What we’re seeing is a battle of the use of and ownership of media, along with the rights to advertise around media delivery systems – in short, as always, it always comes down to the money.

While Google itself fights battles against book publishers, Microsoft’s Live Book Search system and Belgian newspapers, Google’s most popular video site, YouTube, is under attack because its users are posting video clips they shouldn’t be posting, despite strong warnings against doing so, with critics claiming that Google and YouTube aren’t acting quickly enough on filtering software to make the upload of copyright content a futile affair.

While there can be no doubt that some of YouTube’s users are uploading content in lengths or quantities that go far beyond the provisions of ‘fair use’, I wonder how many short video clips featuring interviews or parts of interviews or particular scenes from movies, potentially remixed with other content, are being caught in the Viacom ‘take our video off YouTube’ net?

After all, today we live in a world of user generated content. Sometimes this content uses part of other people’s content to highlight something in particular, to send it up (in parody style) or simply to share a funny moment from a particular TV show or movie with friends – or the world.

The definition of ‘fair use’ is under attack. Of course, blatantly uploading an entire movie, or a TV show, even if in parts to get under the 10 minute YouTube limit, is wrong and should come in for deletion, or automatic filtering, by YouTube.

But if we are talking about ‘snippets’ – with the definition of a ‘snippet’ uncertain – then everything gets much murkier. Is someone allowed to upload part of a commercially available program, or not?

If so, then short clips from any video source can be shared on any video sharing site – it’s not like you’re blatantly uploading an entire episode or movie which will deliver no compensation to the original content owners unless advertising revenue is shared, but it will certainly deliver advertising revenue to Google, or at least should do so.

Viacom and other companies who feel they are missing out on these advertising revenue streams have to understand that viewers are coming to YouTube, because that’s where the great bulk of video content is.

If content is removed from YouTube, viewers have to want it so much that they will go to Viacom’s site, or one of Viacom’s sites, to experience it there, and to share it on their websites or blogs from one of Viacom’s sites.

There is something to be said for a unified experience in finding all of this information, and if it’s not all going to be in YouTube, then Google, the search engine itself, will become or already is the ultimate doorway to the widest selection of any kind of content you can imagine – even if it is a link to a peer to peer website or bittorrent site, which is illegal for a user to use, but not, as yet, link to or likely even visit – although it must clearly be said that I am not a lawyer, and none of what I write should be construed in any shape or form as legal advice, or be relied upon in a court of law.

So, what is the future of content sharing? Is there a future for content sharing or does the revolution of user-generated content come to an abrupt halt? Please continue onto page 2 for the conclusion on the DESTINY of digital content and sharing...