Dec 28 2006
Was 2006 “The Year of YouTube”?
Entangled on the huge morass of the annual "year-end reviews" is this snippet from Tony Hung at The Blog Herald, discussing the phenomena of online video that has occurred over the past year. He notes that:
While privacy advocates complain that making everyone a video publisher is a quick ticket to privacy disasters, I think the flip side is that it creates a sense of accountability on behalf of people who need it the most — politicians. And they need to be aware that you can’t change the nature of this ‘reality’ any more either. More than blog postings, viral video has the potential to circle the world many times over, and its just in its infancy.
However, the phenomena does not live in a vacuum. And what sounds good in theory does not always present itself in the real world. Just look at what has occurred with respect to YouTube's own internal policies since being purchased earlier this year. Not everyone is Craig Newmark, including me.
As an attorney, one of the biggest issues I see with this type of public hosting of proprietary media is the one the RIAA has been facing for years - the unauthorized use and/or copying of content that has been made public (in this case, on YouTube and others) under a proprietary license. In other words, the price for posting your videos for the world to see is that you essentially lose your rights to capitalize on that video, if possible (unless you chose to remove it). It's a double-edged sword.
It will be interesting to see if the full force of the "digital rights management" measures, such as those the recording industry has pushed for, will eventually make their way into the arena of "user-generated" media as well. For now, most users seem content to simply get their voice heard, but how long will that last when those same users attempt to make money off of their content?
Don't get me wrong, I think there can be, and NEEDS needs to be, a happy balance struck between getting paid for practicing your craft while allowing your fans the ability to enjoy same relatively unfettered. If not, we'll continue to be stuck in the shallow end of the "arts" gene pool - with Britteny, Kevin and Jessica.
If anyone knows anything more about this issue, please let me know. I'm curious to see if anyone has already addressed the matter in further detail.
