The media industry appears to finally be moving away from copyright battles and towards embracing open-content and consumer rights. With the success of Monty Python now further bolstering evidence that open-content does not mean lower-sales hopefully this transition will occur even faster.

Well isn’t this just fantastic news. In a year many industry insiders are speculating the utter downfall of DRM and a loosening up of the media industry; as the RIAA drop all court cases in the States and Apple takes iTunes DRM free, there comes yet more evidence that opening up content does not necessarily mean a loss of income. In fact in its very nature it could place the revenue back in the hands of artists where it belongs.

Radiohead conducted a very good experiment a few years ago with their latest album In Rainbows. Rather than sticking it on the highstreet they embraced digital media, releasing it under an open license where fans could choose how much they wanted to pay. It earned more revenue for Radiohead than many of their early albums as they had little overhead. It went down an absolute storm and really showed the music industry what could be done. Since then we’ve seen many other bands embrace the digital age and hopefully in 2009 we’ll see a more industry-centred large scale movement towards internet distribution and more consumer rights.

Yet other media bodies have been even slower on the uptake. Last year saw video and TV finally reach iTunes as well as the advent of services such as Joost taking on a more ingrained role1 online. So it was with surprise that a few months ago the Monty Python Channel went live on Youtube.

For those just learning of this revelation, the Monty Python Channel (MPC) was a response to the literally thousands of exerts from the comedy groups TV and film shows illegally posted on Youtube from people all over the world. To try and stem the tide of poor quality, badly synced clips the remaining members of Python bought up a Channel on Youtube and began uploading their own, high quality clips. They began well, uploading clips that were already the most popular under the “Python” tag. This open-source approach was received with cries of joy from most online as well as quite a few stunned silences from the media industry themselves. It was a risky move, but Python made no enemies and put their opinions up front: they wanted paid! They weren’t going to charge subscriptions, but they were going to link every clip to Amazon and other online retailers that sold their DVD’s; they went so far as to state on their front page that they hoped people who enjoyed their Youtube clips would then go and actually boost their bank accounts a little. This was met with industry sneers; after all why would the pirates, having fought so long to be allowed to illegally watch the content now start paying to do so when it had become legally free?

Yet the move appears to have paid off. Sales of Pythons DVDs, from films to TV series to live shows, have sky rocketed on Amazon. Official figures seem to suggest an increase in revenue of 23,000%! Now that’s not a figure to be sneered at! Shortly after the group went live with the MPC the Holy Grail shot up the Amazon DVD charts to #2; the first time its been in the top 10 of anything for nearly a decade. The media industry is gobsmacked, the fans are happier than ever, Youtube and Amazon will have done pretty well out of it but even better the Pythons are laughing their way, quite literally, to the bank.

But how can they have forecast this kind of success? Surely it was a risky manoeuvre to take? Actually it wasn’t. Not really. Yes, they released their best loved material for free but rather than shooting themselves in the foot they were merely being intelligent. Just as the RIAA now seems to have realised, you simply cannot fight the internet; if people can get something for nothing they will always choose that option. Despite this, at heart most “pirates” are not bad people. I remember back when I pirated music, I did it not for kicks but because I could not afford the music any other way. Now I can I am diligently going back through those albums I downloaded illegally and paying for new copies of those that I deem worthwhile. Now I know that’s a little double edged, but had lastFM been around back then I would have just used that. The ability to preview content has led to me purchasing many lesser known bands who otherwise would have lost out to far inferior mainstream trash for my money. It is a similar logic behind the MPC. You’ve watched their best, it is very good, all of it. The quality is high so you feel £20 for an extra ten hours or so of content is more than justified and you purchase the DVD. It’s actually a very logical business model and also benefits from not inducing the costs of high-sum court cases to try and fight piracy. As long as you produce good content, people will pay for it, but let everyone have a slice of the cake and you’ll find quite a lot of other people will suddenly want to buy the whole damn bakery. Lets just hope the video industry cottons on a bit quicker than the music industry!

“Run away!” ~ King Arthur

1: most likely due to the continued popularity of Youtube and other video upload sites

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