Is this the beginning of the end for YouTube?

[ifm]

As most people will know YouTube was sold today for a daft amount of money to google.
An astonishing success story it has to be said especially as the business is 18 months old!!

What some may not know is that also today YouTube announced the signing of deals with 2 media companies (MGM is one i believe), this is thought to be a deal that forces YouTube to police some of the copyrighted material on their site.
It is thought deals with many more companies will quickly follow.

As of now these big corporations have pretty much left YouTube alone, most probably that they have never had any money and therefore suing them has always been pointless, now they have a shedload of cash i think a lot of companies and individuals will be looking to them for compensation for various infringements both copyright and defamation, libel etc.

So basically does this mean that from now on YouTube will be policing their content?
Are they now in a position where they quite literally cannot afford to allow anyone to post anything?

[mikkyT]

You can post anything with music from the creative commons licence,and theres thousands upon thousands of tracks released under this licence.

Means you cant sing along to barbie girl and put your video out on YouTube though. If they police it that is. Which google most likely will do.

[ifm]

You can post anything with music from the creative commons licence,and theres thousands upon thousands of tracks released under this licence.

Means you cant sing along to barbie girl and put your video out on YouTube though. If they police it that is. Which google most likely will do.

Music is only a fraction of YouTube.

[Poppet7]

Means you cant sing along to barbie girl

Which you do on a regular basis!
Not that I'm complaining, you have a beautiful singing voice!

[mikkyT]

You can post anything with music from the creative commons licence,and theres thousands upon thousands of tracks released under this licence.

Means you cant sing along to barbie girl and put your video out on YouTube though. If they police it that is. Which google most likely will do.

Music is only a fraction of YouTube.

Correct, but its the part that will be targetted by the music giants still paranoid about their tracks being broadcast without proper payments being made and are the most likely to start legal action.

[MrsLime]

I think Warner started pulling stuff quite a while ago.

Pretty much the whole of the Joni Mitchell 'Shadows and Light' concert used to be on YouTube but isn't any more.

The band was: Joni Mitchell, Michael Brecker, Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Jaco Pastorius, Don Alias.  It would be a gross understatement to say that this was the best band, ever.  If you disagree, you are WRONG.

This track is still here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ1lbFvLW90

Enjoy.

[thetank]

If they kill them, surely someone will take their place?

That would be a little bit of irony, the copyright infringement kings getting majorly ripped off themselves

[mikkyT]

Its the whole napster debate all over again (well its not really, but still...). YouTube are not responsible for what people submit to their servers. They do not produce the content. However they do host it on their servers. So they are distributors for said content. I envision a large legal minefield with a lengthy court case with lots of tooing and froing by lawyers on both sides producing an expensive stalemate resulting in said litigation lawyers getting even richer at the expense of the consumer.

YouTube already has copycaters Tank. Well, I think some existed before YouTube. Its the advent of broadband that has made such services appealing to the general internet viewer. Sites like it have existed for ages, hosting content for other people to enjoy - be it images or music tracks. But video has historically been too big to download.

[thetank]

I assume there are yes, but if youtube go the way of the dodo, one of the pretenders (or originals) will rise up and become a household name as youtube did.

It will take time for their content to explode, but as was said earlier, youtube itself is only 18 months old.

We won't be denied our jollies for long.

[ifm]

I assume there are yes, but if youtube go the way of the dodo, one of the pretenders (or originals) will rise up and become a household name as youtube did.

It will take time for their content to explode, but as was said earlier, youtube itself is only 18 months old.

We won't be denied our jollies for long.

The question is will it be the end of YouTube?
I was asking the question because this looks like a good deal for google (YouTube gets upwards of 100 million hits per day) but if it ultimately kills them off then google made a booboo (or altavista if you like ).

[thetank]

It will certainly be interesting to see what happens.