"The War" against mythical journalists who resell their samples on eBay
UPDATE: An unhappy Dan Klores PR person has emailed me about this story, telling me — tongue in cheek, I hope — that "We will make sure in the future to exclude you from all the materials we have since you obviously would prefer not to get them." I've added the whole email, and my response, to the end of today's TV Barn Podcast, which just happens to be about "The War."
It has been eight years — going back to the very first days of TV Barn — since I have seen any evidence that any TV critic has attempted to sell the free samples s/he receives from media corporations. But you'd never know it from the cone of paranoia that has been lowered over us by the industry.
Here's a notable example, and not just because they sent it to the wrong guy: Sony Legacy Recordings is releasing a soundtrack CD to Ken Burns' upcoming megafilm "The War," the opening salvo of what is expected to be a full-on barrage of marketing and merchandising related to the biggest PBS production in years.
My copy arrived with personalization on both the jewel case and the CD itself. The jacket contained this stern warning: This promotional CD is Watermarked and therefore is unique and traceable. The Copyright Owner is able to monitor its use and identify the source of any unauthorized copies. The Copyright Owner will take appropriate action in respect of any misuse of promotional CD releases.
Unfortunately,
whoever at the production house was charged with mailing these
personalized screeners out to critics lost track of where s/he was in
the list. And thus, if you click on the picture you will see that I
have in my possession the CD intended for Brooks Barnes of the Wall
Street Journal ... the guy one before me in alphabetical order on the
canonical list of what Lisa D calls The Reporters Who Cover Television
(TRWCT).
So you'll be seeing that copy on eBay later today. Hey, it ain't my scalp!
Seriously, I know it's part of the corporate mindset to distrust
journalists, but this is ridiculous. For one thing, our employers frown
on reselling of screeners, or (in the Star's case) even giving them
away. At many places it's a fireable offense. So why the paranoia? I'm
guessing it's because it's just easier to throw us in the watermarking
pool with all the freelancers, marketing people and network employees
who may or may not be hawking these things online. But again, in most
cases it's a fireable offense for those people to resell swag, too.
This may seem like inside baseball (and minor league baseball to boot), but I think it points to a larger issue — the industry's contention that Internet piracy costs them "billions" in unrealized revenue. I've always found the counter-argument more persuasive: that actual piracy is minimal, and that what the companies actually want to monetize is the sharing of content that's been going on since Victrola days. Watermarking is just a pesky weed growing out from that, and while it's not exactly crimping my lifestyle, it's still obnoxious.
