The "Digital Licensing" Internext seminar on Monday raised several concerns among content producers who were skeptical about licensing their video content to webmasters for online distribution.
The well-attended discussion was moderated by AVN Online's Farley Cahen, who conducted a panel including Brickhouse Mobile founder Blake Fayling, TheContentStore owner Jonathan Silverstein, and pay-per-view/video-on-demand supplier Marc Bruder.
After each of the panelists introduced himself, Cahen got the ball rolling by stating that the two most important issues in regard to digital licensing are "getting content to websites and the type of content you're going to produce."
Fayling encouraged webmasters to "find solutions to mobilize your content," while the others suggested shooting both hardcore and softcore content at the same time to maximize distribution opportunities. "You really have to consider the cable version, softcore, and hardcore versions, making content for different venues," Bruder said. "[Try and] attract each one of these markets to maximize your content. It's important to produce the right content for the platforms that we market to."
Meanwhile, Silverstein stressed the importance of entering into online distribution deals with companies that know what they are doing. "The most important thing is to make sure all your Is are dotted and your Ts are crossed," he offered. "Work with reputable companies who do their paperwork."
For his part, Fayling added, "If there are answers to your questions that you're not getting, you need to ask yourself why that is."
"Traffic is everything," Silverstein went on to say. "If you can attract eyes to your site, that's the creation of a brand."
Not everybody in the audience was convinced, however. One webmaster wondered aloud why he should allow someone else to take a percentage of money off his content when he could keep all the money by doing it himself.
"It creates viewer loyalty," Silverstein countered. "And that's the name of the game."
