Great post Peter. The YouTube analogy is apt. But remember that Viacom owned the MTV Generation and could have partnered with YouTube early, instead of engaging in a decade of litigation. Yes, it resulted in ContentID, but MTV is irrelevant to my kids today. In retrospect, the better approach for Viacom would have been to cooperate early with YouTube and maintain creative relevance. There is a lesson in that for us today with AI. There is an opportunity to engage constructively with AI companies and find ways to license copyrighted works, and for creators to be appropriately compensated (alongside a reasonable threat of litigation).
Great post Peter. The YouTube analogy is apt. But remember that Viacom owned the MTV Generation and could have partnered with YouTube early, instead of engaging in a decade of litigation. Yes, it resulted in ContentID, but MTV is irrelevant to my kids today. In retrospect, the better approach for Viacom would have been to cooperate early with YouTube and maintain creative relevance. There is a lesson in that for us today with AI. There is an opportunity to engage constructively with AI companies and find ways to license copyrighted works, and for creators to be appropriately compensated (alongside a reasonable threat of litigation).