Keeping ahead of the advertising

It was reported on Tuesday that the entertainment giant Viacom, which owns MTV and Nickelodeon, will be launching a billion-dollar lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google. YouTube, Viacom argues, does not take sufficient responsibility for removing copyrighted Viacom content from its video sharing site.

The most common response to this news that I have read about has said that Viacom is making a mistake: that they are struggling against a market whose natural flow is in fact in their best interests. As Jeff Jarvis observes, Viacom is 'trying to spread stupid', by criticising the actions of its own fans, who are publicising Viacom content.

The clever action, so goes Jarvis' argument, would be for Viacom to do as CBS and, in fact, the BBC are doing: They are condoning the posting of copyrighted content on YouTube, not only by leaving it on the site, but by replacing it wherever it exists with high-quality copy. CBS's and the BBC's idea here is to use YouTube for the marketing tool that it provides, concentrating YouTubers' attention around single high-quality copies of their content.

As one comment on Jarvis' blog puts it, however, the argument is not so one-sided: YouTube is illegally hosting the best of Viacom content, deriving its own potential revenue from it, and developing but containing its own audience - because they don't necessarily have to go anywhere else to get the Viacom content they want.

Basically, Viacom aren't stupid, they do have a point, and perhaps in their case they should be taking the action that they are.

The CBS/BBC model is a good one, but the merit of it is found not so much in the 'clever' strategy itself, as in what it intends for the quality and nature of their content. The secret to making use of YouTube as they plan, will be for CBS and the BBC continually to offer, on their own channels, fresh, appealing product, which competes with what should be regarded only as its own advertising on YouTube.

It will be a shame if Viacom wins a lot of ground against YouTube in the outcome of this lawsuit: the CBS/BBC model is one that will only drive better content.

Big Bully

The Sun this week exposed what it described as the previously hidden truth about Jade Goody: that she is really an ignorant, bullying racist.

As a consequence of having been filled in, once out of the Big Brother house, on the latest of her treatment by the media, 'Jade', according to her agent John Noel, 'is completely distraught and is receiving medical attention for shock and depression'.

That's not surprising really, considering the roller coaster that life must be for her, at the whim of the media. She has been thrown from anonymity via celebrity and now towards notoriety; a tabloid darling one week, a figure of public hatred the next, it's not surprising at all if she's suffering emotional whiplash.

No doubt though, Jade must by now be a tougher cookie than most. This is hardly the first time that she has been on the receiving end of massive media harrassment. Since first appearing on Big Brother, Jade has been ridiculed as stupid and overweight; and that's on top of the more general but constant intrusive and demeaning commentary on her private life that she suffers as a personality in the tabloid eye. (And hasn't she done well despite it? - fitness video and all!)

The real ignorant, bullying racist, to use the tabloid press' own terms, is the great British public itself. We are the ones who buy the Sun and the Star each morning, and tune in by the millions to Big Brother each evening. Channel 4 has been the scapegoat for this latest media 'debate', but what is not emphasised enough is that the popular media does not so much create attitudes as it does reflect them. The questions of racism and bullying on Big Brother have been provoked by the programme's editors; obviously Big Brother's makers thought they would make for good television. And why did they think that? Not because racism or bullying is entertaining, but because the British public is as much a racist and a bully as Jade Goody is (which, truly, is not that much). The C4 executive board met yesterday to discuss recent events; they will have been asking themselves, 'did we give them a little too much reality this time?'

Julian Baggini's excellent article on Guardian Unlimited today discuses the truth about so-called 'racism' in Britain today.