The Stories of the Youtube Gold Rush are Highly Exaggerated

Google’s success in wringing more ad revenue from YouTube is giving rise to a new class of dot-com millionaires…

Hundreds of YouTube stars are making more than six figures, and hundreds more are making more than $40,000 a year — roughly the median salary in the US. There are even stars who have topped a million dollars, although the company wouldn’t say how many…

“However well YouTube does, the partners are doing better,” said Kate Rose, a member of YouTube’s communications team.

That means a number of people are quitting their day jobs for a full-time stint on YouTube. They start as amateurs and when Google sees their stars rising, the company reaches out to them to join the YouTube Partners program. There is also a program for one-hit wonders to attach ads to their viral videos.

Articles like this tend to perpetuate the myth of how “easy” it is for people are “make money on Youtube” when in reality, only a small percentage of Youtube Partners make a liveable income.

Youtube neglects to mention that the small percentage of those who do make a living primarily through Youtube don’t make the bulk of their money through Youtube’s ad-revenue profit sharing program. Instead, these Partners make it primarily from third-party sponsorships that Youtube doesn’t have anything to do with.

Articles like this are big PR moves by Youtube. Youtube has every reason to make the public think that submitting content to Youtube is part of the new, Internet gold rush because that means a whole new crop of speculators will start submitting videos trying to cash in on the Youtube Partner lotto ticket. Seeding misinformation like this also makes Youtube look benevolent, as if the company is sharing all the wealth it makes with the little guys — the individual filmmakers and content creators.

It’s the same thing Second Life did in its heyday. Everyone is ready to find the next quick score, and Youtube and Second Life are more than happy to pretend that they’ve already found it.

Neither Second Life nor Youtube are “bad guys” by encouraging news stories like this, but for anyone thinking about the easy “millions” to be made on Youtube, you may want to do more research before you spend lots of time, money and energy on your Youtube Channel.

via Nypost

Movie Sequels and Comic Book Adaptations: Based on a True Soda

While I don’t agree that this article‘s argument that the following is a bad thing:

Let’s look ahead to what’s on the menu for this year: four adaptations of comic books. One prequel to an adaptation of a comic book. One sequel to a sequel to a movie based on a toy. One sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a movie based on an amusement-park ride. One prequel to a remake. Two sequels to cartoons. One sequel to a comedy. An adaptation of a children’s book. An adaptation of a Saturday-morning cartoon. One sequel with a 4 in the title. Two sequels with a 5 in the title. One sequel that, if it were inclined to use numbers, would have to have a 7 1/2 in the title.

I do think the author is totally correct about how Inception’s success has been so easily dismissed as a fluke:

Consider: Years ago, an ace filmmaker, the man who happened to direct the third-highest-grossing movie in U.S. history, The Dark Knight, came up with an idea for a big summer movie. It’s a story he loved—in fact, he wrote it himself—and it belonged to a genre, the sci-fi action thriller, that zipped right down the center lane of American popular taste. He cast as his leading man a handsome actor, Leonardo DiCaprio, who happened to star in the second-highest-grossing movie in history. Finally, to cover his bet even more, he hired half a dozen Oscar nominees and winners for supporting roles…That film, Christopher Nolan’s Inception, received admiring reviews, became last summer’s most discussed movie, and has grossed, as of this writing, more than three-quarters of a billion dollars worldwide.

And now the twist: The studios are trying very hard not to notice its success, or to care. Before anybody saw the movie, the buzz within the industry was: It’s just a favor Warner Bros. is doing for Nolan because the studio needs him to make Batman 3. After it started to screen, the party line changed: It’s too smart for the room, too smart for the summer, too smart for the audience. Just before it opened, it shifted again: Nolan is only a brand-name director to Web geeks, and his drawing power is being wildly overestimated. After it grossed $62 million on its first weekend, the word was: Yeah, that’s pretty good, but it just means all the Nolan groupies came out early—now watch it drop like a stone.

And here was the buzz three months later, after Inception became the only release of 2010 to log eleven consecutive weeks in the top ten: Huh. Well, you never know.

He makes the case for why Inception was good, but I don’t think he really makes the case for why any of those things like “four adaptations of comic books” or even “two sequels with a 5 in the title” are bad.

I know he’s not directly saying that a movie based on a Stretch Armstrong action figure will have to be bad or that its creators are somehow plotting against good cinema to make it, but he’s sure implying it.

