They both had free content available online that made them money, cash money, money!

YOUNG MOOLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Mashable wrote an interesting piece the other day about Monty Python's YouTube Channel. If you haven't seen it, go! Everything is available for free. There's a selection of their top clips as well as a darling pitch for viewers to go and buy their dvds.

Surprise, surprise...

It's working.

Sales of Monty Python DVDs have climbed to No. 2 on Amazon's Movies and TV Bestsellers list. How can this be when the content is free?

Thank YouTube's "Click to Buy". If you haven't already seen it, watch the video I posted and wait for the little bubble to pop up inviting you to buy some movies. This is an option that was previously only available to YouTube partners to include on their English video, however, as of January 21, 2009, YouTube has expanded the functionality to support links to the iTunes store for German, Spain, and Netherlands users.

The good thing is, we are starting to see proof that free content can result in sales of product. While free redistribution of copyrighted materials is a hot topic for the entertainment industry, they will have to choose. I agree with Stan at Mashable, who put it nicely, "you can’t control, monitor and bully users on the ISP level, and reap benefits from free redistribution of content at the same time. Sooner or later, the entertainment industry will have to choose."

Truth is, the entertainment industry is trying to have it both ways! No surprise there! Youtube partners will now be able to leverage the Content ID system. This will allow partners to identify user content that matches their own and to automatically insert the "Click to Buy" overlays.

Apparently, YouTube just has not done enough to monetize their site - so let's make it increasingly annoying for users.

Because everyone fucking loves pop ups.