All I wanted to do was share my appreciation for a microscopic, megalomaniacal cartoon character.

Plankton, via Wikipedia

That would be Plankton, the tiny nemesis of Mr. Krabs on the Nickelodeon show SpongeBob Squarepants. He’s the classic self proclaimed Evil Genius, who’s brilliant plans are inevitably thwarted by the innocent bumbling of SpongeBob. His over-the-top delusions of self-importance crack me up, but he’s also one of those acts that has to been seen to be appreciated. Merely describing him (as, um, I’m doing here) doesn’t do him justice.

So when a colleague of mine asked about the Plankton stuffed animal who sits on one of the video monitors in our main edit suite, I fired up YouTube, hoping to quickly show him a collection of best-of-Plankton clips.

I was out of luck.

Turns out there’s very little SpongeBob content on YouTube, and virtually all of it is low quality, and doesn’t stay up for long. Viacom, Nick’s parent company, has famously sued Google, who owns YouTube, claiming copyright infringement because, they claim, YouTube isn’t aggressive enough in deleting Viacom’s content that users have uploaded to the service.

Let me be clear, here, that I agree that Viacom has a right to demand that Google remove their content from YouTube. Turns out they do have ad-supported clips on their own web site, and I certainly could have purchased a Spongebob DVD collection, or even have purchased and downloaded episodes from iTunes. They own the content, and if they want to keep fans from uploading clips to YouTube, that’s their right.

But in this case, I think it’s a stupid, short-sighted thing to do.

Here I was, a huge fan of Viacom’s product, eager to share my enthusiasm with a friend who was unfamiliar with the show. And in that moment of shared enthusiasm, we went searching for some short samples of the show on the world’s second largest search engine, and failed.  Excitement shifted to frustration, and eventually we just gave up. The “Oh, you have got to see this!” moment passed. And my friend still doesn’t really “get” all the fuss I made about Plankton.

That’s a missed opportunity for Viacom. They had a chance to win a new fan, someone who was being led to their content by someone they trust, which is one of the most powerful and effective ways to win new viewers. Why would they want to get in the way of that?

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far, far away, Lucasfilm takes a decidedly different approach.

Check out this feature length documentary, Star Wars Begins -

Yep, that’s the whole movie, enhanced with informational tidbits, deleted scenes and other content that Star Wars junkies like me can’t get enough of. (There are versions for Empire and Jedi, too.)

An argument can be made that since this a documentary it falls under fair use, but there’s enough Star Wars related content on YouTube to safely conclude that Lucasfilm has a pretty liberal policy toward the use of their content. It seems that as long as you’re not attempting to profit, they pretty much leave you alone.

This strengthens their relationship with fans. I’ve seen the original Star Wars trilogy hundred of times, practically have the films memorized, and yet I spent seven or eight hours watching these videos on YouTube. (Go ahead, roll your eyes.) Fan-created content like this helps keep the films relevant for long-time fans. (And yes, I’ll be buying the BluRay editions when they come out.)

I wonder how much of a difference it makes that Viacom is a publicly traded company, and that Lucasfilm is privately owned and run by the person who actually created the content?

What do you think? Is a company like Viacom ultimately hurting themselves by clutching their content so tightly? Is Lucasfilm being foolish, allowing the free use of so much of their content? Who’s doing a better job building long-term fans, and which philosophy will work best in the future?