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YouTube's Big Act: It's Not Cute Anymore, says Ad Age
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Where is YouTube going? It's been a busy couple weeks for the embattled Google acquisition and all-around new-media juggernaut. In one of the most incisive (and fun to read) observations about YouTube's clashes with Old Media, Ad Age's Simon Dumenco says it's entirely their fault. "You've been screwing everything up lately," he writes like a rejected girlfriend. "You have to start acting like a grown-up. It's not cute anymore."
Using one of a few clever analogies, Dumenco writes in his column that YouTube is like a restaurant with a sign that reads, "FREE HORS D'OEUVRES, ALL YOU CAN EAT" -- only you don't have your own kitchen; you just steal much of your best food from other restaurants (or, rather, the food falls off of trucks, and your patrons bring it all in, while your waiters look the other way)."
Dumenco's central point is that YouTube has gotten where it is today largely through its vast collection of copyrighted material, and basically, its vast flouting of piracy laws. In respect to 100,000 Viacom clips recently removed from YouTube, Dumenco writes, "They're not your freaking egg rolls to serve! You don't even know how to make egg rolls!"
That may be the case, but if anything has shown that piracy rules might be bendable, it's the power of YouTube. Will "Big (Old) Media," as Dumenco writes, be able to keep its egg roles protected in the new media age, or will YouTube and its sister sites forever break down the glass barriers of the all-you-can-eat buffet bar? Only time, and the people's appetite, will tell.
The media business in it’s infancy once again
Copyrights should be protected, but the question is how? The was a time in the analog days of yore, that this could be accomplished. Now with the speed of light distribution, it is a very hard animal to keep caged.
As soon a YouTube became a big media protectorate, they were vulnerable to common law. And that makes room for the next radial entrepreneur. As has been the case since Gutenberg. Just ask the old time scribes.
Bob Sacks
www.bosacks.com
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