Will the Ron Paul Channel Get Crushed?

[cajuncocoa]

Marc Clair of LionsOfLiberty.com emails:

Robert,

​

It appears the first episode of the Ron Paul Channel is on YouTube.

[Link to pirated youtube video removed from text of email-RW]

At first I thought it was a free preview, and had planned to post it on my site, but upon
further inspection it appears this channel is not affiliated with Ron Paul and is not official.
The channel even links back to RonPaul.com, which we all know is not owned or run by Ron Paul.

I'm curious about your take on this as it relates to your IP stance. Is it up to Ron Paul and
Ron Paul Channel to figure out how to prevent something like this? It seems that if every episode can be slapped onto YouTube the next day by these days it could easily crush the business model.

Thanks​

Marc Clair
Editor In Chief
LionsOfLiberty.com


​

First as a believer in intellectual property protection, and specifically in this case copyright protection, I would object to anyone copying from the Ron Paul Channel, without the direct permission of Ron Paul, or the entity that holds the rights to the RPC broadcast.

My thoughts on this are completely in line with Murray Rothbard who wrote in Man, Economy and State (Chapter 10: section 7)

On the free market[...]There would[...]be copyright for any inventor or creator who made use of it, and this copyright would be per*petual, not limited to a certain number of years.

Indeed as do I, Rothbard saw any infringement on copyright as theft:

​

. Let us consider copyright. A man writes a book or composes music. When he publishes the book or sheet of music, he imprints on the first page the word “copyright.” This indicates that any man who agrees to purchase this product also agrees as part of the exchange not to recopy or reproduce this work for sale. In other words, the author does not sell his property out*right to the buyer; he sells it on condition that the buyer not reproduce it for sale. Since the buyer does not buy the property outright, but only on this condition, any infringement of the con*tract by him or a subsequent buyer is implicit theft and would be treated accordingly on the free market. The copyright is there*fore a logical device of property right on the free market.

​

Thus, unless permission has been specifically granted to post the video on youtube, there is a clear stream of libertarian scholarship holding that the posting is theft.

As for the remedies Ron Paul, or the RPC organization, have, they certainly can pursue the thieves in a court of law. Also as I understand it, if youtube is contacted they may pull a video if they consider it in violation of copyright. It will have to be up to Ron Paul or the RPC organization to determine if it is worth the effort to use either of these remedies.

It is held in parts of the anti-IP community that because it is difficult to enforce intellectual property rights law that IP law should be wiped off the books. This is simply central planning. It should be left to every victim of theft whether or not he wants to pursue damages, not some overseers who want to establish the limits for everyone on the ability to pursue damages. How is that libertarian?

As for the RPC business model, itself, obviously to the degree that daily broadcasts are pirated and published on youtube, RPC will lose revenue. It will have to be up to RP and the RPC organization to determine if it is worthwhile to continue production if revenues are not high enough because of pirating and if it is difficult to protect against piracy. It may be that the revenue loss is not that great and RP decides to continue the channel or RP may decide to change the model to make RPC, say, advertiser supported.

All these are decisions that will have to be made by RP and the RPC organization. That this decision making will have to be made also erases the the idea advanced by anti-IP advocates that there is no harm done by copying material, because the original creator of the material still has his original copy. We can see the weakness in that argument most clearly in this discussion about RPC. Great damage to RPC can be done by reproducing the broadcasts. It can create a great fall off in revenue, possibly to the point where the channel will have to be shutdown.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2013/08/will-ron-paul-channel-get-crushed.html

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

Ron Paul should force them to take it down. If he wanted to post free previews, he would do so. I agree that the youtube videos of the broadcast are a copyright violation. Honestly, I am surprised that they have been up as long as they have.

 

[cajuncocoa]

I agree with you on this rare occasion, Lou. I hope he does. Free previews is a good idea as well; it would allow us to send something to those who aren't on board yet.

 

[KingNothing]

Ron Paul should force them to take it down. If he wanted to post free previews, he would do so. I agree that the youtube videos of the broadcast are a copyright violation. Honestly, I am surprised that they have been up as long as they have.

I would leave them up if I were Ron to drum up interest in his show, and make the show free of charge. Once viewership reached a certain level, he'd be making more money from advertising than he ever could via fees. And that's to say nothing about the fact that he's far more likely to get awesome guests if he has a wide audience.

