is any one else on the island doing? Nothing. They are sipping their mango coconut smoothies on the beach enjoying the overwhelming lack of interesting things happening on this show. And eating stupid Fish Biscuits.
So, in conclusion, I am gonna have to break up with you, Lost. I mean, we had our fun. But in this case, I am not going to sugar coat it. It was you, not me. I mean, things were great when we began. I know we had some rough times and I used to feel that we could make it work, that we could get through together. I just don't think you are living up to your potential and frankly, I already found another TV show, Heroes, to replace you. Please, don't be upset and don't try to change my mind. I really like this TV show and I think it could really work out between us. I know that there are others out there who still love you and will watch you religiously. I just don't know why.