NBC Lawyers Cut Off SNL's Best Promotional Vehicle In Years
from the brilliant-business-strategy dept
For years, we’ve tried to remind people that lawyers understand the law, not business, and why management needs to learn that just because you can do something legally, it doesn’t mean you should. In too many cases, in fact, the lawyers are doing things without even consulting with the business team — and the end results are bad for the business. The latest involves NBC. For everyone who hasn’t been living under a pop culture rock for the past two months knows, Saturday Night Live was rejuvenated a bit back in December when an amusing video starring Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell called became the “pass it around” hit of the month — with most of the traffic being sent to video hosting site YouTube. It gave tremendous publicity to SNL, and even the NY Times had an article about just how big this was for SNL. Others are writing about how it helped push forward SNL’s much needed generational shift. In other words, it’s been the best promotion SNL has had in years. In fact, SNL even mocked the popularity of the online downloads in a promo for the show last month. Apparently, no one told NBC’s lawyers. They’ve now forced YouTube to remove the video from their site, taking away plenty of the goodwill SNL had. NBC wants people to view the video on its own site, of course — even though you can’t view the video there if you’re on a Mac or Linux box. Of course, people are going to point out in the comments (they always do) that NBC “has to” do this or they may lose protection to other content — but that’s not true. They could easily designate this video for sharing. At the same time, given how much it’s helped to promote the overall show, perhaps it’s time to realize that maybe it’s not such a bad thing to have these things passed around online. Either way, this is NBC biting the very hand that fed it a huge breakthrough with an audience that had been ignoring it. Time to rein in the lawyers.
Comments on “NBC Lawyers Cut Off SNL's Best Promotional Vehicle In Years”
iTunes
NBC is also selling this video on iTunes here.
Re: iTunes
actually, they were giving it away as a free download at some point… that’s how i got it.
Not so stupid
Hey, yknow what, they DIDNT call for takedown when this video was hot, they called when it started to get cold – this video is old news webwise.
But now, today, everybody is RESURRECTING IT (like Techdirt), by covering the legal story, and letting EVERYONE know that you can watch it for free on NBC.com.
So, not only has NBC suddenly goosed this story back inot the news, they have also redirected all the resulting traffic to *THEIR* website.
There is no such thing as bad publicity.
Re: Not so stupid
But now, today, everybody is RESURRECTING IT (like Techdirt), by covering the legal story, and letting EVERYONE know that you can watch it for free on NBC.com.
Everyone, eh? Funny, all I see is a box saying that I need to use Internet Explorer for Windows…
Grammar police
reign (rān)
n.
1. Exercise of sovereign power, as by a monarch.
2. The period during which a monarch rules.
3. Dominance or widespread influence: the reign of reason.
rein (rān)
n.
1. A long narrow leather strap attached to each end of the bit of a bridle and used by a rider or driver to control a horse or other animal. Often used in the plural.
2. A means of restraint, check, or guidance.
3. A means or an instrument by which power is exercised. Often used in the plural: the reins of government.
Re: Subject Police
Grammar is:
The study of how words and their component parts combine to form sentences.
The study of structural relationships in language or in a language, sometimes including pronunciation, meaning, and linguistic history.
Grammar != Spelling
If you are going to be the board police and post definitions when people use/spell words incorrectly, you might start by checking that you are using your own words correctly.
Re: Re: Subject Police
why the hell are we talking about grammer?????
But yes I think the video should be left available,I was sent the video many times even though it did nothing for me,I know what SNL is.
Re: Re: Re: grammer???????
am I gonna have to call the spelling police again.
Re: Re: Re:2 grammer???????
No, but we will have to call the punctuation police.
Re: Grammar police
Whoops. Thanks. Fixed.
Re: Grammar police
2. A means of restraint, check, or guidance.
that was what was meant, so what is your point????
YouTube illegal
The problem is that YouTube is illegal. They have tons of music videos, tv shows, and more. Plus they aren’t streaming, you can actually download anything. You can technically just download any copyrighted content they serve, convert it from FLV to Mpeg4, and play it on your iPod video. No need for any commercial video stores anymore when you can get it free on YouTube.
Man it is just annoying how much disregard they have for copyrights. Why don’t we just copy YouTube’s code or logo everywhere and not take it down unless they ask us.
Re: YouTube illegal
The problem is that YouTube is illegal.
Uh. Under what law?
They have tons of music videos, tv shows, and more
YouTube is the platform. It’s the people who upload the stuff that are breaking the law — not YouTube.
