Swooning over Louis CK content licensing

Louis CK has a new show which I have started watching, “Horace and Pete”. I love his licensing model for the show. You can stream it or download episodes once you have paid for them. HD or SD, your choice. He has a very simple license:

You can download the video here. Once you’ve got it, it’s yours to do with as you like: sync it to your Zune, stream it over wi-fi to your spouse, burn it to DVD, etc.

Sure, there is copyright law involved here with its presumptions but this is how content should be released. People should be able to pay a reasonable amount of money for content they want to watch or listen to. Then, once they have paid, they should be able to watch or listen to it on whichever device they want.

The only restriction should be not to re-sell or re-share it (well, unless the content creator decides to embrace Creative Commons licensing or something similarly permissive – which works too).

Instead the Entertainment Industry opted for a business model that just about discourages people from buying its products by using stupid geographical and format restrictions. Imagine if the industry gave everyone an easy option to buy and download whatever they wanted to watch or listen to and consume that on whichever device they wanted? Boy, if they did that, the industry may just thrive.

In the meantime, I’m a big fan of people like Louis CK who actively works to make it easier for people to buy their content.

Image credit: Pixabay