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25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

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191–200 of 356 posts

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#191

What I find really interesting is that all these studios who ran TV channels for so many years fumbled the bag when it came to streaming.. It's like all these people who basically were in content distribution didn't really wise up to the next, new thing in their business even as it happened in front of their eyes. It's pretty wild that Paramount+/Disney+/Peacock or whatever really struggle to get going, especially gi…

Ask a media company head in 2005 for a half a billion dollars to roll out a subscriber service which 23% of the US adult population could even use, which needed a custom decoder box, and which they could charge $10 a month for, and which would eventually destroy the market they were currently making all their money in.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#192

Piracy should be legal if there are no other means of obtaining the content.

In other words: piracy is illegal because it hurts the content producer (they don't get any money). But if there's no way to pay for that content, no damage is done, hence piracy and "copyright violation" should be 100% legal.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#193
post #157
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also haven't gone to a library recently to read the Iliad, that doesn't mean I'm ok with all copies being burned.

This is the same as Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, etc. taking something down for "hate speech" or "community guidelines". OP reported my original comment the same way Paramount removed content. Bit of a double-standard. I advocate for torrent, to believe in a large corporation to up-hold content (like a comment on the internet, or a TV series) who is surprised it moved to a paid streaming service.

I don't think it's even possible for a user to down-vote a direct reply to their own comment.

I can't see the post you're complaining about; but based on the tone of the rest of your messages, maybe you were just off topic or rude-atop-the-soapbox and others flagged you?

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#195
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize YouTube is one of their main threats, and their main advantage over YouTube is higher quality? Giving treasure trove of quality content to YouTube in exchange for peanuts while shuttering their own, that would be a double whammy.

Higher quality of what? Content? YouTube doesn't make any, it just hosts it. Of UX? None of the big streaming services have anything remotely comparable in quality to YouTube's player, and given it is what it is, that's saying something.

> Content? YouTube doesn't make any, it just hosts it.

That’s a meaningless distinction for consumers. YouTube has some content of good production value among a sea of crap. Giving it more professionally produced content only weakens the old guard.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#196

This is complete incompetence from their leadership who show no value to their own content. They could have easily auctioned off/sold very old content to someone else but that kind of thinking would be beyond their competency. It's no wonder they go in such huge losses despite of having loyal audience and monopoly over unparalleled content. To this day I cannot get over the fact that there are literally millions docu…

They could have easily auctioned off/sold very old content to someone else.. That assumes they own the exclusive rights to the content. A lot of media has many rights holders (writers, music, etc), and you need to get them all to agree a sale or waive their right in order to sell. That could be expensive because it's involve lots and lots of lawyers. For a bunch of old comedy clips it might not make any commercial se…

If the copyright system were changed so that rightsholders were guaranteed to get paid, but didn't have veto over publication, how bad would that be? The reasons people usually justify copyright protection usually centre on rewarding the creators, and I think the right to stop people seeing your work is a harder sell.

There is of course a new question of how to set the price, but you could e.g. have an auction of some kind where the highest bid must be accepted.

(There are certainly notable cases like Mein Kampf where copyright has been conspicuously used to prevent further distribution.)

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#197
This is what happens when software developers sell the idea of "streaming", i.e., downloading and throwing away, instead of downloading and keeping. Meanwhile the price of offline storage has dropped precipitously as the popularity of expensive "streaming" has risen.

Online storage is relatively expensive but software developers sell the idea of "cloud" storage instead of offline storage. Eventually people want to cut costs. Overpriced "cloud storage" is a likely target.

Why are these ideas pushed on computer users despite contravening common sense. Answer: Greed.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#198
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have easily auctioned off/sold very old content to someone else.. That assumes they own the exclusive rights to the content. A lot of media has many rights holders (writers, music, etc), and you need to get them all to agree a sale or waive their right in order to sell. That could be expensive because it's involve lots and lots of lawyers. For a bunch of old comedy clips it might not make any commercial se…

If the copyright system were changed so that rightsholders were guaranteed to get paid, but didn't have veto over publication, how bad would that be? The reasons people usually justify copyright protection usually centre on rewarding the creators, and I think the right to stop people seeing your work is a harder sell. There is of course a new question of how to set the price, but you could e.g. have an auction of som…

> If the copyright system were changed so that rightsholders were guaranteed to get paid, [...]

How much would they get paid? What if they wanted to hold out for more? Would every piece of copyrighted material be paid the same? Or would you normalise it per sentence or per letter? Or per frame in a movie?

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#199
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty open to doing something like this broadly, but I think this is especially important for software. Things like video games are much harder to archive than text. Keeping them running 70 years after the death of the author is already a herculean task. Doing that, when no copies are being distributed could make that entirely impossible. The current copyright system is going to rob the public domain of many of…

What makes you think you’re entitled to other people’s work?

Once it becomes a cultural artifact it becomes more than just "someone's work". The goal of legislation is / should be to figure out how to balance the different and competing needs into a system that works reasonably well.

Re: 25 years of video clips gone as Paramount axes Comedy Central wesbite

#200
Business as usual. Someone decided to earn more money :

  "While episodes of most Comedy Central series are no longer available on this website, you can watch Comedy Central through your TV provider. You can also sign up for Paramount+ to watch many seasons of Comedy Central shows."
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