Viacom Lawsuit

Viacom's billion dollar lawsuit against Youtube's parent company Google started last month. It's pretty silly for a couple of reasons.

There is a reason Time picked the audience as their person of the year in 2006. That mirror cover thing was pretty dumb, but I think it was a pretty smart choice. User-submitted content is having a huge impact on what we see. Instead of reading newspapers, we read blogs for news. Instead of FM radio, we have webcasts and satellite radio with custom stations. People find out about new bands on MySpace. I don't read Wired magazine, I go to Wired.com. Instead of SNL, now you have just got to see this kid dancing badly on youtube, it is hilarious, "LOL."

Viacom's pissed that instead of watching their network's shows at their scheduled time over standard airwaves, people are taking advantage of the internet to find new ways to entertain themselves. I loveTthe Office, but I've never watched it on a Thursday night at 8 (seriously, I had to look that up in listings) I just rent the thing on DVD from Netflix. My friend Brandon just buys them on iTunes each week. My friend Spencer Tivos it. Some people even grab it off of a bitTorrent site (which I would love to dive into in a different essay) but the bottom line is this - it gets watched. How many people are using the internet in some way to find their favorite entertainment, whether it's text, video or audio, instead of getting in the old fashioned way? In the near future, more people are going to be watching their favorite shows over the internet than on standard air waves.

And that terrifies Viacom. It's outside the little box they built for themselves back in the before-internet days that was supposed to last forever and ever. Well someone lied and Viacom's scared and taking it out on Youtube. Idiots.

NBC is being much more enlightened. NBC wasn't doing so well a few years ago, but a year of taking chances and they're in much better shape. The first step was getting very, very good programming. Old tired concepts like "Overweight stand up comedian with surprisingly attractive house wife struggle to raise a family" isn't going to pull in ratings anymore. Partly, because it comes on once a week, at exactly one time and if you aren't in front of your TV for those next 30 minutes you missed it. Partly, because I can watch clips of this kid wiggling a lightsaber on Youtube and it is hilarious. And I can watch the lightsaber kid anytime I want, as many times as I want as long as I have an internet connection. So that's what you're going to have to compete with. The bar is high.

Also, NBC got a Youtube account. They started putting promos, sneak previews of Heroes on the internet for people to see. There are dozens of clips from The Office on Youtube, and they have millions of hits each. Since they can watch it anytime they want, as often as they want, it's a lot easier to find the show this way. Some people see this clip on the internet and it's their first exposure to the show. They see it, they like it and now they want to see the full episode, when does it come on? Some people saw the show and liked it so much the fans started putting up their favorite parts of The Office up there for other people to see. And people watch them. Now, pay very close attention: having seen these clips on the internet, people are becoming very interested in watching this show. This clip on Youtube, put up there by a fan? It's serving as an ad. And nobody at NBC had to lift a finger. It doesn't cost them a dime. It builds buzz for the show, whatever that means. They don't even have to arrange hosting for the thing, that's Youtube's problem.

And NBC couldn't be happier with that situation. Because they are graciously allowing fans of NBC's programs to advertise NBC's programs for them. NBC is doing much better this year, and I can't wait for season 2 of Heroes to start.

Viacom is being less enlightened. They've decided to clench every muscle they can and freak out about this because the ratings are down, because the ratings don't take into account how much money you could make if your shows were up for sale on DVD or affordably for sale on something like iTunes. I suspect a little of it is because nobody's looking at "ifilm.net," the Viacom approved source of all your MTV and Comedy Central clips. At first I thought there might be frustration because they paid for all this hosting and advertising to get their site going and nobody's looking at it, but they only started ifilm after the lawsuit started. It's nice of them to get their own site so I can see clips from the Daily Show, but it's only got clips from this summer on, and my favorite clip (Jon Stewart making fun of Ted Steven's Series of Tubes rant) isn't on there. It was on Youtube, it's not on ifilm. So I decide I like Youtube more.

Another nice aspect of Youtube is that you don't actually have to go to Youtube to see the clip. Youtube's perfectly fine with people embedding video clips into their own websites. Your favorite website could have a list of their favorite upcoming shows, and it's ultra-convenient for the web author to put a clip from the show on their site by just embedding the clip they got from Youtube. It helps build a sense of community, builds a relationship with the user and the site that Youtube is so open, and free with their material. It's another so many people use it. Ifilm doesn't allow it, so people can only put a link to the ifilm page. People are less likely to click on a text link than they are to stay on the same page and watch a video clip, so there's less people clicking on links to ifilm. It's not that ifilm is a bad site, it's that it's very hard to start a new community site when there's already a clear frontrunner in that category because there's already a strong community in place at the frontrunner.

You see, there's this communications law that the more people you have on a network contributing to it, the better the network is. The more stuff you have in your basket, the more valuable the basket is. Youtube has a much bigger audience already installed than ifilm, hence more people are going to keep going there because it's already much more valuable. If you try to introduce me to your site, I ask "does it have all my favorite clips from Youtube? No, well then why bother, I'm already using Youtube."

Viacom could've looked at the reality of what's happening outside their old-fashioned box, adapted to the trend, gotten a Youtube account and started hosting better looking, well organized clips of their shows, which again would've served as effective free advertising, but instead they've chosen to ignore the trend and do what companies were doing a decade ago before the first .com bubble burst: starting a site and praying to any god they can find that people are going to look at it.

