| Pierre on the Electronic Frontier |
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| Written by Pierre Maré | |
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The Internet poses a conundrum for marketers: the question of copyright. The web is a vast place, with hundreds of millions of sites, and billions of pages. Under these circumstances, it is almost impossible to police the web, and ensure that copyright is enforced.
The problem has made itself best known with MP3s and
movies, from which artists and producers expect to benefit. However in
spite of all the effort that goes into closing larger sites, copies of
songs and movies are available on the internet for download. Smaller
sites and areas with more lax rules make it possible.
Even when a purchasing mechanism is in place, the files can be copied from drive to drive. And efforts to limit copying by limiting the number of times a file can be played have proven less than popular. The same is true of sites and their contents. The processes can be duplicated and so can the contents, with varying degrees of success. So how should the marketer approach the conundrum? The first, and most obvious solution is to apply for intellectual property rights on processes and forms of products that are particularly valuable. But this can be extremely expensive and may not have the desired result. A patent only guarantees the right of the developer, and does not protect against misuse. If the intellectual property is misused, then the developer may choose to prosecute, depending on feasibility of prosecution, as well as the cost of the prosecution. Much of Internet development takes place within an open source environment. The software and applications that are run on a site are made available for free to whoever wishes to use them. The developer uses the free processes and programmes to develop the site: as the code is offered free, this is the most cost effective manner to develop a website. However this also means that the broader site cannot be copyrighted, only certain contents and the visual devices associated with brand identity. So a different approach comes into play. The core rule in branding is that a brand is a relationship between a consumer and a product and / or service. By developing a unique relationship at the outset, the brand protects itself against infringement of its properties. A relationship that is unique and strong cannot easily be copied, and is worth considering as a centrepiece of strategy. The same has to extend to the website. As an example of this, consider the phenomena of Facebook, YouTube and Myspace. Each of these sites has been developed with a single-minded proposition. All of these sites have attained leadership in their categories, and attract the lions’ share of the market. The question is, can a differential be developed on a local basis now? As far as content is concerned, it is almost impossible to ensure that a specific set of words will not be copied and / or altered. One way around this is to make the content freely available, and use it as a marketing tool. Although this may seem to be precisely what is happening with piracy, the addition of a proviso to recognise the source of the content can be used to draw people to the original site. All it takes is a friendly request for recognition. There are at least two reasons why the content will be used with recognition. Firstly a link is far easier than redeveloping the material. Secondly there is no need to place an additional strain on the site’s bandwidth resource. The key to the thing is that the site has to be useful and / or extremely characteristic. This is the basis for phenomena such as syndication, tagging, RSS feeds and embedding in the case of video sites such as YouTube, all of which contribute to traffic to the original sites. As there is no hard and fast approach to copyright, the site developer should consider taking a more tactical approach and encouraging access to content. This is not only a solution to the issue of copyright, but also an effective means to drive traffic to the site. |
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