What is Digg?36 Comments
- EGOvoruhk, on 10/12/2007, -5/+58I mean, I know he's Kevin Rose, but this is no more than the "Cool" comments that get dugg down to hell, but we all know that wont be happening
And I'm not Kevin Rose, so I guess I get the honors of being dugg to hell :-D - bpapa, on 10/12/2007, -2/+25I never thought I'd see the day where a Kevinrose comment had -15 diggs.
Anyway this is a pretty wild article. It's so intricate that it seems like a movie plot or something. I'm sure a lot of wild speculation (as the author himself sort of admits) but hey, maybe it's really close to the truth. - shakin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15If you ever doubted that the media companies rip off artists, this quote should leave no doubt at all.
"> The media companies had their typical challenges. Specifically, how to
> get money from Youtube without being required to give any to the
> talent (musicians and actors)? If monies were received as part of a
> license to Youtube then they would contractually obligated to share a
> substantial portion of the proceeds with others. For example most
> record label contracts call for artists to get 50% of all license
> deals. It was decided the media companies would receive an equity
> position as an investor in Youtube which Google would buy from them.
> This shelters all the up front monies from any royalty demands by
> allowing them to classify it as gains from an investment position. A
> few savvy agents might complain about receiving nothing and get a
> token amount, but most will be unaware of what transpired." - MrSolutions, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12Yes this is a great article...
Its very interesting indeed to see how hidden deals are being carried out and what a "shark eat shark" the big business world is.
Nice to see that out of all of this the actual people who produce the content probably won't get a dime! - rsbrown, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8This was the most interesting statement in the article, to me. I realize 50% is a bitter pill to swallow, but it's really sickening that these media conglomerates would go to such pains to avoid revenue sharing with their artists. Keep in mind that the entire claim behind these lawsuits is that the *artist's* efforts have been exploited because of copyright infringement.
Why is it that, in 2006, still nobody has come up with a viable alternative business model for artists to distribute their work and avoid signing a deal with the devil(s)? - travishealy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9After reading this I gotta say one thing.
F*ck big media. If this report is true, and they went out of their way to collect money from Youtube without having to pay out those royalties to their talent, I'll do nothing BUT download songs for free from now on and then mail a cheque directly to the artist if I have to. - GliTCH82, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Media companies rape artists and people rape media companies. But then Google comes along and they're like wow that's a lot of butt sex going on, it must hurt but here's $500,000,000 anyway. So the media companies are like, "oh, for $500,000,000 we'll take it in whatever position you like" but the artists are still getting raped.
So the moral of the story is, support your artists, go see them in concert. - mikev, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Hearing GooTube makes me think one thing..
The PornoTube redux. Hopefully with straight porn this time... :S - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Nearly 500 million of the 1.65 billion purchase price is not being disbursed to shareholders but instead held in escrow."
That's $500,000,000 in copyright protection. - GliTCH82, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Even Digg's founders are shown no mercy when it comes to the Digg mob. That really says a lot about Digg's integrity.
I remember reading comments on Digg where some people were absolutely sure that Google would never buy a social networking site like MySpace or start one of their own, because it would affect AdSense's popularity among portals.
Apparently they hadn't considered that Google already waived that non-bias when they created Google video, which competes with video portal sites and now after their YouTube buyout and deals with media companies they're only digging themselves a little deeper in.
I'm waiting to see how this is all going to pan out. Will Google ultimately side with people, or will they flock to where the money is? How is this going to impact Google search? What's to stop Google from secretly offering top search positions for media companies as compensation for licensing? - monticello, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3don't be evil!
- Thorin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3I thought the purchase was all in stock, so I don't understand how this works. How do you hold $500 million worth of stock in escrow? Will they distribute this stock to the various record labels who they're dealing with?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2You protest too much. All you have to do is click on the "straight content" filter right at the top of the page and all (well most) of the icky ***** stuff goes away.
- eMuleDude, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2A cool $50 Million for the major record labels for doing nothing. It's sort of strange since most people watch clips of tv shows rather than music videos. What will stop the tv studios from threatening Google with lawsuits unless they receive their $50 Million cut?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Wow, I don't know about the rest of you, but that's the most incredibly evil thing I've ever heard of Google doing.
- palmer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"The second request was to pile some lawsuits on competitors to slow them down and lock in Youtube's position."
There ought to be a way for those competitors to sue the ass off any company engaged in that, but good luck. - MrAndrews, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Based on reactions to the original post on pho, I think some investigations may be on the way into whether the big media companies stepped over the antitrust line, and you'll probably see lawsuits from artist managers trying to get their share. I wonder if too much attention will kill the deal for Google? Being posted on a private list like pho, everyone says "hmm, yes, that sounds about right...", but I'll be interested to see what happens when it gets the spotlight that blogmaverick/digg are providing...
- Ricardola, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Ok... So what Jack Black will say about this?
- uzusan, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@thorin
that's probably exactly what they will do to avoid paying the content producers / artists any money (as the article says its an investment gain rather than content license). - Kogut, on 10/12/2007, -4/+4Media companies rape artists and people steal from artists. Who is more evil?
- sionix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Follow up: http://digg.com/tech_news/Behind_the_scenes_Google_played_hardball_in_YouTube_deal
- MrAndrews, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The original post on pho did come with a warning that some elements are speculation, but this should not be tainted by Cuban's general dislike of YouTube/Google. He's just reprinting something that was produced independently by someone in the know. It's not quite as shady as it seems.
- zevy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I'd take it with a grain of salt, coming from an unknown anonymous source, via Mark Cuban, the guy who wrote the most against YouTube in the last months...
http://www.blogmaverick.com/search/?q=youtube+google - rileyjt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1If you read the article, the speculation is that Google will basically give them an equity position in YouTube, then later on buy that equity position from them with the money in escrow. That allows them to get around distributing the money to the artists because it is just the media companies making an investment.
- steste, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2http://www.duggmirror.com/tech_news/Some_intimate_details_on_the_Google_YouTube_Deal/
OR
http://www.duggmirror.com - paulmdx, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1> The second request was to pile some lawsuits on competitors to slow
> them down and lock in Youtube's position. As Google looked at it they
> bought a 6 month exclusive on widespread video copyright infringement.
> Universal obliged and sued two capable Youtube clones Bolt and
> Grouper.
Now that's what I call 'do no harm'.. - geminem, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2i love this line from the article:
"In
> spite of the media "user generated" puff pieces it was clear to all
> involved that they generated that content by hooking up their TV tuner
> cards to their PCs." - etnu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Mark Cuban is trying really hard to not look like an idiot for his "moron" comment.
While it's plainly obvious that the total dollar amount of the deal was inflated somewhat due to copyright settlements (it's public knowledge that NBC, CBS, etc. entered into agreements for equity of YouTube just before the deal took place), I think this particular claim is a bit far fetched.
If you look at YouTube's popular category, the most popular videos by far are ones that aren't copyrighted. I sincerely doubt that Google went through all this trouble to buy YouTube just so that they could get away with showing pirated content. If they really wanted to do something like that, it would be far simpler (and cheaper) to just let YouTube get sued into oblivion while simultaneously making back room deals with the media companies. - tylerdurdenclub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1you can put anything in escrow. it is just a collection of assets that you aren't allowed to access until certain requirements are met or the threat of pending litigation passes.
- rivershadow, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1And all the artists and actors get screwed once again while the parent companies stuff their pockets...
- Damaso, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Let me get this straight...in short, Google bought YouTube to save from going down the drain due to copyright lawsuits by giving them a ludicrous amount of zeros to hide behind?
- kidhero, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0pholist is started by xeni jarden of boingboing
- 4815162342, on 10/12/2007, -14/+3YAAAS a dugg down comment for kevinrose!
- Raithmir, on 10/12/2007, -45/+6Cool.
- kevinrose, on 10/12/2007, -135/+45Amazing.. great article.
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