Rights.. again

In recent weeks I've spent a lot of time on a project abroad, which has taken up much time.

It's also got me thinking about rights again.

A lot of people in this industry spend a lot of time analysing technologies and platforms and alliances but rights rarely gets a look-in. And as for boring stuff like metadata well...

I'm very much a believer in getting content out there. It's not that I don't care about rights - every content owner should be able to protect their intellectual property and take appropriate value from it.

But when the attempt to protect property runs head-first into consumer behaviour then it's the rights that have to change.

I say this because on one of several flights and facing long hotel stays I picked up a box-set of James Bond DVDs. It wasn't until I tried to watch it on my laptop that I realised it was a Region 1 (North Am) DVD and both me and my laptop are Region 2 (Europe).

I was graciously granted the right to switch between regions but only four times... gee thanks. I might not even make my way through the box set if I watched Region 2 DVDs in between. Clearly this causes a problem, not least of which is choosing between Goldfinger and The Man With the Golden Gun.

But the main problem is that I am now being penalised for apparently reasonable consumer behaviour. In this day and age of frequent travel and movement, let alone digital access, the idea of geographical restriction is outrageous. I've paid a substantial amount for the DVDs and even more for my laptop, software licences etc. So the owners have made their money but I will be left holding a useless DVD.

So what am I going to do ? Obviously find some way to crack the encoding software or download the movies illegally instead. There's only one pirate in this scenario.

Rights and wrongs

At first glance it would seem to me that a service which allows you to set up an audio feed through your phone (or VOIP) would not be something that should cause too many rights issues.

I was alerted to Gabcast by Jonathan Marks on his Critical Distance blog and signed up with the idea that as I will be spending quite a bit of time on the road over the next few months it would be nice to record some book chapters for my kids to listen to. My son Gabriel loves being read classics like Treasure Island and King Solomon's Mines.

But in signing up to Gabcast's T&Cs I agreed that anything I record will have all rights cleared and that I grant the use of the material to Gabcast in a worldwide licence.

Now I don't for a moment imagine that Gabcast is going to take my audio books recorded for limited private use and release them as a worldwide podcast. My reading voice charms my children but that's about it. Nor do I think that publishing houses are going to start chucking War and Peace through my front window.

I know the platform has to pretend that they have no control over rights and it's all my fault if something goes wrong, and I know I have to pretend that I know all about the rights and have a file of waivers and clearances somewhere and I know that publishers have to pretend they really care about people reading their editions as if it would stop them buying books.

It's just a bit silly.

Anything which can be digitally reproduced and copied is essentially valueless, in so far as value lies in the actual product. The value lies in the brand and the advertising and community opportunities it generates. And maybe it would get people to buy some analogue versions, better known as books.