News.com: 'NBC Finds Formula For Fighting Piracy'
Sep 24, 2008
According to a News.com article titled "NBC Finds Formula for Fighting Piracy," the entertainment company is succeeding in its efforts to prevent Web users from sharing unauthorized clips of NBC content on sites like YouTube and Dailymotion.
Part of its strategy has been to rely on video sites that use filtering technology to identify and remove infringing content (which it says is improving), but NBC has also tried to attract Web users to its online properties by making more of its own videos available.
In fact, NBC general counsel Rick Cotton told News.com that more than 99 percent of online videos from the Beijing Olympics were viewed on NBC's sites. Cotton also said that the recent Saturday Night Live skit of Tina Fey impersonating Governor Sarah Palin got more than 7 million views at NBC.com in the week after it aired, along with an undisclosed number of views at its Hulu site.
I was actually one of those people who went straight to NBC.com to view the SNL skit after missing it on TV. But it may be premature to suggest that any company has developed a 'formula for fighting piracy' since unauthorized content continues to appear online. And you only have to read the comment section that follows the article to be reminded that there are still those who think content providers are missing the point by trying to control their material online in the first place.
Tags:
copyright, Hulu, intellectual property, NBC, piracy, Veoh, video, YouTube
