p2pnet - rss feed: Networks shut down Redlasso
p2pnet news view | Movies:- “Find it, clip it, share it,” was the catch line on Redlasso, and according to Paul Sweeting on ContentAgenda, it had become the, “go-to source of news clips for political bloggers, including Huffington Post and Perez Hilton”.
But after eight months, it’s down.
“We would like to thank you for your continued support of Redlasso,” says a notice on the site.
“You have been essential to making Redlasso a household name online. Unfortunately, due to the legal actions taken against Redlasso by two networks, we are left with no alternative but to suspend access to our video search and clipping Beta site FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE. The networks have provided a big blow to the blogger community’s right to exercise the first amendment and comment on newsworthy events. It is anti-Web. During this service suspension, we will continue our conversations with content providers, with the goal of establishing formal partnerships that will quickly help us restore access to the Beta site.
“For our business and Radio To Web clients, Redlasso will continue to operate and provide those services to you without interruption.”
Redlasso created a search engine, “specifically for video and audio news oriented information,” says the Wikipedia. “The engine allows users (Bloggers) to search radio and TV programs for words or phrases, make clips of the results they like, and save the clips, post them on the web or send them in e-mails.
“Redlasso has refused to suspend its operations after receiving a cease-and-desist order from CBS, NBC and Fox” —- and the biggest of the Big 4 organised music members, Vivendi Universal.
It records news shows and makes them available usually within an hour of their original broadcast, said Sweeting, going on it then lets users create their own short clips, “using a search function and time codes and embed the clips in their blogs.”
But as with similar cases, the real conflict between the networks and RedLasso is not over exclusive rights, he said on ContentAgenda. It’s about how and where value is created on the web and who’s best positioned to capture that value, he went on, declaring »»»
By insisting on framing it as an issue of exclusive rights - however clear-cut the law - the content owners all but assure themselves of gaining little even if they win the case.
As Media Wonk has argued before, the web rewards enablers more so than publishers. To thrive on the web, the networks need to think more like the former than the latter.
Historically, studios and networks invested money to create a piece of content. On closed networks like broadcast or cable TV, capturing that value was a fairly straight forward matter of making the content available and selling advertising around it.
But the web is not a closed network. Simply making content available does not create much value because exclusivity is effectively impossible. Instead, web users create their own value, by repurposing content for their own ends. And the operators best positioned to capture that value are generally those that provide the tools that enable users to create it.
The exclusive rights granted to copyright owners give them hand in negotiating a share of the value created. But only if they play it. Simply shutting down one particular tool, or attempting to define all acceptable use cases as part of a traditional licensing deal, ult?imately only limits the amount of value that users can create and that content owners can capture. The goal ought to be to maximize the total value created by enabling users to create it, and then structuring a deal to capture an acceptable share it.
The “exclusive rights of copyright owners” don’t extend to an “exclusive claim to all the potential value created by the use of their world,” Sweeting added.
“And for copyright owners’ own good, it shouldn’t.”
States Redlasso CEO Ken Hayward:
“Redlasso’s goal is to develop a platform that provides content owners and bloggers a viable solution to tracking and monetizing content online, not to engage in lawsuits. In the eight months the Beta site has been in operation, we have built wide brand awareness and equity amongst the blogger and media communities. The wide spread use of our tools and platform demonstrates that the Redlasso model is a simple and elegant solution for all content owners to track and monetize content usage on the Web; content that would otherwise be untraceably spread across the Internet and used for free.”
Hayward said his company wants to keep talking to content providers “during this usage suspension,” hoping to establish “formal partnerships that will be beneficial to the content owners and blogging community”.
Redlasso says its “suspended” Beta site is, “simply a tool that permits the blogging community to search blogger selected content via keywords, enabling them to find and clip the limited duration vignettes on which they wish to comment and play on their blogs.
Clip usage, “is an exercise of first amendment rights to provide social commentary on newsworthy events,” it says.
“Other uses of the clips by bloggers are prohibited contractually by Redlasso. The company also employs sophisticated technology to make inappropriate practices difficult.”
.
.Stumble It!
ContentAgenda - Networks look to rein in RedLasso, May 21, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
July 30th, 2008 at 7:20 am
a household name? bah. i’d never heard of it until now.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:44 am
There are a lot of things I have never heard of that are, nonetheless, very populoar and well
known.
The point seems to be something I was derided for mentioning in an earlier debate with
a corporate shill.
Copyright is being used as a hammer to control political speech.
The smokescreen of Infringement from RIAA and MPAA members is being used to
create laws that can be used to, not just control acess to the internet for non signed acts,
but control access to information politico’s and corporations don’t want heard or seen.
I was told this isn’t the movie ‘hackers’.
I agree.
It’s much worse, and there aren’t any ways for anyone but them to win.