The Achilles Heel of Online Video
Is the genie about to stuffed back in the video copyright bottle? Is the popularity/viability of video sharing sites such as YouTube and MySpace in question. It could be given Universal Music Group CEO Doug Morris has apparently had enough with video sharing services that allow their members to violate copyright laws by posting music videos and other content on their sites. "We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars," Morris told investors Wednesday at a conference. (Source: San Jose Mercury) You knew it was only going to be a matter of time before a major copyright owner finally said "enough is enough". Money talks so it is no surprise some content owners have lost their patience with folks like YouTube become cultural phenomenas on the back of unlicensed copyright. So what now? If YouTube pulls all unlicensed content from its servers, will users leave in droves, and will YouTube and its IPO/acquisition dreams suddenly disappear? In some ways, Universal's decision is much needed because it will force the fast-growing online video industry to evolve and move forward as a business rather than a free-for-all. Of course, this might be bad news for people who like watching clips of the The Daily Show while killing time at work!
September 15th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
The unfortunate thing is that you can watch (at least some) of the daily show video on Comedyscentral.com, but users have no way to find it there. Search engines don't seem to be making any effort to index video on the web. Instead they are trying to lure the content into their walled gardens. But you hit the nail on its head about monetization: unless the publishers get compensated, they have no incentive to upload their content.
I would argue that the real solution is the creation of some kind of video tags that allow search engines to find and index video content on 3rd party websites, allowing the producer to sell advertising around the video and the search engine (Youtube or Google or whoever) to sell advertising around search.