YouTube Anti-Piracy

YouTube Anti-Piracy Software Policy Draws Fire

By offering anti-piracy tools and helping companies to filter out some of their content YouTube is opening the door to their competition and hurting their reputation. What was great about YouTube when it first came out was it was the one stop shop for any short video from videoblogs to a Saturday Night Live scene. If you take away a good chunk of the copyrighted stuff will push people over to other websites that catalog video clips.

earlier this month Viacom demanded YouTube remove more than 100,000 Viacom video clips after the two sides failed to reach a distribution agreement. Some of these clips used music from other artists and content that Viacom does not own all the copyrights for so its hard to know for sure who they belong to in the first place.
MySpace Makes Anti-Piracy Play

Myspace can get away with this without seriously affecting their reputation because Myspace is more about personal profiles and networking then sharing music and video clips.

While the big media companies like Viacom may have a case about uploading clips of shows before they are aired on TV, once a clip is aired on TV or in a video blog it should be fair game for YouTube or any other site. Once it is out there you should be able to watch it or download it to watch as many times as you want.

The free-exchange of copyright material on the Internet may not be legal but its going to happen no matter what tools YouTube or MySpace uses. It is to easy to pirate these clips just like it is too easy to pirate music. they could create a site like iTunes that would provide an alternative of clips and entire episodes of TV show that is legal and of better quality.

demanding YouTube to remove clips will only hurt Viacom in the end. the easy it is to access clips of TV shows the more people are gong to get interest and watch the show.

YouTube is only helping out those companies that it has agreements with so they an still be considered
the one stop shop for video and make their partners happy.

what does this have to do with how we get our news? while TV brought us the 20 minute round up of whats going on right YouTube has allowed viewers to go right to the latest celebrity gossip, the latest terrorist attack, or the latest speech by Obama. the viewer does have to watch the nightly news they can put it together by watching different clips mixing a clip of CNN with a clip from the daily show.

In a YouTube world news is all about the spectacle, the latest shocking, strange, funny, or retarded event that has happened. Its the pictures of Birtney's balled head, its the video of the employees of the cartoon network who were suspected of placing the ads around Boston that were mistakened as bombs and cost there parent company millions talking about their hair in a news conference on FoxNews. Refusing to answer any serious questions of the media. YouTube - Boston Ad Prank Suspects Talk About ... Hair

The details of the story of who did what and why that Newspapers cover so well often go by the way side as people watch the stories with spectacle over the ones with any substance.