Stuart Cohen: SuperStock Ceased Content Distribution to China Over Tracking Failures
Stuart Cohen · Licensing Revenue Dropped Tenfold in 15 Years. Now What? · Jun 20, 2025 · at 10:31
Stuart Cohen, CEO of media licensing platform SuperStock, discusses intellectual property risks and cross-border licensing challenges in China.
0:00 / 0:41exact quote · 41.7s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Well, and of course the first place that our rights went away was when they were, when we had resellers for our content in China and those all spiraled out of control because you lost all ability to track any usages. When did that happen? It's probably about 10 years ago. And then. Sounds about right. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, we've stopped distributing anything to China, although it's a huge market, but yeah, it just wasn't right for us. Cause I really was not getting, there was no communication back and forth. I mean, there was a lot of turnover in the companies there and then all of a sudden they just forgot who you were, but they didn't give you your content back.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Stuart Cohen
Stuart Cohen: Crypto and Blockchain Have Produced History's Biggest Corruption
“And actually the biggest corruption Of all time has kind of come from the whole crypto blockchain world, you know?”
Stuart Cohen: Copyright Registration Is the Only Way to Ensure Content Ownership
“Well, in, in the case of say, if you're a photographer or videographer, or even a writer, you there's the U S copyright office. You could register your work. That's one way that that is the only way is the copyright laws.”
Stuart Cohen: Content Rights Holders Must Accept 20% Unauthorized Usage
“You're just figuring, look, you know, there's gonna be 20%, hopefully it's only 20% illegal usage, and you just gotta let it go.”
Stuart Cohen: Image Licensing Revenue Dropped Tenfold Over Fifteen Years
“No less than 300 dollars. Now you gotta think that each respective license will make no less than say 30 dollars. I mean, it's gone down tenfold easily in the last 15 years.”
Stuart Cohen: Large Ad Agencies and Corporations Refuse to License AI Content
“And I think a lot of the large advertising agencies
And or corporations will not use anything generated with AI.
They may come up with concepts on what they want to create using AI, but they will not license any AI content for that specific reason.”