NewTeeVee Live: MTV exec proposes antidote to piracy

NewTeeVee Live: MTV exec proposes antidote to piracyAt NewTeeVee Live, the subject of copyright came up in a roundtable about “crossover hits” between the Internet and TV, and an MTV executive boldly went where other content owners have been hesitant to go before.

Ty Ahmad-Taylor, vice president of product development at MTV Networks, said he thinks the best antidote to piracy is making your content widely available. Apparently, not everyone at MTV’s parent company Viacom shares that exact view, since Viacom’s filed a $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube.

That doesn’t seem to deter Ahmad-Taylor though. He believes that companies, including his own, who don’t make their content easily available to their customers are sending a message to users to steal the stuff. Which is one of the reasons MTV created a Facebook app to allow fans to watch videos and dedicate them to friends on the platform — i.e. where they are.

Not everyone is ready for such bold talk though. Another panelist, Kevin Cohen of Turner Broadcasting System, said that his company is still finding about 25,000 clips a day from their Adult Swim network on YouTube, and TBS is exploring filtering options to prevent the authorized clips from being uploaded.

last100 is edited by Steve O'Hear. Aside from founding last100, Steve is co-founder and CEO of Beepl and a freelance journalist who has written for numerous publications, including TechCrunch, The Guardian, ZDNet, ReadWriteWeb and Macworld, and also wrote and directed the Silicon Valley documentary, In Search of the Valley. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.

Leave a Reply