This article does a lot to summarize the great points that he makes. My problem with the full article though is that those really valid points about how the movies don’t cater to certain audiences because marketers aren’t interested in learning anything about those audiences (which he does prove), is muddled by the subtext of the article: that Hollywood’s “bland assembly-line ethos” creates end-products that aren’t as good as they could be (which he doesn’t really prove).

The other conclusion that I can agree with are that good movies die and mediocre ones get greenlit because of fear. Just like any business where a lot of money changes hands, the people who control the money tend to be risk averse. When you can lose millions of dollars in one weekend, it makes sense to hedge you bets with known commodities — even if your commodity isn’t any more certain than a Magic 8-Ball.

For the studios, a good new idea has become just too scary a road to travel. Inception, they will tell you, is an exceptional movie. And movies that need to be exceptional to succeed are bad business. “The scab you’re picking at is called execution,” says legendary producer Scott Rudin (The Social Network, True Grit). “Studios are hardwired not to bet on execution, and the terrible thing is, they’re right. Because in terms of execution, most movies disappoint.”

Just look at Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Brilliant execution, but for one reason or another, people didn’t come. You can blame the marketers if you want, but at some point, you the paying movie-going public is responsible as well. You get more of the types of movies that you go support.

Critics: imagine a five-part Hollywood movie as a classic movie serial, and you might feel good enough about it to actually give it a fair chance. It’s a shame that if a summer movie is based on a Philip K Dick short story critics will give you a pass, but as soon as it’s based on a comic book, you movie somehow becomes guilty until proven innocent. Movies are movies no matter what their source material are.

I’ll even go further and say that I personally welcome any innovation that will keep the movie industry in business whether that be bad, misguided 2D-3D conversions or flavor-of-the-week event movies because those are the things that keep the industry alive, allowing them to make movies like Inception every few years.

If you want to name your movie after an action figure, a video game, or a brand of soda to get people in the seats go ahead…

I’ll be happy as long as you also make sure to make that movie good.

via GQ

Photo Credit: Chung-Cha

A Harsh Word for Patent Trolls

Having interacted with a lot of lawyers in the past three years, I’ll go out on a limb most lawyers really do act nobly in this profession. Maybe I’ve just hung out in good neighborhoods, but the vast majority of lawyers that I’ve met are concerned with being professional, doing a thorough job, and being highly ethical.

If you’re around enough the law though, you also see some of the dark side. After all, the law is a business, and shady not-quite-ethical things happen all the time in any business.

Since I work at a non-profit where we’re unconcerned with making money from the people who contact us, we can advise people to act in a way that generally works toward the greater good. For the clients who have questionable agendas (which is a higher percentage than you’d think), we can tell them politely to find someone else to do their dirty work.

Most lawyers don’t have that privileged though. They have to pay their bills, so free from any sort of do-gooder-moral-compass, they do the economically rational thing and take the work given to them. Since lawyers are mostly just the arms, legs, and mouths of their clients, the general public might not realize that a scummy client can give an otherwise decent lawyer a bad name.

Patent and copyright trolling is part of that dark side of the law, and the companies that do the trolling are just that kind of scummy client who can pay a lawyer handsomely to help spread misery and ruin small businesses in the name of “protecting intellectual property.”

IP lawyers should make peace with what they do when they choose to work with trolls. Prey on the weak. Stifle innovation. Lose your soul. Cash your paycheck. Feed your family.

Tradeoffs.

Trolls go after the smaller companies first. They pick on startups because undercapitalized small companies cannot afford to be ideological. When faced with the prospect of extensive legal fees and a huge distraction, they do the pragmatic thing – they settle. The troll can accept less from a startup because the troll can later argue the startup has a small market share and a limited ability to pay. A smaller settlement does not preclude larger settlements with bigger players later. In a side note, one troll accepted services from our portfolio company in lieu of cash because the troll could not technically do the thing that our company was accused of copying so we are providing them with the capability. The irony there kills me. It feels a little like being forced to dig your own grave before being shot.

The trolls then use the money extorted from young startups to fund the more expensive and ambitious cases against larger more established companies with deeper pockets. These folks have more to lose but they also have more resources to defend themselves. I don’t often think about the plight of large companies but this attack has a direct impact on young companies.

via Union Square Ventures

Artists, sue at your own risk

Where I work, we often advise artists about the downsides of getting involved with the formal legal process: the expense, the emotional toil, and the unforeseen consequences. This is a story about how a even a legitimate lawsuit backfired hard. Incredibly hard. Artists who think a lawsuit is a good way to solve a problem, be warned. Feel free to skip to the end if you just want to hear the moral of the story.

