TubeYa
Marc Cuban wrote a nice riff on YouTube
He's right - the things that have made YouTube so successful are the simple fact that anyone can upload a video, for free, and embed it into their own website, for free. Or, another way to say it: FREE BANDWIDTH!!!
The other point he makes is that when you open the floodgates, you're bound to attract people who are going to spread copywritten works. It's inevitable.
And now, Warner wants to get in the game and play nice with YouTube, clearly trying to capitalize on the mania and make some cash while they can.
If this all smells a little too familiar, it is.
Beyond the free bandwidth and copywrite violations, there's also a couple other things that made YouTube so popular. It was free. Yes, I know, it's still free, but by free I mean it wasn't really capitalized on. It was a free-for-all. Anyone could post anything and you never quite knew what you were going to get. The coming commercialism of the Tube will likely create an expected sense of direct 'monetization' which has the repeated effect of sucking the life out of anything enjoyable on the internet.
This whole situation also underscores the online mob mentality. It's the wild west, and as soon as someone throws up an outpost where it's all you can eat for $0.00, people come and feast...or maybe like locusts, they feed and move on to the next great free for all buffet on the web's eternal frontier. What will be the next thing? Free money if you just visit our page? "We'll split our ad revenue with you, the reader!"
Would it really be so ridiculous if YouTube created a system where a video owner could, for a monthly fee, upload their movies, control the rights (distribute for free, charge to watch, sell ads/split profits) while maintaining complete and total legal copyrights and actually embracing the nature of the artists creating the videos and giving them a place online where their works could be viewed and supported? Isn't that what Google and iTunes are doing, sorta?
We have built up the notion that everything online should be free, to everyone, all the time. That it has created this cycle of trying to aggregate as many eyeballs as possible so you can show them distracting ads (i know, i'm also often guilty)
Back in the hay-day of the boom, we used to joke about the South Park episode featuring the underpants gnomes"
Step 1: Collect the Underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit
Are we seeing the same patterns again? The thing we have to remember is that unless people are actually buying those things then it's just one big revolving pyramid scheme of AdnonSense. And isn't everything supposed to be free anyway?
---
By the way, i spent a good 1/2 hour on Google Video and YouTube tonight trying to find something enjoyable to watch. There really isn't too much there, except maybe stuff like this, and I don't quite understand what all the fuss is really about.
It's really just another evolution of America's Funniest (stupidest) home videos and Reality TV...on demand. Where's the Idol edge to it? Why can't I vote and get someone thrown off of the Internet? Oh...wait, there it is
I think it will be a long time before this amateur content replaces Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and Keith Olbermann...
good night, and good luck ;)
He's right - the things that have made YouTube so successful are the simple fact that anyone can upload a video, for free, and embed it into their own website, for free. Or, another way to say it: FREE BANDWIDTH!!!
The other point he makes is that when you open the floodgates, you're bound to attract people who are going to spread copywritten works. It's inevitable.
And now, Warner wants to get in the game and play nice with YouTube, clearly trying to capitalize on the mania and make some cash while they can.
If this all smells a little too familiar, it is.
Beyond the free bandwidth and copywrite violations, there's also a couple other things that made YouTube so popular. It was free. Yes, I know, it's still free, but by free I mean it wasn't really capitalized on. It was a free-for-all. Anyone could post anything and you never quite knew what you were going to get. The coming commercialism of the Tube will likely create an expected sense of direct 'monetization' which has the repeated effect of sucking the life out of anything enjoyable on the internet.
This whole situation also underscores the online mob mentality. It's the wild west, and as soon as someone throws up an outpost where it's all you can eat for $0.00, people come and feast...or maybe like locusts, they feed and move on to the next great free for all buffet on the web's eternal frontier. What will be the next thing? Free money if you just visit our page? "We'll split our ad revenue with you, the reader!"
Would it really be so ridiculous if YouTube created a system where a video owner could, for a monthly fee, upload their movies, control the rights (distribute for free, charge to watch, sell ads/split profits) while maintaining complete and total legal copyrights and actually embracing the nature of the artists creating the videos and giving them a place online where their works could be viewed and supported? Isn't that what Google and iTunes are doing, sorta?
We have built up the notion that everything online should be free, to everyone, all the time. That it has created this cycle of trying to aggregate as many eyeballs as possible so you can show them distracting ads (i know, i'm also often guilty)
Back in the hay-day of the boom, we used to joke about the South Park episode featuring the underpants gnomes"
Step 1: Collect the Underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit
Are we seeing the same patterns again? The thing we have to remember is that unless people are actually buying those things then it's just one big revolving pyramid scheme of AdnonSense. And isn't everything supposed to be free anyway?
---
By the way, i spent a good 1/2 hour on Google Video and YouTube tonight trying to find something enjoyable to watch. There really isn't too much there, except maybe stuff like this, and I don't quite understand what all the fuss is really about.
It's really just another evolution of America's Funniest (stupidest) home videos and Reality TV...on demand. Where's the Idol edge to it? Why can't I vote and get someone thrown off of the Internet? Oh...wait, there it is
I think it will be a long time before this amateur content replaces Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert and Keith Olbermann...
good night, and good luck ;)
posted by Andy at
10:56 PM
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