Patent Law

As We Were JUST saying . . . . last YEAR, Innovate, I mean ADVERTISE

By Les Weinstein, Michael Young, John Leo Wagner, Eric van Ginkel, and Victoria Pynchon

I've lived long enough to remember the Empire of the American Car Industry, 25 cent a gallon gas and 35 cent packs of cigarettes (I should have quit when prices reached the half dollar mark).

In the mid-80's Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam wrote a scorching indictment of the way the Detroit Auto Giants all but handed over the keys to their market dominance to the Japanese for whom the battle of Detroit and Toykyo looked more like taking candy from the hands of oblivious monster-car babies.  The Reckoning remains must-reading for anyone who does not wish to see Ozymandias /** written on the feet of a torso-less Statute of Liberty by the end of the 21st Century.  

I'm certain we're not the only civilization to cling to what we know; and, who, in the face of the almost certain market loss simply continue to do things the way we have always done them.

Which brings us to the recording industry, which has intimidated, bullied and sued its own market on its way into almost certain commercial oblivion now that capitalism has made possible that which Marxism failed to accomplish -- putting the means of production (and distribution) into the hands of the people. 

This morning, however, the New York Times Business section brings us Now Playing on YouTube:  Clips with Ads on the Side  -- the first indication we've seen of a Media Mogul Epiphany.  

After years of regarding pirated video on YouTube as a threat, some major media companies are having a change of heart, treating it instead as an advertising opportunity.

n the last few months, CBS, Universal Music, Lionsgate, Electronic Arts and other companies have stopped prodding YouTube to remove unauthorized clips of their movies, music videos and other content and started selling advertising against them.

CBS may be the most surprising new business partner in that its sister company, Viacom, is still pursuing its acrimonious billion-dollar copyright lawsuit against YouTube’s owner, Google.

So far, the money is minimal — ads appear on only a fraction of YouTube’s millions of videos — but the move suggests a possible thaw in the chilly standoff between the online video giant and media companies. Getting into the good graces of media entities is seen as critical to the future of YouTube, which has struggled to show appreciable revenue for video ads.

To read the full article, click here.

Quite the time for the members of the RIAA to rethink their market strategy in light of this development in its campaign to bully grandmothers, teenagers and disabled single mothers. 

From Slashdot:

 Phase I of the RIAA's misguided pursuit of an innocent, disabled Oregon woman, Atlantic v. Andersen, has finally drawn to a close, as the RIAA was forced to pay Ms. Andersen $107,951, representing the amount of her attorneys fee judgment plus interest. But as some have pointed out, reimbursement for legal fees doesn't compensate Ms. Andersen for the other damages she's sustained. And that's where Phase II comes in, Andersen v. Atlantic. There the shoe is on the other foot, and Tanya is one doing the hunting, as she pursues the record companies and their running dogs for malicious prosecution."

(empahsis mine)

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream . . . . . 

_________________________

**/  For non-Lit majors, Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley below.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away

Full post as published by IP ADR Blog on August 16, 2008 (boomark / email).