YouTube versus big media defines the Internet

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 20 February 2007 05:11

Opinion and Analysis

While many liken YouTube and MySpace as being sort of brothers in arms, birds of a feather bringing free content to the masses, there is a stark difference. One is owned by a large old media player and the other is owned by the world's biggest new media company. This difference is highlighted in the approach of both sites to protecting the copyright of content providers and defines a looming war over the distribution over the Internet.

To put it simply: content providers want guarantees that their copyrighted content will be protected and to date YouTube cannot or will not provide such guarantees. The owner of MySpace, News Corporation, on the other hand is bending over backwards to satisfy its old media brethren by enlisting the aid of technology in an effort to weed out copyright infringers.

The issue is, however, not whether technology can be used to stop unauthorized uploading of copyrighted music and video to sites like YouTube. As California-based Audible Magic has shown, sophisticated content-recognition software exists today that could be used to stop unauthorized uploading to sites like YouTube.

The problem is that YouTube users don't want the site to be denuded of all that delicious free content. For a huge portion of consumers, the Internet has become the primary source of entertainment and information. For many - especially young people - the Internet has replaced TV, newspapers, reference books, magazines and even public libraries as a way to access the content they want.

So the issue is not how you stop consumers from getting access to free content. The issue has become how do you provide free content to consumers and still make money from it. The answer should be obvious - advertising.

What the original Napster started a decade ago, before it was closed down, has now grown into an unstoppable monster. There are now so many sites that offer illegal and pirated music and video downloads that the content providers are at a loss of what to do.

Many content providers have come to the conclusion that the only way forward is to give the public what they want at a price that the market will bear. Consumers want to be able view the content they want, when they want, at a very low cost and preferably no cost.

As Apple has demonstrated with iTunes, consumers are prepared to pay for high quality content at the right price. Cable TV demonstrated that people are prepared to pay for content free of advertising. Free to air TV also demonstrated long ago that many more people are prepared to put up with advertising in order to get free content.

In the case of YouTube, poor quality pirate uploads of TV shows and music videos would disappear overnight if agreements were struck between content providers and the site that would give consumers what they wanted funded by advertising. And advertising on the Internet is one market that YouTube owner Google knows something about.

For old media players like Viacom, the choice is clear. They can turn up their nose, take their ball and go home and in the process pretend that a paradigm shift has not occurred in the way content is being delivered to consumers because of the Internet. Alternatively, they can get real, jump on the new media content bandwagon led by Google and others, and in the process make some money.