Re: Re: YouTube illegal
I hand out bags all day. I have a box full of little bags. I don’t know what’s in them, people just keep filling my little box full of bags up for me, and I just keep handing them out . . .
One day someone throws some bags of crack in my box. I’m still handing em out.. handing em out..
Oh, “Hi Officer! Here, have a bag!”
Think I’d get busted for it? Hell yes. Catch my drift? “I’m just distributing what people give me, officer!”
American greed strikes again.
A soon as i heard it was available on I-Tunes it all made sense.
Mr pibb and red vines = crazy delicious forever!
Yep, they sure did it.
They used the one method that I can’t use to view a video in Linux–ActiveX controls (which are a security risk all by themselves).
itunes
Last I had heard it was free on iTunes, are they charging now?
Re: itunes
Yep, they are indeed charging– $2, to be exact.
Too Funny for SNL
When I first saw this I thought they did the video
for something else, because SNL hasn’t had anything
funny for years.
The bean counters did it.
I doubt the lawyers did this on their own initiative. Some bean counter somewhere probably saw that the video had been a traffic generating hit, but that they were getting $0.00 from YouTube’s hosting. They did the math, and then called in the sharks… err.. lawyers.
By the way, please don’t make fun of my grammer… she passed away years ago.
Still available on Google
The video is still available on Google Videos;
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4245337360492479670&q=narnia
Re: Still available on Google
LOL. If YouTube is getting pinched for hosting the video, I’m sure as hell that NBC will start asking Google to remove it from their indices.
Saturday Night Live
Damn, I just learned I’ve been living under a rock for a few months. We quit watching SNL several years ago.
Re: Saturday Night Live
I have been tivo’ing the older episodes and watching it back when it was actually funny.
Re: Saturday Night Live
Same here, and it looks liek it still sux
No Subject Given
I record SNL on my PVR and I’ve found that I skip 8 out of 10 skits and about twice a season I actually care about the music act which means that SNL is actually just a 15 minute show for me (on a good night).
Can anyone say grass roots.
Any grass roots movement of today is going to be driven by the internet. That is obvious. They are just making a horrible business decision and will realize it one they’ve made it.
No Subject Given
Actually I didn’t watched SNL at all until I received a SNL viral video link on my msn messsenger. After that I gave the show a couple of shots. The problem was that the viral video was kind of old and very funny, but then actual show is lame. So basically very good old videos are promoting and reviving a decaying show. All free of cost for SNL. This in nature is called simbiosys. Websites get great traffic and SNL get a great promo. If people at tv shows were just a little smart they could even take an advantage of the situation by making sweet deals with the websites.
NBC should be happy
NBC should just be happy that anybody wants to download anything from that show. It hasn’t been funny for a while. The only time I get a laugh from SNL is from old clips like More Cowbell, or Celebrity Jeopardy.
Re: NBC should be happy
And they are removing Celebrity Jeopardy Left and Right on Youtube.
Not much from SNL I enjoy.
I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
Oh come on. NBC spends a small fortune to nurture the talent on SNL. And YouTube gets to make money selling ads on someone else’s work? Come on. It’s theft, pure and simple. When those nice young boys boost my car and drive it around town, they’re may be engaging in some “viral marketing” for me and the car company. But that doesn’t make it right or a sustainable business model for anyone.
If we want the folks at SNL to create new things, we need to encourage them by sending them money. Or perhaps some cupcakes. But they get stale and don’t go through Paypal.
Re: I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
Absolutely. Looking at some other sites comments on this shows how stupid people are. That anyone could remotely think using this video for free is OK and NBC is crooked or dirty is beyond comprehension. There is no difference between this and copying movies from a DVD and putting them on the ‘net. Of course, there are those who think there is nothing wrong with that, too. Unbelievable.
Re: I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
Oh come on. NBC spends a small fortune to nurture the talent on SNL. And YouTube gets to make money selling ads on someone else’s work?
Of course, without that happening, many fewer people would have become interested in SNL, meaning fewer people watching, meaning less on ad sales for NBC. Think a little beyond just the first step and you’ll understand.
Come on. It’s theft, pure and simple
Yeah, except that it’s not. Copyright infringement, maybe, but not theft. Not under any legal definition.
And, the point is that the overall benefit to NBC was much greater than the loss. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
Re: Re: I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
YouTube is pimping copyright violations. Why is this ok with so many bloggers?
