Warren Ellis has some interesting comments about the YouTube purchase:
[W]hat happened to all those threats to sue YouTube? There’s a fair chance back channels were opened via which YouTube could whisper, “don’t do that, something huge is gonna happen soon, here’s a few million in equity, trust us, we can afford it.” That’s speculation, obviously — though, equally obviously, Universal and the like were somehow sedated in recent months. What isn’t speculation is the observation that YouTube is a site that got its profile by presenting lifted copyrighted material — and now it’s been valued at 1.65 BILLION dollars. If you don’t think everyone and their wife is now going to start suing Google for illegally broadcasting copyrighted material, you’re insane. You’re also insane if you think the companies who weren’t somehow placated by YouTube into not destroying them a few months ago didn’t already have suits prepared and in the drawer waiting for the exact second this was announced.
It will be very interesting to see if the lawsuits will indeed start rolling. Fortunately Google has deep packets for settlements and if they diligently remove all copyrighted material upon lawyergram per DMCA rules they should be able to stay in business. After all, Google video did.
What is more interesting to me is how this will affect the searchable Video market. Up until now YouTube dominated this niche, with Google in modest 2nd place, and a host of small copycat services trailing far behind. Now that the two major players belong to the same company will the market slowly start stagnating due to the lack of competition? Has Google reached a critical mass that will allow them to maintain near-monopoly and suppress all competition?
[tags]google, youtube, video, online video, youtube purchase, warren ellis[/tags]
It is my understanding that copywrighted content is allowed on youtube because they will give a cut of the ad revenue to the company that produced it.
Google has been trying to give all companies the same deal, however Comedy Central (or the parrent company) recently declined the agreement because they thought that their content was drawing more viewers, so they should get a better piece of the pie. Therefore, Colbert and Daily Show videos have begun disapearing from Youtube.
Nope, they don’t. Youtube is all user submitted content and there is no easy way to distinguish a Colbert Report clip from say a clip of me pretending to be Colbert. Especially if I label my video to say it is a genuine Colbert Report clip.
Youtube has no way of knowing how many of it’s clips belong to Comedy Central so there is no way for them to calculate how big of a cut do they owe them, or who is eligible for the cut.
I that Comedy Central got pissed that people go to Youtube to watch their clips, instead of using their crappy website with 3-4 “official” clips per show. I think one of the dumb executives just developed a traffic envy:
“If youtube didn’t have Colbert clips, all these millions of people that visit it would be looking at our website and clicking out ads instead”
Unfortunately the internet doesn’t work this way.