Comments on: The promise and peril of video sharing

CNET News.com's Charles Cooper says YouTube is careful to avoid the mistakes that ultimately torpedoed Napster.

[deanhoveysmith]

YouTube move to Canada?

Well, since sharing music is legal in Canada, why not have YouTube move to Canada? I really doubt they will have any legal issues once move! YouTube is wonderful site, and I am sure Canada would welcome the company with open arms!

[chris11-1]

Music/Video sharing might not be legal in Canada

There is some controversy over music sharings legality in canada. As a Canadian myself, I have never been bothered by the feds about music sharing, but some of my friends have. The CRIA, the Canadian version of the RIAA, is becoming a net Nazi also, i find the fact that these groups are suing people for downloading music outrageous, when the artists are getting, what, 0% of the profits from the lawsuit! It just shows the greed of the record labels! With the profit that the artists make per "legal" download is $0.10 more than what they would make from you just getting the song from a P2P site! So why are the record labels suing claiming that the P2P networks are ruining them? It's the artists that are doing all the grunt work and are barely even getting paid! I say that people should stand up to these groups, what they are doing is wrong and unfair to the artists!

[Don_Dodge]

YouTube has four challenges

YouTube reminds me a lot of Napster more than 5 years ago. YouTube is doing for video what Napster did for music, but they have the advantage of hindsight.

YouTube has four challenges, all of them can be overcome, and I think they will. First, copyrighted material must be removed from the site as quickly as possible, and filtered out in the first place if possible.

Second, YouTube needs to identify and filter porn so that it is not easily accessible to minors, or adults who don't want to see it.

Third, YouTube needs to create several revenue streams that can scale with the business.

Fourth, they need to continue to innovate and build a strong brand relationship with their users. They need to build a community so that as new competitors come along the users will stay with YouTube.

I think they can do all four of these things and become a very successful company. At Napster we were not able to do this, but most importantly we were just too far ahead of the market.

Don Dodge
http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2005/10/napster_the_ins.html

[Daniel-San]

Screw copyright for the right size

If I told a mate of mine that he should check a movie out, and gav ehim a trailer of the movie, should I be shaken down in court for not paying Sony or WB their profit from promoting THEIR movie?

Fair use for fecks sake.

I promote certain companies brands by posting their shows or clips from shows online, why should I pay them for getting people to buy their content?

For instance, over here in the UK, and Europe as a whole for that matter, Lost premiered about six or so months after its US release. I downloaded the first couple of episodes and just recently bought the boxset of season One. It is a good show, worth paying for, and basically racked up sales for their producers in the end, because a thoughtful soul shared their contet. I do not watch TV as such. I buy DVDs of shows I like. Without video sharing I would miss out on such gems as Heroes, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, etc, because I do not watch the usual channels.

In Sweden, where I am from, I will vote for the Pirate Party, which promotes free filesharing and fair use, that companies hate. Will be fun to see what the MPAA does of that.

[chris11-1]

W00T, now if canada had one of those parties....

YEAH! Show those people who say filesharing is wrong!

[chris11-1]

W00T, now if canada had one of those parties....

YEAH! Show those people who say filesharing is wrong!

[Dave_Brown]

The Pirate Party

I hear that the Pirate Party has now come to the US. Nice idea. I wish them luck getting recognized. The 2 party system bureaucracy is hard to overcome.

Dave

[Daniel-San]

Instead

"Second, YouTube needs to identify and filter porn so that it is not easily accessible to minors, or adults who don't want to see it."

How about in your profile, you can untick boxes that states "I object to offensible content".

I like all the garbage that I find on there. I like offensible content.

Why let a MINORITY of people run what the general masses see? Let them opt out and let people decide for themselves.

An opt-out should let YOu tube cover its rear end so to speak. Basically showing people, IF YOU ARE OFFENDED BY CERTAIN ISSUES, DON'T BLEEDIN WATCH THEM.

It is kinda like, if you are a pacificst you don't watch wrestling or boxing.

Freedom of information and freedom of speech for petes sake.

[ssparish]

There is a difference

Not that this matters much now that this article is no longer news, but there is a significant difference between Napster and YouTube: user generated content.

I would dare say that 99.9% of Napster music was not posted or shared by the original owner or was not user generated. It was all ripped from some artists CD. YouTube has significant, nay, HUGE, amounts of content shared by individual users. Any legal manuvering by the MPAA to shut down YouTube or any other video sharing site, is going to meet a tough burden of proving that YouTube doesn't have significant non-infringing uses.

The other prong of attack by MPAA is apparently already being blunted by YouTube trying to be a "good corporate citizen".

I think the video industry (MPAA) has learned from the hard knocks and missteps of the recording industry (RIAA).