I think I’ll start a new site called You Blog with the full content of the most popular blog entries and news articles as submitted by my readers. I’ll sell ads, get lot’s of VC money and sell out to Yahoo after a few months.
I’m pretty sure that the writers and publishers whose work is “contributed” will be thrilled about it because of the great publicity.
If that goes over as well as I think it will, my next Web 2.0 ventures will be YouBook, YouCD and YouDVD. It’s gonna be huge!
Re: Re: Re: I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
YouTube is pimping copyright violations. Why is this ok with so many bloggers?
YouTube is the platform. It’s those who upload the video who are violating copyright.
I think I’ll start a new site called You Blog with the full content of the most popular blog entries and news articles as submitted by my readers. I’ll sell ads, get lot’s of VC money and sell out to Yahoo after a few months.
Uh. Good luck with that plan. Others are doing things like it. It’s called having an RSS aggregator. And, I wouldn’t have any problem with it at all. As I’ve spoken about repeatedly, as long as anyone uses our material with our name and a link back to the site, more power to them. Lots of people do that, and in fact, it DOES give us more publicity and more traffic and we’re thrilled about it. So, if you do it, good for you.
Re: Re: Re:2 I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
RSS aggregators republish material that is offered by the original rights holder for republishing. YouTube knowingly accepts and promotes (most viewed/highest rated) material that is clearly posted without the knowledge or permission of the creator.
Calling YouTube a platform does not excuse it from turning a blind eye to obvious copyright violation. It’s made even worse because they are profiting from the work of others who have not given their permission to allow it to be used by others for profit.
Would YouTube be an innocent platform if the site were owned by Rupert Murdoch and they were allowing and pretending not to notice uploads of competitor’s material?
Sure, NBC is an evil, corporate empire, but sites like YouTube will end up taking advantage of the little guys, too. But, hey, they should just let their video/music/books/art be uploaded without their permission to YouTube for the great publicity, right?
Re: Re: Re:3 I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
RSS aggregators republish material that is offered by the original rights holder for republishing. YouTube knowingly accepts and promotes (most viewed/highest rated) material that is clearly posted without the knowledge or permission of the creator.
Uh. You were the one who just said republishing blogs, and I said people were already. Now suddenly you say it’s fine?
Calling YouTube a platform does not excuse it from turning a blind eye to obvious copyright violation.
It still is a platform. That’s perfectly clear. If people point out copyright violations, YouTube removes it. They don’t publish anything themselves.
Would YouTube be an innocent platform if the site were owned by Rupert Murdoch and they were allowing and pretending not to notice uploads of competitor’s material?
As long as it’s just the platform, it’s just a platform. That’s the law.
Sure, NBC is an evil, corporate empire, but sites like YouTube will end up taking advantage of the little guys, too. But, hey, they should just let their video/music/books/art be uploaded without their permission to YouTube for the great publicity, right?
Again, if the net result is better for them, uh, hell yes they should let it happen.
Who cares if YouTube profits also? You think NBC is better of having less new viewers themselves if it means YouTube doesn’t get to profit also?
Re: Re: Re:4 I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
Republishing entire blogs is not the same as republishing blog feeds. My position did not change.
>>”That’s the law”
It’s not that simple, the law is not settled on how to handle copyright violations. What is clear is that YouTube is taking advantage of that ambiguity.
They’ve counted on their users to upload the most interesting copyrighted material to their site so YouTube would gain publicity. Lazy Sunday was better for YouTube than it was for NBC.
YouTube has always known that there were ways it could respect copyright holders rights up front. They made a deliberate choice to court publicity and popularity by ignoring obvious copyrighted material until they were notified.
They’ll continue to exploit this ambiguity to get as big and popular as they can until they can afford to be respectable.
At that stage, they’ll introduce a platform for selling video, including videos like Lazy Sunday. And then we’ll see that the platform isn’t neutral. They will actively seek out and ban videos of material that YouTube is selling. They won’t have to wait to be notified that the most popular video of the week is a direct rip of something in their catalog.
And they’ll probably pursue legal action against anyone who posts their videos on another site or broadcasts them on television.
They probably won’t be happy about the free publicity for their site when someone is giving away works that they are trying to selling.
YouTube offers a great free video site so it’s easy to feel good about them now. They will be the big bady guys soon enough and none of the real issues about copyright will be resolved.
Anyway, I’ve got to go check out VideoSift.com for the best Google and YouTube videos.
Don’t miss the ukulele player doing an amazing rip of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”! 😉
Thanks for the fun conversation, Mike.
