Here's an interesting perspective (excerpt from Reuters, via CNN, below) on everybody's current darling, YouTube.
While I am not an expert, I agree with Mark Cuban (here's his original blog post on the issue, titled The Coming Dramatic Decline Of YouTube). There's a lot of activity with respect to sharing and distributing content that has yet to be brought to heel, but that will be (in some form or other) when legislation and DRM (digital rights management) starts catching up with some of that activity.
That said .. I also believe that the fundamentals of intellectual property and digital rights legislation must be changed in significant ways so as to minimize the possibility that only a few large companies own almost all intellectual property. I don't think there's any option ... the digital infrastructure is there, the tools are available and cheap, and as Cuban points out ... "User-generated content is not going away".
When only a few large companies own the rights to most content, soporific or dead cultures are the eventual result ( a perspective examined in significant detail in the book Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law To Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, by Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, who is the creator of the concept of Creative Commons, and probably the world's leading expert and advocate for major change to existing IP and DRM legislation).
That may happen ... the last twenty years' evolution in the television business is not a stellar advertisement for hope ... but I tend to believe that some day effective compromises will have to be worked out that acknowledge, facilitate and support the ongoing popularity and use of much amateur content in commercial settings and ways.
Cuban: Only a 'moron' would buy YouTube
HDNet co-founder says video sharing outfit will eventually be "sued into oblivion" over copyright violations, points at limited advertising reach of YouTube.
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Billionaire investor and dot.com veteran Mark Cuban had harsh words for YouTube, the online site that lets people share video clips, saying only a "moron" would purchase the wildly popular start-up.
Cuban, co-founder of HDNet and owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, also said Thursday that YouTube would eventually be "sued into oblivion" because of copyright violations.
"They are just breaking the law," Cuban told a group of advertisers in New York. "The only reason it hasn't been sued yet is because there is nobody with big money to sue."
YouTube, based in San Mateo, Calif., specializes in serving up short videos created by everyday people. Its popularity, with more than 100 million video showings daily, has spurred speculation the firm will be sold or taken public.
But YouTube has also come under scrutiny because users often post copyrighted material, including music videos produced by well-established artists.[Snip ...]
In other remarks, meanwhile, the often-controversial Cuban also told advertisers that the reach of YouTube is limited, particularly when it comes to user-generated videos.
"User-generated content is not going away," he said. "But do you want your advertising dollars spent on a video of Aunt Jenny watching her niece tap dance?"
"Somebody puts up something really good and you get, what, 60,000 viewers?" Cuban added during the event at Advertising Week in New York.
YouTube now offers advertising through banner ads, promotions and sponsorships. It has said it plans to roll out a range of different advertising options over the coming year.
Cuban cautioned advertisers against investing heavily in so-called viral campaigns that are spread by users beyond their initial point of distribution on YouTube or other video sharing sites. But he touted opportunities to run commercials on high-definition television such as his HDNet network.
"What makes viral so special is it's so hard to do. It's so hard to plan. It's hard to stand out," he said, describing 99 percent of money advertisers spend on viral campaigns as "wasted."
Tags: YouTube, Mark Cuban, Creative Commons, Larry Lessig, intellectual property, DRM
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