The YouTube Curse

Filed in archive Internet TV on November 20, 2006

The Revolution May Be Briefly Televised
Do you remember the Saturday Night Live skit 'Lazy Sunday?' That was an early YouTube favorite. While no one much cared with the skit originally aired, someone put it up and people watched it often. Then, NBC said to take it down and made sure it was available only at their own site.

This is the YouTube curse: a clip gets a lot of viewers, immediately falling under scrutiny -- and if it's copyrighted material, the clip may well be removed, leaving useless links and frustrated viewers in its wake.

The Wall Street Journal wrote that "YouTube's rise has come with a built-in glass ceiling -- or maybe it's a cave roof studded with razor-sharp spikes."

Today YouTube and the major media companies have what can safely be called a complicated relationship. Networks put clips on YouTube hoping to generate buzz while asking for other clips to be taken down. Record labels look the other way as some videos become favorites, then ask that other videos be removed. Media companies talk darkly of $150,000 per copyright violated, then strike licensing deals.

As anyone who's ever been in a complicated relationship can tell you, they often grind along until all of a sudden they get simple -- by turning bad.

Content owners have rights, no matter how Neanderthal some may feel they are in exercising them. They have a right to defend their copyrights, even if that means passing up additional exposure for their content. They have the right to pursue their own content strategies, no matter how fragmented or inelegant or theoretical those may be. They have the right to do nothing with their content, even if that seems like a shame.

But having said all that, one can't help feeling that something is askew, that the legal black and white is missing something vitally important.