What Louis C.K. Knows That Most Media Companies Don't

Until recently, comedian Louis C.K. was known mostly for a hilarious clip about how “everything is amazing but no one is happy,” which lampooned our inability to recognize our own good fortune and led to a TV show. Now he has become the new poster boy for the idea of selling content directly to fans, after the success of a video download he offered on his website without any digital-rights protection. And that success contains lessons for traditional media companies who continue to lock down their content and otherwise fail to take advantage of the social Web.

Louis C.K. (whose real name is Louis Szekely) announced earlier this week he was going to both live-stream a video of his latest stand-up routine—called Live at the Beacon Theater—and offer a download of the show for $5 on his website, without any copyright or digital-rights management (DRM) protection. Or as he described it: “No DRM, no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever.” However, the comedian asked his fans to please avoid uploading the video to BitTorrent or other file-sharing sites, saying he wanted to be able to continue such self-financed experiments in the future: