youtube again
As the news about one rights owner after another threating to sue Youtube keep coming in on a daily basis (sorry, no links this time but you will find it if you want, trust me), my anger has been growing.
I was going to post a reply to the latest post at dj rupture's blog, but i figured it strayed too far from his issue and I evidently just wrote down things I had inside me and wanted to get out.
I better post it here:
From my point of view Youtube is on the verge of dying a slow death.
Everbody and their mom, our favourite vultures included, is now claiming their rights as they hope to get a piece of the cake that is Google's record revenues.
30,000 videos deleted on behalf of the "Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers", Comedy Central material deleted thanks to Viacom, NBC material (old, odd Saturday Night Live clips) deleted a while back... Bayern Munich (german soccer team) threating to sue, so are the GEMA (*the* German music rights management association...deleting what they object to would be a major thing...) and tons of majors.
The GEMA thing alone could become terribly complicated, or expensive for Google. Hmm, come to think of it, they probably don't mind ;)
I wonder how it will all end, this attempt to please all the world's different rights owners, coming from the most different juristical backgrounds in their home countries. They all have in common that they themselves failed to come up with any structure or idea that brings their contents online in one way (free) or another (creating revenue). And now they jump the bandwagon, demanding their share for not doing anything, after millions of users built a community in what is a social phenomenon.
I wonder if youtube ends up being filtered just like Google [sites not in compliance to German law - e.g. nazi propaganda - will be filtered out of the Google index upon request by state officials]. One way or another i am afraid all the odd, old, rare and exciting stuff will disappear again. Just like this stuff is not represented in legal music download services, but mp3 blogs or file sharing.
In other news... crap... for some reason the channel that was CNN here has been showing only a black screen for a few days now. Just in time for the mid-terms :/ I will just have to follow coverage online, as no German TVstation seems to devote its night programme to that topic. I think some did for the presidential election two years ago. Then again I can do without the fairly balanced accounts of Germany's "USA experts" anyway (yes, I really believe they are, but it is hard not to be balanced against Bush from a European perspective I might add ;).
I was going to post a reply to the latest post at dj rupture's blog, but i figured it strayed too far from his issue and I evidently just wrote down things I had inside me and wanted to get out.
I better post it here:
From my point of view Youtube is on the verge of dying a slow death.
Everbody and their mom, our favourite vultures included, is now claiming their rights as they hope to get a piece of the cake that is Google's record revenues.
30,000 videos deleted on behalf of the "Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers", Comedy Central material deleted thanks to Viacom, NBC material (old, odd Saturday Night Live clips) deleted a while back... Bayern Munich (german soccer team) threating to sue, so are the GEMA (*the* German music rights management association...deleting what they object to would be a major thing...) and tons of majors.
The GEMA thing alone could become terribly complicated, or expensive for Google. Hmm, come to think of it, they probably don't mind ;)
I wonder how it will all end, this attempt to please all the world's different rights owners, coming from the most different juristical backgrounds in their home countries. They all have in common that they themselves failed to come up with any structure or idea that brings their contents online in one way (free) or another (creating revenue). And now they jump the bandwagon, demanding their share for not doing anything, after millions of users built a community in what is a social phenomenon.
I wonder if youtube ends up being filtered just like Google [sites not in compliance to German law - e.g. nazi propaganda - will be filtered out of the Google index upon request by state officials]. One way or another i am afraid all the odd, old, rare and exciting stuff will disappear again. Just like this stuff is not represented in legal music download services, but mp3 blogs or file sharing.
In other news... crap... for some reason the channel that was CNN here has been showing only a black screen for a few days now. Just in time for the mid-terms :/ I will just have to follow coverage online, as no German TVstation seems to devote its night programme to that topic. I think some did for the presidential election two years ago. Then again I can do without the fairly balanced accounts of Germany's "USA experts" anyway (yes, I really believe they are, but it is hard not to be balanced against Bush from a European perspective I might add ;).