Is this development as important as I think? (I am not a good source of legal insight) You decide and let's watch together as it develops. Today, a landmark ruling was announced in favor of EBay vs. Tiffany. The case had to do with counterfeit brands being sold on EBay. Was EBay responsible as Tiffany had claimed, to police Tiffany's brand for them? The message seems to have come back that brands are responsible for their own protection. Is it possible this could be stretched to include makers and sellers of content too?
The thesis behind my larger idea that media is in the midst of an industrial revolution has several big points marketers of content must be aware of, and this is one of them. Who is responsible for protecting their content? Google/YouTube or Viacom? It seems like an outrageous question to me but many disagree. Time will tell. Is this decision an important part? Link for Washington Post article: "Brand owners have to be vigilant," he said. "That's the message."
How perishable, if at all, are copy right protections on content? Who decides? This distinction is both important and has never been made outside of content re-runs that are narrowly defined as either live events or syndication. Now that record labels are moving to extinction wiull artists decide if their new record can get play on various media for free or for a payment? This topic is definitely getting way ahead of ourselves.....for now.
Posts will slow down in the next few weeks as I compile this subject into a very short book for marketers of content and especially brands of content. This is a pivotal time for anyone in media as the marketing component is facing long term trend changes and forcing evolution in the vertical ahead of many other categories of products and services that will follow later. Stay tuned. I will post article links following these trends along the way. Dave
One more excerpt: ...."Separately, the judge ruled eBay could use Tiffany's name in its ads, both on its home page and in sponsored links eBay buys through the search engines run by Yahoo and Google. That had been an unsettled legal question for search engines, which have faced lawsuits over the use of trademarked terms in paid search listings."
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