There is no conspiracy against Google or YouTube

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 16 March 2007 17:32

Opinion and Analysis

The issue of content sharing, and being legitimately paid for content has now raged for many years. VCR’s were once under threat of being banned, but in the end they were not, with users being able to tape live programming on demand – even to record it at a future date through programming the recording schedule whether you were at home or not.

If users can access and record content legitimately and for free through free-to-air or Pay TV broadcasters, the precedent for downloading and then sharing that content, by lending a tape to a friend, has been set. It’s something that is totally natural for the world’s VCR owners, and now DVD recorder owners across the globe.

Microsoft and others try to put DRM onto recordings done through Windows Media Center, but software is available on the Internet to easily remove and such DRM and create a standard DVD for playback in virtually any DVD player.

Now Viacom wants to not only effectively put DRM onto all their video content, so it can’t be shared by any sites that Viacom does not want it shared at, but they want to strictly control how their content will be shared.

Figuring out how to give users the sharing ability that they so clearly want, while ensuring that content creators are suitably remunerated, while we all live in a world where piracy of any video (or other content) is but a web browser, a broadband connection and a few clicks away, content owners have to wake up about the true value of their products.

Make it too expensive, or too hard for people to access, or even too hard for people to share snippets thereof with others in a legal and easy fashion, and you risk alienating the very online user-generated content users out there and you risk driving them into the pirate worlds – or to your competition.

Content is king, but it must be priced reasonably, or the market will shift towards the freedom of piracy – and the risks of poor quality content, misnamed files, files that contain malware, spyware, viruses and more.

An excellent example is Sony’s UMD movie discs. At the same or even greater cost than a DVD with the same movie at a higher video quality, it was a no brainer to see that they wouldn’t be successful. Sony dropped the price in Asia, to clear stocks – and sales went dramatically up!

Even here in Sydney, Australia, a local computer, electronics and electrical megastore was clearing out UMD movies at $10 each. I snapped up four titles on the spot – but I certainly wouldn’t have at the original Australian dollar price of well over $30 each!

The current legal battles are a turning point in a war of the worlds over content - but there's clearly more to the issue. For the conclusion, please continue to page 3.

Ownership, distribution, advertising revenue, content creation and the needs and desires of the users who actually buy and consume that content, whether it is purchased on DVD, or as a download, or purchased by giving up one’s time to watch advertisements (which no-one is forced to watch) is being fought out by the world’s biggest companies, with plenty more standing on the sidelines cheering for either side – or both – while the same bystanders frantically trying to figure out the best way to keep everyone happy and to make it a win-win for all.

Truly, the answer is not simple, or we’d have it today and widely implemented everywhere. The Google and YouTube legal attacks are not a conspiracy. They are but a part of destiny – the destiny of online content that is all still being figured out as we speak.

The old rules of content are finding it hard to be applied to the realities of an online, always connected, mostly broadband world. It’s a battle that we need to have, and I, for one, am glad we are having it, because this is a very important issue that must be amicably (or otherwise) resolved, once and for all.

The only problem is, we might have to wait until next season (or even the one after that) to see how it all turns out. In the meantime, the fresh round of content battles almost seems like reruns of similar battles in the music world – only with these reruns, the ending could well be different. Keep tuning in to this bat channel as we report and seek to make sense of all the developments, in what is fast becoming a must-see show that you can’t miss!