Two bloggers take two different approaches on copyright this week while discussing the decision by C-Span to use DMCA and US Copyright Law to force sites to remove the video of Stephen Colbert’s act at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner.
Chartreuse and his band of commenters take issue with the fact that C-Span is pursuing this. Many there argue that the video is nothing more than free viral marketing for C-Span and that the best solution would have been to give it away.
At the same time, BizNicheMedia states that content owners should be a jerk about protecting their content. Only by being a jerk about the copyright and ownership of the content, can the owner protect their interests.
Who’s right?
I was kicked off of a forum once many years ago because I chose to take the side of a set of cartoonists in their copyright battle against a set of humor websites. They had used cease and desist letters, followed by DMCA notices, and then finally used the legal system through a copyright lawsuit in order to stop several websites from using thier content withour proper licensing. I felt then, and feel today, that this was the proper course of action.
For a content creator, their content is gold… it is all that is their livelihood…
In the case of C-Span, while I may have taken a different approach than the path that they chose, their choice to move aggressively to protect their content is probably the wise legal move – but could hurt them in the long run from a marketing perspective.
Then again, who really watches C-Span? Booknotes, anyone?