 

[TonySutton]

RP needs to hire an effective social media person. Someone had TheRonPaulChannel on youtube which has links to ronpaul(dot)com and ronpaulchannel.com

They need to work with social media outlets to push ron paul channel and drive membership. An organized campaign would give shortened sneak peak videos linked back to the website. This is not rocket science

 

[angelatc]

I do not see Glenn Becks broadcasts on YouTube. Ron should have them take it down, but he might be slow in pulling the trigger because of the backlash over the fee for the channel. But he might be already filing the forms.

 

[angelatc]

RP needs to hire an effective social media person. Someone had TheRonPaulChannel on youtube which has links to ronpaul(dot)com and ronpaulchannel.com

They need to work with social media outlets to push ron paul channel and drive membership. An organized campaign would give shortened sneak peak videos linked back to the website. This is not rocket science

If he had hired a decent marketing director, the fee would not be as much of a shock as it seemed to be. Some things never change.

 

[ctiger2]

They should've done the first episode as a freebie so people can see what they'd get. What I'd do is post them 1-2 weeks later on Ron's official tube channel after they air on his ronpaulchannel. That way everyone could eventually see them but paying people would get 1-2 week lead. Which I'd think would be fair. Posting them the day after on some random person's tube is undermining.

 

[mczerone]

RP's channel will fail, and we can brainstorm better ways to produce it/market it.

But Wenzel is small-minded about the IP issue, and his take on it here only leads to further scarcifying RP's message.

It is held in parts of the anti-IP community that because it is difficult to enforce intellectual property rights law that IP law should be wiped off the books. This is simply central planning. It should be left to every victim of theft whether or not he wants to pursue damages, not some overseers who want to establish the limits for everyone on the ability to pursue damages. How is that libertarian?

Way to straw-man. The "difficult to enforce" argument is one of the bottom tools in the bucket of the anti-IP position, and it's not even a positive argument for their position, it's simply a critique of the alternative (a way that pro-IP positions fail).

It seems that Wenzel is just arguing that there are contractual rights to "IP" - and that specific relationships must exist for enforcement. And then they have to find a court to enforce their claims.


In all, the libertarian-scholars need to stop arguing about what the law would be, and start focusing on arguing for a method for discovering the best laws: competing courts operating on fixed fees and subscriptions to foster an environment where good decisions are rewarded and bad decisions are punished by the market for justice.

I'd bet that the anti-IP people and Robert Wenzel could agree that a service like iTunes could agree with content producers not to host content that are "copies" (covers/samples/rip-offs) of currently available content; and the costs of enforcement levels could be discovered through market forces. Now where they'd disagree is if a 3rd party host could offer those rip-offs. Maybe they could, maybe they couldn't. WE DON'T KNOW HOW THE MARKET WILL DECIDE. Presumably the justice orgs would just shrug these off as low-class rip-off markets and the buyers would know they're risking getting "bad" products by shopping outside established hosts. And (to tie this back into Wenzel's straw-man argument) creators would recognize that it's not worth the cost to go around playing whack-a-mole with any number of alternative hosting sites that may or may not be hurting their economic position.

In the OP case, RP isn't marketing his product to spread his message and maximize the profits in the long run - he seems to be milking his die-hard supporters for some petty cash to fund his retirement without eating into his savings. He might be planning to just run this station for another 3-5 years until he's ready to fade into his final days with his family.

If he's really interested in spreading the liberty message, he should be giving away most of the content for free. He should not care about the repeated sharing of the videos. He should get youtube ad revenue if he wants to keep costs covered, and ask for donations at the end of each episode, or an Amazon affiliate program, or selling value-added products through the show (e.g. autographed books from his collection or his guests, DRM protected bonus content, or tie-ins to live events).

As it stands now, this production fits one of the two standard operating procedures evident from RP's brand: (1) absolute incompetence in marketing, financial management, employee oversight, and concern for broad-appeal, or (2) only caring about growing RP's personal/family net worth by taking money from the gullible and fervent supporters who view him as a messiah.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

I agree with you on this rare occasion, Lou. I hope he does. Free previews is a good idea as well; it would allow us to send something to those who aren't on board yet.

