THE UNLAWFUL OBJECTIVE IS UNMISTAKABLE: Believing itself to be delivering unto the world a Dharma Drop worth of awesomeness, one of the Gawker Media sites this afternoon posted the full video of the twelve-minute epilogue to Lost which constitutes the most anticipated addition to the Season 6 DVD set.
Shame on Gawker Media for doing so.
[They have since reduced it to a three-plus minute clip from the end of the video which contains perhaps the more shocking elements of the full epilogue. It is yet unclear whether this was a voluntary action or was prompted by legal threats.]
We here at ALOTT5MA HQ take seriously the notion that the people who generate good content have the right to seek payment for it, and those who attempt to circumvent their efforts to get paid are stealing. Period. And, obviously, a good way to encourage people to buy a DVD set of a tv series folks have already seen -- especially when it comes to a series for which folks were frustrated by inadequate answers and closure -- is to provide them with answers, closure and content they haven't already seen.
But when you set up a system in which writers get paid based on their hit counts, as Gawker Media has done, all you're doing is encouraging its writers to locate potentially popular content which one cannot find elsewhere. (HT: Matt.) Otherwise-protected intellectual property is obviously one such area -- steal the content, ring up the hits, take (some of) it down when you receive a cease and desist letter, pay a settlement if you have to, repeat -- ritualized intellectual property theft as business model, a Napster of text and video.
[Heck, you may recall they even grabbed Isaac's Tiger Woods parody without initially crediting our site (see #8 here), not that we were asking for money. Just a link. Of course, there's also the athlete "dong shots" and rumors regarding too-much-fun-loving gunslingers and their texting habits which no other media will touch. Whatever draws a crowd.]
But the latter stuff is mostly rude and privacy-violating; stealing intellectual property directly takes potential money from content creators. That's bullshit. I'm glad they cut it down from twelve minutes to three minutes, but, really, it ought to be none minutes. Let ABC, Damon and Carlton decide how much free content with which to entice fans. Namaste.
