Will YouTube Suffer Same Domino Effect As Napster?
January 25, 2007
Filed Under Blog
Today the news wire is hot with the news that 20th Century Fox served YouTube with a subpoena, demanding that the viral-video site disclose the identity of a user who uploaded copies of entire recent episodes of 24 and The Simpsons.
It will be interesting to watch this play out and there are two resulting paths that this could take. If Fox decides to go after the “poster,” we’ll see a similar effect that mirrored the Napster fall. The media companies will “scare” posters into not interacting with YouTube for fear of legal action. Timely and interesting content will then drop-off the site, reducing the viral nature that the site is known.
Feeling the pinch, and the possible loss of interesting content, YouTube could also make the move to provide media companies with a “cut” of their ad revenue dollars that relate to videos that are posted to the site. If this happens, media companies could take a free ride and leave the heavy lifting of encoding and posting of what YouTube users is timely and relevant content, get exposure for their media properties, and get a piece of the action.
Let’s face it, there are only so many home shot movies and low production videos that can draw interest over time. YouTube’s biggest impact is the immediacy of being able to have discussion around the water cooler that drives online viewing a funny skit from Saturday Night Live or a great play that happened in the big game yesterday. For long term success, everyone will need to play well with others in the sandbox, or we will all lose out.