You need content though to have a free preview. One interview, a trailer and a tour of the studio isn't much to sell to someone. If it were my business, I would have produced a ton of content prior to the launch.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

I would leave them up if I were Ron to drum up interest in his show, and make the show free of charge. Once viewership reached a certain level, he'd be making more money from advertising than he ever could via fees. And that's to say nothing about the fact that he's far more likely to get awesome guests if he has a wide audience.

See my free preview comment above. I think that would have been a better option.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

Another thought is why didn't they offer a 1 mo / 6 mo / 12 mo option with the 6 & 12 being cash up front and discounted. They could then use the revenue for advertising and marketing.

 

[FSP-Rebel]

RP's channel will fail, and we can brainstorm better ways to produce it/market it.

As it stands now, this production fits one of the two standard operating procedures evident from RP's brand: (1) absolute incompetence in marketing, financial management, employee oversight, and concern for broad-appeal, or (2) only caring about growing RP's personal/family net worth by taking money from the gullible and fervent supporters who view him as a messiah.

Exactly what I have been pondering. He needs to stop using his name for this channel or his peace and prosperity institute as this will yield limited appeal. Thus, it will stay as a money-only generating outfit w/ little to no expansion in spreading the message. Good job on your second assessment pointing out how some supporters can be viewed.

 

[FrankRep]

Lets see how Libertarians deal with Intellectual Property rights in real life.

This should be fun.

 

[Peace&Freedom]

RP's channel will fail, and we can brainstorm better ways to produce it/market it.

But Wenzel is small-minded about the IP issue, and his take on it here only leads to further scarcifying RP's message...

As it stands now, this production fits one of the two standard operating procedures evident from RP's brand: (1) absolute incompetence in marketing, financial management, employee oversight, and concern for broad-appeal, or (2) only caring about growing RP's personal/family net worth by taking money from the gullible and fervent supporters who view him as a messiah.

With Wenzel's mentality, we've certainly come a long ways from the grassroots, bottom up philosophy of handing out homemade DVDs, where nobody hassled over IP or otherwise bottlenecking getting the message out. We need a rebirth of that cool spirit, and less legaleze about take down orders and "follow the leader" top down directives.

 

[fisharmor]

RP's channel will fail, and we can brainstorm better ways to produce it/market it.

Here are some other winning ideas he could go with:

-Broadcast in analog on the VHF band.
-Create a serial to run prior to feature motion pictures.
-Pocket Flix. Remember this? It's catchin' on, I'm tellin' ya!
-Offer a free month of ice block delivery by horse-drawn wagon with a year's paid subscription.

 

[cajuncocoa]

Lets see how Libertarians deal with Intellectual Property rights in real life.

This should be fun.

Not all libertarians fall in lockstep on this issue. I believe in the protection of IP rights myself.

 

[cajuncocoa]

You need content though to have a free preview. One interview, a trailer and a tour of the studio isn't much to sell to someone. If it were my business, I would have produced a ton of content prior to the launch.

Have you ever seen a good movie trailer? If you know how to boil things down you could excerpt a 20 minute interview into a 30-second spot. It doesn't matter how much content he has, you take what's there and find a good teaser without giving the whole thing away.

 

[CaptLouAlbano]

Have you ever seen a good movie trailer? If you know how to boil things down you could excerpt a 20 minute interview into a 30-second spot. It doesn't matter how much content he has, you take what's there and find a good teaser without giving the whole thing away.

Oh I agree. I just mean in the sense that someone signs up and all they got in the site is one piece of content. Much easier to sell the product if he had say 50 hours of prerecorded content to start. They could have produced some lecture series, maybe licensed some videos from others, etc. Right now all they have is one interview which I can get on youtube, and when they do the next one, I'll probably be able to get that one too.

I like the concept of it all, just doesn't seem like they got anyone on the team who has produced this sort of thing before. We'll see though

 

[cajuncocoa]

Oh I agree. I just mean in the sense that someone signs up and all they got in the site is one piece of content. Much easier to sell the product if he had say 50 hours of prerecorded content to start. They could have produced some lecture series, maybe licensed some videos from others, etc. Right now all they have is one interview which I can get on youtube, and when they do the next one, I'll probably be able to get that one too.

I like the concept of it all, just doesn't seem like they got anyone on the team who has produced this sort of thing before. We'll see though

I agree, that would have been better. It's something sorely needed to help those of us in our quest to help to educate others to our cause.