Stephen Colbert Groks the Viacom v. Google Suit

vcg1.jpgTo understand what’s at the crux of the $1 billion Viacom suit against Google for copyright infringement, look no further than the guy who has become the flash point for the suit, Stephen Colbert. Colbert spent Monday’s episode giving a platform to the debate of copyright law and fair use that is embodied by the current collision of old media content owners versus new media technologies that enable the mashing up of that content.The Colbert Report has been at the crux of the Viacom-YouTube/Google suit since Viacom first sued and highlighted the fact that copyrighted episodes of the The Colbert Report were freely available on YouTube. The Electronic Freedom Foundation then sued Viacom over YouTube’s takedown of a Colbert parody produced by MoveOn.org and Brave New Films.

On Monday’s episode, Colbert mapped out the players with skin in the game with his guest, John Perry Barlow of the EFF. Here’s an extrapolation of what he whiteboarded for the audience:

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Colbert was at his subversive best as he gave platform to the EFF’s suit against Viacom and their interpretation that a parody of a parody is fair use of The Colbert Show. While he is clearly beholden to Viacom, (“they own me, baby… I am their bitch”), by giving a platform to the EFF he is emboldening the enemy of his parent company.

Watch the clip right here (via ColbertNation.com, not YouTube) to see Colbert lay it all out:

Colbert clearly “gets” what is going on with mashup culture and that value is added by allowing the market to remix and remake content that he is creating. And all of this casts a reflective glow back to his show. To showcase his point he announced the Stephen Colbert:For Your Editing Pleasure contest, encouraging views to download footage of his mock interview with PBS’s Gwen Ifill. Viewers are encouraged to edit the footage to make Colbert appear in as unflattering a light as possible and resubmit it to the show. Through this contest he is showcasing that creativity that can be unleashed when content is freely distributed, and how smart copyright owners are encouraging the remixing of their content facilitating deeper connections with their audiences.

Blake vs Chris: The competition heats up

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The Blake vs. Chris Competition: BlakesCreditCards.com vs. CreditMighty.com

The Blake versus Chris competition is heating up. I woke up this morning and decided check my stats on the siteMighty account that I’ve created for the Blake versus Chris competition: CreditMighty.com. To my delight, I’ve earned my first $5 to take the early lead on my side of the competition. When I got in the office, I had Blake check his stats, and wouldn’t you know he’s sitting at $5 too. So, 27 days into the first month, the Blake versus Chris competition is tied.

Let me recap what is going on here:

We launched the Blake versus Chris competition on March 1, 2007. The competition consists of each of us building our own credit card affiliate marketing websites using our platform: siteMighty.com. We’ve got a friendly competition going in which we’re each building our own website and working on different traffic generation techniques to see who can earn the most through their siteMighty-powered site. We’re doing this for a couple reasons:

  1. Proof of Concept — we felt that a live blogging approach to launching siteMighty would give us the opportunity to communicate to our users exactly what siteMighty is. It’s also a way for us to “eat our own dog food”, which is a software term for using the software you’re writing. That’s what we’re going to do, we want to prove that anyone can make money through affiliate marketing by using a siteMighty website.
  2. Education — we also want to use our blogging on each of our websites to share the exact techniques that we’re using to make our siteMighty-powered sites a success. We’re blogging every step of the way about what we’re doing, and we want to build it into a valuable educational resource for other siteMighty users so they can follow it step-by-step and make money themselves.
  3. Learning and Testing our Own Product — what better way for us to motivate ourselves to make siteMighty the best it can be, then to force ourselves to use it. I already have come up with several new feature ideas based on my use of siteMighty. We’ll continually be adding tools to siteMighty to ensure our success, and the success of our users.

Our goal is to simulate the environment in which our users are building siteMighty sites. This means spending a limited mount of time, working with a limited budget, and taking a step-by-step process to success. We’re going to disclose everything we’re doing so people can learn from it. So here are the rules:

  • We each are launching separate siteMighty powered websites.
  • We’ve constrained ourselves to marketing a budget of $250 per month each.
  • We’ll blog about everything we do on our sites to share our techniques with the public.

So come check out our siteMighty Blake versus Chris competition here the two sites:

We’ll be making periodic updates here on the Idea Fuel blog to draw attention to the competition, but most of the updates will be taking place on the sites themselves. Stay tuned as we put our own feet to the fire to prove that anyone can build a successful affiliate marketing website with siteMighty.com.

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