CSI Letting Go with Keppler
CSI has lost Grissom for a couple of months and has a new guy in town – Keppler. To support the new character, up pops a new site called Who Is Keppler. So here, CBS have let go in 2 ways; first it’s built on Ning and secondly, look what they are allowing with the videos.
The site has a little background on the character but the main functionality is uploading videos, either direct from a file or by linking through to Google Video or YouTube. It has all the usual bits and pieices – comments, ratings, favourites etc.
There’s a lot of clips from CBS, but the main point of it is to collect videos from fans about CSI. This means favourite clips, remixes to music, homages to characters. All the elements that maight have had CBS pulling the videos down a year or so ago are now being encourage. Come be a fan the site says, show us what you live, show us your creativity and join in with a community of like-minded people. They’re not pushing IP rights here, they’re joining in with what people are already doing and celebrating it.
An interesting step forward, a entertainment company that does not sit in the ‘use this and we’ll sue you’ camp nor the ‘we know you do it, we can’t stop it but we don’t condone it’ but moves right up to ‘join in the fun, acknowledge we own it but do what you can and share it with us’.
There’s still risks involved in this for CBS. A fair few of the videos uploaded are cut to music, which is definitely not owned by the parties involved. There’s also the internet-age creative risk of somebody cutting something to make a new story, seeing something on the show that resembles it and deciding to sue CBS. (Hence many writers make it plain they never read unsolicited submissions for this vary reason).
CBS are on the edge of the spectrum when it comes to UGC and IP, let’s hope we see a few more examples.
I loved this article. Especially because I am a CSI fan and I tend to do some research on the show to figure things out. A new componant to this Keppler thing is that cbs has a hotline to call each week where you get tips about the character ((609) 910-3200 ) whic plays into the whole viral aspect of the campaign. Anyhow I thought it was a very interesting way of involving the audience again.