Remember Deee-lite? No?

Deee-Lite was a dance music group in the early 1990s led by quirky, pigtailed front-woman Kierin Kirby. Their most famous song “Groove Is in the Heart” is one of those songs that you remember as soon as you hear it.

Exhibit A: Groove is in the Heart and Kierin Kirby

Remember Space Channel 5? No?

Space Channel 5 was a moderately popular series of music-based video games created by Sega and released for Dreamcast internationally in 2000.

Exhibit B – Space Channel 5

In 2003, lead singer of Dee-lite, Kierin Kirby, made a critical error. She assumed that the general public had retained any memory of her career and sued Sega for “misappropriating her likeness” in Space Channel 5.

She claimed that (1) the game’s main character, Ulala, looked and danced just like her in her Dee-Lite days, and (2) Sega never got her consent to design the character in her likeness.

Sega of Japan, it seems, was up to some shenanigans. When the game was first being developed in Japan, Sega of Japan tried to license the song “Groove Is In The Heart” as the flagship song for the game for $16,000, and Kirby didn’t give her permission. It must’ve been strange then for Kirby, years later, to find out that the main character of that same game bore a striking resemblance to her younger self.

Generally the law in California, where the suit took place, prohibits anyone from knowingly using another person’s name, voice, or likeness to advertise or sell a product without the consent of that person. ( See California Civil Code § 3344(a) )

In her complaint, Kirby described Ulala as having “nearly the same distinctive make-up, large eyelashes, doe eyes, red/pink hair, pony tails, cute backpacks, mini-skirts…and platform shoes.” She also claimed that Ulala’s name was based on how Kirby introduced herself in the “Groove is in the Heart” video with the phrase “ooh la la.”

The judge didn’t find this convincing. On summary judgment (before trial), the judge determined that Space Channel 5′s main character, a space-age reporter from the 25th century, was unlike any public depiction of Kirby. And even if Ulala was designed after Kirby’s public persona, the First Amendment would protect the depiction.

Additionally, Sega somehow managed to prove that “the Japanese creators of Ulala — who created her name, look and dance moves — had never even heard of Deee-Lite, [Kirby] or Groove is in the Heart at the time they created Ulala.”

Maybe this was just after-the-fact backpedalling by Sega’s employees. OR maybe Kirby’s likeness wasn’t really as unique as she thought it was. After all, Kirby was suing Sega’s Japanese designers for stealing an image which she herself “stole” from just about every Japanese teenage girl in the mid-90s.

This is the scary part

In the end, Kirby lost the case, even though the game did seem to borrow liberally from Kirby’s look and persona. Adding insult to injury, the court ordered Kirby to pay Sega’s attorney fees.

Imagine this: When Kirby filed the suit in 2003 she demanded that Sega pay her $750,000. By 2006, because she lost the case, she now owed Sega over $600,000.

That amount doesn’t take into account how much money she spent to have her own lawyers fight Sega for three years which was probably also another $100,000-$500,000.

Do you still want to sue anyone?

via jwz and Kirby v. Sega of America, Inc. 144 Cal App 4th 47 (2006, Cal App 2d Dist).

An $150,000 Lesson In Supply and Demand

The law school I attended was wonderful, but law school generally is a racket. Too many schools pump out too many lawyers to fill an ever-shrinking amount of jobs. Just like in The Wire, law school administrators around the country “juke the stats” [ http://rc3.org/2008/04/23/how-law-schools-juke-the-stats/ ] to make it seem like the economic downturn didn’t affect the market for lawyers at all. That’s how some schools can report to their prospective students that 93% of their grads are employed, despite 15,000 BigLaw job cuts

[The way law student employment upon graudation statistics are calculated, they] don’t discriminate between the law grad working at Applebee’s and the grad working at Skadden. The high employment numbers are buttressed by salary figures released by some schools that show median private-sector starting salaries of $160,000, even at schools outside the U.S. News top 40.

Law school is sold to the uninitiated as a way to make a guaranteed, lucractive career. In actual practice, law school is just like any other educational opportunity. You really have to “want it” to come out with a good job. And you have to go above and beyond just “wanting it,” if you want to come out with a good job that pays well that you like doing everyday.

