MGM is giving movies to youtube
 

On Monday, YouTube will move forward a little, announcing an agreement to show some full-length television shows and films from MGM, the financially troubled 84-year-old film studio.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios will kick off the partnership by posting episodes of its decade-old ?American Gladiators? program to YouTube, along with full-length action films like ?Bulletproof Monk? and ?The Magnificent Seven? and clips from popular movies like ?Legally Blonde.? These will be free to watch, with ads running alongside the video.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/bu...dia/10mgm.html


i see some parallels here, the cost of intellectual property keeps decreasing

o thats fucking peachy

You can spend resources on restricting access to your content, or you can spend resources on learning to profit from all circumstances of access to your content.

Just what I want to do --- watch a feature length movie at my computer in a tiny format. Sounds great.

the difference here, i think, is the MGM perceives the value of their movies at a lower rate, now that the inter web is here, i guess is the simples way to say it, i really wonder how things are going to end up 10 years from now, its sort of hard to predict. new ground here.

way to go MGM.

I've watched movies before on youtube. Paid in full was on there complete (think it still is) and I couldn't be bothered downloading it. After a couple minutes you forget about the quality and move on. And I am willing to bet (in fact I know already from reading news articles) that these vids will be broadcast in higher quality than their average videos, so it shouldn't be a big deal. Of course if it is a blockbuster movie, with amazing special effects I'd download it on torrent or rent it.

porn is different from mainstream movies

I'm sure it is, but does the premise not apply to both?

Interesting move. I'd expect more to follow suit... :thumbsup

not very long before bw costs keep dropping to make it more economical to send more through at a lesser cost, my guess is that its not too far away. not saying its here, saying this move just cracked the door for whats later coming.

Releasing a movie like The Magnificent Seven which has already earned millions of dollars since its release decades ago makes sense. Not many people were going to Blockbuster to rent it or buying it and it's already been shown in its entirety on many public television channels over the years. A bomb like American Gladiator also makes sense.

The difference is not that intellectual property is worth less, it's that low grade property now has a meaningful outlet. High quality content isn't going to be free any time soon. You won't see Ironman2 on YouTube legally.

The same may well be true for porn. Posting free versions of outdated porn with ads to bring traffic to sites for more current content in higher quality makes good sense. Very few people will be jerking off to 300x200 blurry images of Kristara Barrington getting fucked in a 1980s VHS porn movie they saw 20 years ago... but it may be a great way to bring them to a quality classic porn movie site loaded with digitally remastered versions of their favorite pornstars from the 70s 80s and 90s in DVD quality online streaming videos.

The problem comes when illegal tube sites start sharing the 'good content' illegally. When someone at YouTube puts up a GOOD movie that isn't decades old or a current TV show with no commercials.... it will get yanked down just as fast as any protected porn video should be. :2 cents:

I think it's pretty cool :thumbsup

no it doesnt, its not meant to be given away free. Porn lasted so long because for the first part of its start it was sold behind counters and darkened windows. WE are seeing the first country filtering porn off the net and thats going to grow.Too much free and too easy to access. Also coke isnt going to buy ads or intel like they will on mainstream tubes. These also are movies you can see free on tv all the time.

Actually, I think porn lasted so long because it's fun to watch people fucking, and it seems to me that with more societal acceptance comes a larger audience and larger revenues. Once adult entertainment was liberated from behind those counters and from behind those shaded windows, most notably by the Internet, profits increased. This is a perfect example of how accessbility is a paramount factor in any product's value, material or otherwise.

Following this logic, a free product is an incredibly accessible product, and so the distributors of that free product are in the position to make as much, or more money from it. Advertising is one such revenue-generating method, but with time and research I'm confident others will manifest.

As far as mainstream advertising is concerned, I feel that with an even greater acceptance of adult entertainment (perhaps through a highly accessible free product as mentioned above), mainstream advertisers will begin to consider adult entertainment as a viable medium for their products.

good point

let's net be free :(