Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Carrots, Sticks, and Copyright Laws

In his recent New York Times article, "Sneaking Into the Movies," Michael Cieply describes how large media companies are using both carrots and sticks to ensure compliance with copyright laws.  

The sticks are well known-mostly lawsuits.  The article suggests that most media companies realize these efforts will have, at best, limited impact on pirating copyrighted music, movies, and television shows.  

The carrots are not well-known, but primarily involve creating "events" around the music and movies, such as using concerts-not records-as a primary revenue stream for performers and creating one-of-a-kind events around movies, which  viewing the video can't repeat (like the opening events associated with Disney's documentary, Earth.)

View the entire article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/weekinreview/26cieply.html?ref=weekinreview 

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