Everyone else, those law students lukewarm about the practice of law, and those who only enrolled because of a perceived lack of anything better to do are probably in trouble. They’re in trouble to the tune of $120,000 – $150,000.

Getting more education is always a good idea. Paying for that education through a graduate program, particularly if you’re only doing it because you don’t know what else to do, isn’t a good idea in almost every case.

Just like Wall Street, one day we might look back at this moment as the time when the higher education industry should’ve taken responsibility for bankrupting a generation of young people by selling dreams without any basis in reality.

[Law schools] just happen to be the most professional and visible private school type milking the guaranteed student loan cow. Some day soon, student loans will be exposed as a banking sector nearly as ugly as sub-prime mortgage lending. Making the loans exempt from bankruptcy discharge sheltered them from market forces, and the result has been a predictable and unsustainable spiral of greed.

via the ABA Journal

Photo credit:”The Law School Casebook” By David Ortez

They’ve Created A Monster! Trademark lawyers take note.

Where I work, we often advise people about the downsides of getting involved with the formal legal process: the expense, the emotional toil, and the unforeseen consequences. This is a story about why IP lawyers may need to re-evaluate those “unforeseen consequences” now that the Internet provides informal, inexpensive ways for companies to fight back.

Olson and Bear LLP, the law firm that represents the MONSTER energy drink trademark, sent Rock Art Brewery, a small-town Vermont brewery, a cease-and-desist letter. The letter opposed Rock Art’s trademark filing for its “Vermonster Beer.” Olson and Bear argued that the name “VERMONSTER” used for beer would be confusingly similar to the term “MONSTER” used on energy drinks.

Olson and Bear LLP took the usual hard-line approach with Rock Art. When the owner of Rock Art offered “to stay out of energy drinks with The Vermonster, if they leave him alone in beer,” Olsen and Bear made the claim that “Monster [wasn't] concerned with energy drinks, that Monster wants to now get into beer.”

Whether Monster has the actual intention in the immediate future of getting into the beer market, or whether Olson and Bear just wanted to allow Monster to keep its options open isn’t clear. What was clear is that Olsen and Bear was “ready to take immediate action” (as law firms often are) which meant filing an expensive lawsuit against Rock Art. Rock Art, which is essentially a mom-and-pop-hometown-hero-style local business, didn’t have the means of defending itself if it went to court.

After the popular craft beer blogs picked up this story and the owner of Rock Art released highly sympathetic Youtube video explaining the situation to the public, there was an immediate backlash against Monster Energy Drink brand online. This online backlash even led to real-world boycotts of Monster. Rock Art’s video “is now easily the highest-rated brewery video ever on YouTube with over 320 votes and a 5-star average.” For Monster, this is a huge PR failure.

Attorney Doug Riley predicted this weeks before the backlash began: “What I’ve seen happen — where the likable company is the good guys, with a homegrown local Vermont product, and on the other side is this big, faceless, conglomerate corporation — is usually the corporation will back off. It’s bad for publicity, and the Vermont company is really not a threat.” He didn’t have to be a fortune-teller to predict this might happen, he just understands exactly how the Internet has changed the game regarding policing trademarks.

In the end, the situation got settled quickly, out-of-court and in Rock Art’s favor.

Lessons learned? Yes, firms do have to police their clients marks, and to be fair to Olsen and Bear, they don’t just target the small guys who it knows may not be able to put up a fight, they go after everyone.

For example, when one looks at the registration by Coca-cola of a drink called “Monster Refreshment” you can see that [Monster] is not afraid to take on companies far bigger than they are.

But the question still remains, how much was the registration for VERMONSTER in connection with beer really a threat to MONSTER in connection with soft drinks / energy drinks, and was the a winner-takes-all fight really worth all of the expense (legal fees) and negative press for Monster? Was the situation so untenable that a license couldn’t have been worked out?

The Internet makes it really easy for the public to fight for the little guy. When you send a cease and desist that attacks someone’s livelihood (even if you have every right to) that person is going to use everything at their disposal to fight back. In this Post-Twitter landscape, it might be EASIER to go after a company like Coca Cola, that plays by the old, formal lawyer-versus-lawyer rules than a company like Rock Art that will wage a guerrilla PR war and will probably win (at least in the court of public opinion).

Lawyers defending small business and mom-and-pops, take note. Leverage your client’s fanbase to keep them out of court.

via BeerNews and A Good Beer Blog

Just in case you want to know what won this war for Rock Art, it wasn’t a brief, it was a video: