Last week, Wired ran a post about the “long tail” of selling media online - basically, that more than just the top 40,000 song tracks or 3,000 movie titles can and will sell to online buyers, and that without the cost of storage you’d get in an actual store, there’s no reason not to sell beyond the highest profit curve in any media market. How to deal with the licensing of media in a long tail system, however, is not as clear cut.
Should all sites be charged the same amount to license copyrighted content, in spite of the fact that some content producers only get a few thousand views while others spread their material to movies and TV? Or should the media producers take matters into their own hands - like the band Harvey Danger has with their last album release - and distribute their content under a creative commons license, which would let fans exercise their creativity on songs and video without violating copyright?
So far, the legal rules associated with licensing long tail media remain in flux, with lawsuits like Google and Veoh’s ultimately likely to influence the outcome. There ought to be a compromise available between rigid license agreements and the free-for-all that online media sharing can become; what that compromise might be, unfortunately, is still a mystery.
(Source: Online Video Watch)
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