as far as owning rights… many moons ago I was involved in producing a state wide battle of the bands the way we use to do it offline and there were TV production issue with the same type of issues…. the same thing here…whoever distributes the work usually ends up with the lion share of control.

Really though, its true. Just like how television news divisions are hyping up citizen journalism (because of their shrinking budgets), so are every other part of MSM trying to have the public do the heavy lifting– then buying the product!

To wit, I recently spoke with a successful comedian here in New York about this problem. She was about to sign a TV pilot deal with a network when the network did an about face and asked her to post her material online on her own web site as a “trial run.”

There’s an unfortunately blurry line between using the Web for inspiration and talent, and using it as a slave labor farm team to offset production costs and increase profits.

It is geared toward student filmmakers, so there’s that. But now it turns out there’s “Another Freakin’ Green Screen Contest” starring Modest Mouse, excuse me for being a bit cynical.

They just put out their first major label release, but they can’t afford to hire an actual filmmaker?

The Optimist View is that after going through all of this work for the band, that the 15yr old gets inspired to keep creating stuffs for themselves. It may be a jumpstart to someone becoming a powerful creator of video on the Interwebs. And that’s pretty darn cool.