Good luck with that. Lemme know how that turns out, but right now I'm going to look at this little Indian dwarf dancing to techno music.

The American Way

A friend of mine is becoming an American citizen. Apparently it is quite an ordeal. After she filed a rather large stack of paper work, she's had her fingerprints taken for documentation purposes. The only place she could go to do it was the state capitol, two hours from where she lives. And now comes the written test.

This thing is ridiculous. The study guide is 30 pages of totally useless information about this country. What do the stars on the flag mean? Who wrote the national anthem? Since when does any of this stuff have anything to do with being an American? Ask her who she voted for on the last American Idol. "What's the coolest thing you've seen on Youtube lately?" If she doesn't know what Youtube is, she's either a grandmother or a spy.

Our national anthem doesn't seem that important to me anyway. Maybe there's a reason most people don't know all the words. I had to look this up, but we've only had it for 70 years, and it was written about the War of 1812. What was that war about again? I don't know that I can even bring myself to look it up on Wikipedia. But there's nothing in the Star Spangled Banner about equality, or democracy, or the freedoms of speech and inalienable rights we give all our citizens (great selling points when you're contemplating paying $400 to become one). All the things that are supposedly important about this country, and they're nowhere in sight. The song's really about a bunch of pretty explosions, and hey look there's a pretty flag! Now more bombs bursting in air! There is the word "free" in there, once. It shows up more in the original poem, the line is used as a refrain, but it comes off like a tie in to how cool it is against a night sky lit by cannon fire and our enemies recently set on fire.

Come to think of it, it might be more American than I first thought.

An Antithesis toMy Buddy List

We set up these websites like Facebook and MySpace and develop these huge lists of our friends and not-real-just-internet friends. But what do we do about the people we don't like? The people I try to avoid in the real world keep finding me on the web, inviting me to be their friends over and over because apparently I must have mis-clicked the last three times I identified them as being unworthy of my company.

Where is the button to mark someone as my enemy? I want a Buddy List, and a Nemesis List. If Facebook lets me poke my friends, I should be able to jab at my enemies. Maybe there could even be a little flash animation of a red pitchfork poking their user icon. Now there's mass appeal.

Back to the Future

"Back to the Future" came up in conversation last week in a pretty big group of people. I point out how likable this movie is. There's simply no one who doesn't like it. All well and good, but why? It's not all that deep, I'm not sure there's even an over-arching moral to the story (outside of not messing with time travel, anyway) but it's just universally beloved piece of our culture. As soon as I said something about this, someone said, "Brian, I hate Back to the Future," to which I respond, "You sir, hate freedom. If you hate time traveling Delorians, you're hating America." I dunno, maybe it does say something about us. We love to rewrite our own history; but even more than that, we love to make jokes about having sex with your mom.

Lick My Candy

I've got this new idea for an art project. My assignment is a surrealist sculpture. My idea is to make fun of the the medieval catholic practice of Icon worship and involving it with the modern obsession with celebrity. In ancient times you can go to a church in Europe and pray to a shirt or, in some cases, the body parts of a holy man.

So, I'm taking this idea and modernizing it. I'm constructing a series of reliquaries, these ornate shrines, and sending candy to celebrities asking them to lick it and send it back to me so I can put it in the shrine. I imagine almost everyone will say no, and that's fine; I'll probably just document that, and lick some candy myself and say it's theirs. If they get mad and sue me, it generates publicity and I become a famous artist. But imagine if anyone actually says yes.

So I'm trying to think of celebrities who would be smart/crazy enough to get my idea and go for it. Steve Martin's an art collector so he might dig the concept, Woody Allen might give me permission to lick something and say he did it himself (an option I'm including), and those guys on Jackass will do just about anything provided it's weird enough. I've got a pretty long list of others going, but again I'll probably be lucky if one in a hundred sends me anything back. So lemme know if you think of anybody I should try to write. I'm kinda aiming at not-too famous people, since they'll be easier to get in touch with. For example, I'm writing to Gary Coleman since the guy seems to be willing to do anything to be famous.

The emails I'm sending will definitely explain the whole project. And while I think it would be funnier if they got the candy in the mail, it probably is better they pick it out themselves, so they know I'm not trying to poison them or anything.

On the subject of eBay- I've been over it with myself, and I'm not sure if I can do that. Will the celebrities give me permission, is my teacher okay with it? But really, I think it's a nice twist on the project that kinda proves my point, that this whole celebrity worship thing is silly, that some people will buy (literally) anything attached to famous people.

This is the craziest idea I've had for a piece, and my teachers love it, so I just can't resist trying for it just to see what happens!

Attention Grabbing Devices

A long time ago, it occurred to me that people are, basically, cattle. Look around you the next time you're sitting in a restaurant and check for glazed over expression when they chew. Why do you think we put televisions in restaurants now? Because people want to avoid thinking for themselves if they can possibly help it.

And like cattle, people need to be herded. Without explicit written instructions, a person gets distracted and lost quite easily. They frequently have to be guided towards what they want. For example, a lot of people at my current job ask where the bathroom is, walking past the sign with an arrow on it pointing towards the bathroom to ask me where the bathroom is. I used to gesture to the sign, but people could never figure out they were supposed to read it. So I just explain it, it's not a huge inconvenience for either of us. Recently I decided I'm going to start using a flare gun. How much easier would it be for them to follow a ball of fire down the hallway?

You might think it's excessive, but I think you're not looking around very closely.