YouTube's fate rests on decade-old copyright law

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It really boggles the mind....

...that some little scrawny video screen at a resolution that would make people puke, with horrible image compression artifacts and which cannot easily be copied (except for a few hardy hackers) can initiate such legal action. It's really just a silly preview for the real full-resolution article.

What's at stake here is -of course- the very foundation onto which these media companies have forged their business plans, which is to force people to view commercials, and squeeze income out of everything they own because they can, and CONTROL. They're not used to relinquishing any of it.

As the Internet did with the music business, a revolution so wide in scope has already started that it will shake the very foundations of how these people have been to operate. That revolution is that content wants to be free, and that there is so much of it that it is impossible to police it adequately.

That content is also our culture, and although some will argue that it is just there for no other reason than to be monetized by its rightful owners, it appears downright silly that such a low-bandwidth representation of it would fall under the same guidelines as getting a copy of the real thing.

But having these little videos is also helping promote the content beyond the scope of these media giants' control, and things that become popular may not be the ones they WANT to become popular, or have invested resources into promoting.

If YouTube gets sued into oblivion, it will be easy enough for anyone to start another site that does exactly the same thing, and is located in a foreign country where no one can meddle and interfere with their servers.

Meanwhile, instead of playing positive, (and as was the case with the record labels during Napster) the media conglomerates have -for the most part-not made any effort to develop a digital strategy and offer all of their content easily for a small fee; when they do so, it will AGAIN be laden with so much commercials and silly DRM that one wonders at the sanity of these business tactics.

Information wants to be free.... Nothing you can do about it, save shutting down the Internet.

The saddest part about it is that the same Internet could be used to help them promote many of their ventures, but this would require a dynamism and coherent vision which is not possible for a public company traded on the stock market, looking for results in 3 months, not 3 years.

Like Prince said, 'Sign Of The Times' !!!

sg

Posted by: staygroovy   Posted on: 03/15/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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