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

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

#301

Post by Terretta »

varunnrao wrote: post #104

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…

> It's pretty wild that Paramount+/Disney+/Peacock or whatever really struggle to get going, especially given that they provide access to top shows that people really want to watch. It's like having Breaking Bad-esque product but really screwing up when it comes to wanting people to watch it. ... The tech's cheap and they already have the content.

This might not be evident, but ViacomCBS/Paramount back catalog is by and large available on Pluto.TV.

In their app it's available played back from VOD as if linear television in highly targeted "channels" which is convenient if you want to have something "on in the background".

More conveniently, it is also available as an Apple TV "Channel" for PlutoTV that makes too many old shows to ever watch available as VOD.

This also seems to be a catalog behind various house branded linear+VOD TVs, e.g. Samsung, Vizio, Comcast... The tell you're looking at a Pluto white label seems to be the TV grid organization by genre.

Because of the rights, it has all the old Star Trek related series, the old Doctor Who, and countless shows of every variety that had been on CBS, Paramount, Viacom, etc. in the past. If you watched 8 hours a day with no repeats, you'd have over 35 years of TV ahead of you...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto_TV

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

#302

Post by Mindwipe »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #245
eru wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

This has all been solved for music with compulsory licensing, so I assume we could solve it for video too.

It really hasn't.

Try seeing how many Beatles songs you can include in another work that you distribute internationally and let me know how that goes.

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

#303

Post by lotsofpulp »

blitzar wrote: post #150
swagmoose wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew it was bad, I didn't know it was $14 billion bad. Did they spend it all on their two terrible streaming apps?

Rates were low, the cost of servicing $14 billion in debt was $0. CEO's had the company take the debt on, paid themselves fat bonuses and hoped that the little people downstairs would invent something new that would save the company.

You think Shari Redstone, who has 77.4% of the voting power in Paramount, just let her employees get rich at her expense? She hired them, she offered the compensation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Amusements

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

#304

Post by Mindwipe »

Digit-Al wrote: post #230
varunnrao wrote: post #104

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…

The worst part is that we already had a perfectly viable model: Netflix paid for the rights to everything and gave access to everybody for a reasonable monthly fee. Then the studios got greedy and thought "why should we let a middleman take a slice of our profits?" They took back the rights and started their own streaming services thinking that people would be happy to pay the same amount of money to access the tiny…

Literally no part of that was viable - Netflix didn't even buy 5% of US produced current TV content, less than 10% of film, maybe 1% if we generously round up of archive content, and most of what they bought was already paid for by Network airings or earlier windows.

And even then, Netflix was burning billions of dollars of cash every year to keep operating.

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

#306

Post by blitzar »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #303
blitzar wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rates were low, the cost of servicing $14 billion in debt was $0. CEO's had the company take the debt on, paid themselves fat bonuses and hoped that the little people downstairs would invent something new that would save the company.

You think Shari Redstone, who has 77.4% of the voting power in Paramount, just let her employees get rich at her expense? She hired them, she offered the compensation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Amusements

She paid the CEO $30 million a year to lose $30 billion in market cap (of which National Amusements share is $23 billion) in just 4 short years, so I would say that they got pretty rich at her expense.

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

#307

Post by mlyle »

gnicholas wrote: post #143
mlyle wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let’s say I make a painting and put it in the drawer, never to be seen again. Then you own that physical painting. > Do I lose the copyright then Yes > and someone is permitted to come to my home and take it away? No, but if you gave your friend Bob a copy of the painting, he's allowed to copy that copy as much as he wants once you lose the copyright. The original copyright system-- you could only get the full term…

> No, but if you gave your friend Bob a copy of the painting, he's allowed to copy that copy as much as he wants once you lose the copyright. Wouldn't this require Bob to outlive the artist by many, many years? My understanding was that copyright extends well past the death of the original creator. EDIT: I'm curious why this is downvoted. Am I incorrect about the length of copyright being decades past the death of th…

I can't downvote you, but I presume that you're being downvoted because your comment seemed to not understand the context of the thread.

A. Someone proposed making copyright "use it or lose it"

B. Someone else said this could have unintended consequences, like people breaking into your house to take a copy of a work where copyright has lapsed.

C. I pointed out that's not how copyright works: it has nothing to do with control of physical artifacts.

D. You then presumed that the copyright runs for a long time, which contradicts the premise we're talking about in "A", and is completely out of left field. (In any case, it's irrelevant to the question in B-C; if I have the one of the only extant copies of something from a century ago, you still can't come take it to make a copy).

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

#308

Post by kube-system »

bandrami wrote: post #227
mcmcmc wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because they published it; they were free not to do so if they didn't want anybody to reproduce or distribute it (in fact that seems like the easiest way to do so). In order to encourage more people to make these works, however, our government grants them a temporary, limited monopoly on the work's reproduction and distribution, but this is a means to an end that we agree to for utilitarian reasons, not some kind of…

> Because they published it; they were free not to do so if they didn't want anybody to reproduce or distribute it

Copyright protects works at the moment they are created, not when they are reproduced or distributed. Most of the works under copyright protection have never been distributed.

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

#309

Post by kube-system »

wolfendin wrote: post #172
mcmcmc wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It’s copy right. Not author right. The exclusive ability to copy is granted as a conceit. The restriction only came about because publishers got mad.

> The Congress shall have Power…To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

Sounds like Author's Rights to me.

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

#310

Post by kube-system »

mindslight wrote: post #287
mkl wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public domain does not mean public. The source code could remain a trade secret. More of an obstacle is competition from free past versions - a lot of people would be happy with a 10 year old version of Photoshop or MS Office. That's why I think it should be extendable to 20 years with a hefty fee (but not further, or only with a much heftier fee).

If you do not publish source code, your binaries should be ineligible for copyright protection. There is very little creative work in the binaries themselves. Keeping your actual creative work hidden (especially from things like eventually being part of the public domain) but yet still expecting to receive the privilege of copyright is inequitable. Same thing with only publishing under digital restrictions management…

Then those who wish profit without sharing will just offer SaaS instead of binaries. Exactly as they do with a significant amount of copyleft-licensed software today.

Pulling back copyright doesn't necessarily force people to share -- people can also keep secrets. A primary purpose of IP law is to encourage sharing.

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