Paramount is out with a new online service that lets customers purchase clips from films. As this New York Times article notes, it's initially aimed at advertisers and marketers who want to use the clips in campaigns. Consumers will be let in on the action later.

I have a couple thoughts on this:

1. Kudos to Paramount for giving this a shot. It certainly can't hurt, and we need all the experimentation we can get.

2. I think this is a fantastic opportunity to test good-better-best quality levels. I've long thought there's a way to service different segments of the audience through resolution, features and convenience.

For example, writers, bloggers and others who simply want to reference a clip could grab a lower-resolution version for free (as many already do through YouTube). This boosts awareness and creates branding opportunities for the content provider.

One sidenote: The Times piece suggests folks on the low end -- consumers, mostly -- may have to pay a low per-clip fee. That's the wrong move. These aren't ringtones. Ringtones are a public expression of personality linked to an always-on, always-available device. Embeddable movie clips require placement within media forms, be it a website or a DVD. The all-important personality element is muted. I'm not going to shell out cash if that so-bad-it's-good movie clip only broadcasts my ironic sense of humor to a limited audience. I need exposure, dammit!

But I digress ...

Moving up the scale, companies that want to aggregate clips or make them available as part of another content product could pay a reasonable amount (likely a flat rate for a certain number of clips) and gain access to DVD-quality content. I can see utility here for the education world. A one-stop shop for clips could take a lot of the pain out of the copyright quagmire law-abiding teachers currently face.

On the high end, marketers and advertisers who need full-resolution (1080p, if available) and the absence of co-branding would pay a premium.

What won't work is an "everyone must pay" declaration. I'm assuming that since this got written up in the Times, and given that a consumer option is part of the longer-term gameplan, Paramount wants this to be more than a back-channel marketers' tool. Otherwise, why publicize it? This is clearly a public-facing product. As such, it needs to properly service the unique needs of all audience segments.

Reports suggest Microsoft is courting European publishers for some sort of Bing-based news thing. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch continues to shake his fist at Google. Cory Doctorow connects the potential dots at Boing Boing:

So here's what I think it going on. Murdoch has no intention of shutting down search-engine traffic to his sites, but he's still having lurid fantasies inspired by the momentary insanity that caused Google to pay him for the exclusive right to index MySpace (thus momentarily rendering MySpace a visionary business-move instead of a ten-minutes-behind-the-curve cash-dump).

So what he's hoping is that a second-tier search engine like Bing or Ask (or, better yet, some search tool you've never heard of that just got $50MM in venture capital) will give him half a year's operating budget in exchange for a competitive advantage over Google.

Toss in the growing idea that Twitter, Facebook and other recommendation-based results are now more important than Google traffic and we've got a very interesting set of signals.

According to the New York Times, the Associated Press is once again rattling its saber over use of its content by Web sites. A similar soap opera played out last summer:

newspaper revenue tanks > AP shakes fist at pesky Interweb > bloggers get pissed > nothing happens

But read deeper into the Times piece and you'll see this latest flare up is different because the AP actually has a point: sites with SEO mojo that grab AP content and pass it off in their own wrappers do undermine the AP's core mission of providing fast, trustworthy information. The AP relies on reputation to justify its existence, so it wants credit where credit is due. I can't argue with that.

This reasonable complaint is, unfortunately, buried beneath the AP's history of misguided lawsuits, wacky licensing, and its penchant for tough-guy posturing. What the organization needs is an even-tempered communicator (the anti-Beale). Someone who can quell Internet angst by drawing a straight line between the AP's original content and the ever-expanding legion of aggregators, bloggers and Tweeters. The organization needs to note -- consistently and with great fervor -- that it's not hunting bloggers; that its beef isn't with excerpting; and that it encourages fair use of its content. Only then will the AP's real message get through.

Hand-Picked Related Links

• Some questions related to Google News and the Associated Press (Official Google Blog)
• AP launches campaign against Internet "misappropriation" (Ars Technica)
• Some Suggestions For The AP, Care Of The Music Industry (paidContent.org)
• Some Papers in Financial Trouble Are Leaving the A.P. to Cut Costs (New York Times)