WARNING: Opinionated Editorial Ahead

Throughout our net-centric world, the conventional wisdom is that a line can be drawn; one that separates those 'who get it' from those who don't. When it comes to a site like YouTube, that dialog often concludes with some muttering about why every media conglomerate must turn over their content to the portal to remain relevant to the viewer's life.

The first thing wrong with that conclusion is that it assumes that the portal somehow owns the viewer. I don't know about you, but I don't think that YouTube, Viacom, Comcast, Microsoft, or anyone owns me. No, the only function any of those media companies provide is that they are supposed to make it easier for me to find quality stuff to watch.

The second thing wrong is that the conventional wisdom conveniently forgets about the idea of property rights. Namely, when you own something, you get to decide what to do with it - even if that idea is stupid. Many of my neighbors believe that it is a waste for me not to wash my convertible every week and make it shine. But guess what, I don't care!

But what do you make of the recent Viacom/YouTube spat? Most of the opinions I read criticized Viacom for not getting it right; inferring that some metaphysical justice would teach them a hard lesson. In this warped value system, YouTube owns the viewers and Viacom is the evil empire that is turning its back on its audience.

But what really happened? Is Viacom ready to cry Uncle? Is YouTube's stature so huge now that everyone else is ready to bow down before them? No.

In fact, Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman said his company is better off after requesting that all its copyrighted content be removed from YouTube. It turns out that once the clips were taken down Viacom has been able to build traffic on its own Web sites, yielding a financial gain the YouTube postings didn't allow.

I could rattle on about the reality of the advertising market and why that statement is true. Instead, let's just note that YouTube does not own the viewer. And it does not take a great leap of imagination to understand that if you want to see Jon Stewart and cannot watch it on YouTube, you can very easily surf over to http://www.comedycentral.com/.

So tell me again, who doesn't get it?