Re: Re: Re:5 I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
It’s not that simple, the law is not settled on how to handle copyright violations.
It actually is that simple. Read the CDA and come back and let me know which part is not clear. Part of the “compromise” to get it passed was that anyone providing a platform could not be held responsible for the content on that platform:
“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider”.
YouTube may enable copyright infringement, but they’re not guilty of it themselves.
Where you may think that things got tricky would have to do with the SC decision in the Grokster case, but that only applies to situations where the platform provider is known to have specifically encouraged copyright infringement — something it appears YouTube has been careful not to do.
You may not like it, but it’s not illegal.
As for YouTube’s future plans, those are in the future. You can’t condemn them for future plans until they’ve enacted them.
Re: Re: Re:5 NBC and Youtube.com
I just had a video removed by youtube which was on NBC.
It is an obscure Canadian band on the Conan O’Brien show from october 1999. The band was Moxy Fruvous which has now broken up.
Not even 24 hours later, they removed it citing copyright violations.
I wanted to show it to “new” fruvous fans that found out about the band after they broke up but NBC isn’t going to allow that.
I doubt they will put that clip on their site as it’s not as popular.
Re: Re: Re: I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
Maybe they need to change the copyright law to be less restrictive, instead of MORE restrictive, or not extending the length of copyright law.
Re: I hope NBC sticks it to YouTube
Good thinking Bob Rob, let’s piss off the remaining feeble 0.2 market share we still desperately cling to on Saturday night, cancel the show entirely, and fire your worthless ass. Brilliant.
Re: NBC should leave YouTube alone
Oh come on. NBC spends a small fortune to nurture the talent on SNL.
You obviously haven’t seen the latest contract for repetroire players on SNL…if you did I think you would have to reconsider that statement.
Protecting themselves from bait and switch rap?
I’m thinking that maybe there’s another reason for NBC lawyers to pounce on this.
Lazy Sunday–very funny. SNL rarely funny.
Sure, the YouTube exposure of Lazy Sunny was a promotional boost for NBC. But those of us lured back to SNL by its promise are continually disappointed. Maybe the legal angle isn’t that the NBC lawyers are protecting their intellectual property. Maybe the angle is that they are worried about FTC action for false advertising–or bait and swtich practices.
FREE word of mouth marketing
I understand the copyright issue. I do. But why did NBC wait so long to say anything? This video definitely got people talking about SNL again – even though it’s still not that funny. I consider that free marketing.
becoming the National Bigbrother Channel
and who might those ‘channel parters’ be?
None other then Micro $oft?
It’s a boon to co-promote the mainstream o/s vs linux or mac no?
Duh!
Hmm, when content, technology, buisness interests and lawyers get involved. You have the mess your in here.
’nuff said.
NBC's rating are down the crapper.
Nothing but terrible programs. Fox is totally blowing NBC out the water IMO. 24, PrisonBreak, Family Guy, the ever popular Simpsons, hell even The war at home is pretty funny.
NBC has maybe Leno (who’s winding down to retire in the near future)
Conan (the one great asset NBC has)
Carson Dailly f*cking blows chunks. Terrible interveiwer, NOT funny, never funny sketches, unoriginal material, and rambles on about his self in monologues 80% the time.
ok, thats latenight.
The primetime effin BLOWS as well.
Everything sucks except scrubs, fear factor, and the office.
Now I think NBC has made a HUGE mistake. Look at what fox did with family guy. They made a fotune off the DVDs. Not $2 a DL.
NBC doesn’t have enough GOOD SNL skits for a dvd yet and are slitting their own wrists by effectively losing everyones interest in the skits. A potential future sales.
Again IMO.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...
Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I’m a lawyer defending a major record company, and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that jury room deliberatin’ and conjugatin’ the Emancipation Proclamation, [approaches and softens] does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.
SNL Skit Pulled by NBC
I have said it all along. WE LIVE IN A PROPAGANDA COUNTRY where the liberal media stifles free speech and exchange of ideas. WE ARE CLOSER TO HAVING A HITLER IN OUR COUNTRY THAN WE KNOW! I encourage everyone of voting age to listen to radio, search the Internet, and look for other venues to get information. YOU WILL NOT FIND IT ON NBC, CBS OR ABC!!! IF YOU ARE GOING TO VOTE, VOTE BASED ON COMPLETE INFORMATION, NOT A PUBLIC RELATIONS FABRICATION (OBAMA).