R Rated Content Online

I don’t share many of Mark Cuban’s personal ideals. We have a lot in common and lot of interests that are mutually exclusive. That doesn’t mean I dislike him, I only really know him through friends and friends of friends. However, we seem to regularly come up with the same conclusions about entertainment industry trends. This is one of those rare occasion we find a meeting of the minds…

In his recent blog post on online video censorship issues (Link) He raises some good points about where the platform for genuinely mature adult-oriented entertainment is. We’re not talking about porn. We mean nudity, violence, language and themes that are common place in “grown up” content. Content that uses these devices to enhance the artistic message of the program (for lack of better word).

“You cant post that kind of material on Youtube , Myspace, Yahoo or AOL Video. So where will user generated content geared towards a more “mature” audience go ? Dailymotion ? Or does internet hosted video never get past PG – 13 ? Has internet hosted video evolved into the most censored medium of our generation ? If you really want to go beyond PG 13, do you have to host it yourself on your own website ?”

I know for a fact that hulu allows r-rated content, but it’s not user-generated. The same goes for another video portal that’s backed by a major media company coming in the next few weeks.(I’d say more, but I’m under contract)

I’m not really certain the wall-garden approach is the best for this type of content either. If there was a way that little collectives of filmmakers could band together to create “colonies” of mature video in the same way as some of comic friends, like Act-I-Vate, have done there might be a winning formula in that.