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YouTube: The Next Napster or New Corporate Friend?
Since its launch in 2005, YouTube has surged in web popularity (one of the quickest hit sites in web history)...becoming a must-see watercooler destination for "viral videos". It's free to view, download and pass along to friends. Sound like another peer2peer model that got into trouble a few years ago? You remember them...the original Napster. Is YouTube just another example of the same file sharing model...only easier and more transparent?
YouTube is definitely hot, having spawned several new fresh video services (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.), but some critics wonder if the video sharing site is walking the same thin line as Napster, the first peer-to-peer file sharing service. We all know what happened there. RIAA and MPAA lawsuits. Congressional hearings. Metallica gets pissed off. Then Napster is banned and shut down.
Just as Napster made it easy for users to download free music, YouTube makes it easy to download free video. In its own way, it is a fresh (and better) version of 'America's Funniest Home Videos' combined with 'Entertainment Tonight' -- perfect for our short attention spans to give us a wide view into pop culture on the street level.
Often, the posted videos belong to copyright holders. YouTube doesn't police the site for copyrighted content, but it has adhered to requests from media companies to remove clips belonging to them (see NBC's demand to have SNL's "Lazy Sunday" parody pulled). YouTube hasn't been sued yet; in fact, many Hollywood studios have described YouTube as a "good corporate citizen." Which is interesting considering how content protection advocates were only 7 short years ago when it was still a dial-up world and not the high-speed world like today. Also curious is how corporate media masters apparently give YouTube a thumbs-up despite the abundance of pornographic material on the site.
Certainly a media trend worth watching to see how it plays out for long-term acceptibility.
Currently, YouTube users are posting 35,000 new videos daily at the site and watching more than 35 million videos per day...proof positive that high-speed broadband has demand and word-of-mouth watercooler talk has a new destination (and it's not on old TV, either). Viral video file sharing looks to be a long lasting media trend.
As long as YouTube's marketing/promotional value remains higher than content owner's concern for cash royalities, YouTube (and the rest) will be around much longer than the original Napster. February's failed Perfect 10 court ruling protecting Google's caching of search images only reinforces YouTube's positive position.
Makes you wonder...will YouTube get hit like Napster someday...will it remain best buds with corporate media...or is it neither/something else? We'll be watching...
related C|net article here
related AP article here
posted by Unknown @ Tuesday, April 11, 2006,
