Are YouTube just another bunch of pirates?
I continue to enjoy Newsome.Org. Kent pointed me today in the direction of a contribution by Jason Calcanis on why YouTube is not a real business.
Jason makes his main point that the file sharing capabilities of YouTube makes it a business that relies on piracy to generate it's ranking. Unfortunately he extended the thought to call it a silly little business that anyone could start in a week and for that he's taken some heat. Counter arguments have pointed out that Flickr is similarly an FTP site with Tags, that technically what has been achieved by YouTube in terms of scalability isn't easy, and that the communities that sites like Flickr and YouTube have built are not easily replicated. Good points.
Let's back up a second to Jason's main point. People want facilities that allow them to share photos, videos, files and content. The problem is that if these facilities are delivered as free services then those companies are also delivering the capability to support piracy. Blogging is not immune, witness the rise of the piracy of blog entries being re-packaged by ad-supported delivery mechanisms.
Isn't one of the issues what YouTube are doing to deal with the issue of piracy? Are they doing nothing or even worse are they relying on the piracy and therefore encouraging it to an extent, without crossing the legal line, in order to build their community? And given their business model, scale = revenue. Flickr, by contrast, appear to be more interested in copyright infringement and self-policing. It's possible that if YouTube fail to police themselves adequately that eventually someone else (e.g. the courts) will do it for them.
Technorati Tags: Kent Newsome, Jason Calcanis, YouTube, Flickr
Jason makes his main point that the file sharing capabilities of YouTube makes it a business that relies on piracy to generate it's ranking. Unfortunately he extended the thought to call it a silly little business that anyone could start in a week and for that he's taken some heat. Counter arguments have pointed out that Flickr is similarly an FTP site with Tags, that technically what has been achieved by YouTube in terms of scalability isn't easy, and that the communities that sites like Flickr and YouTube have built are not easily replicated. Good points.
Let's back up a second to Jason's main point. People want facilities that allow them to share photos, videos, files and content. The problem is that if these facilities are delivered as free services then those companies are also delivering the capability to support piracy. Blogging is not immune, witness the rise of the piracy of blog entries being re-packaged by ad-supported delivery mechanisms.
Isn't one of the issues what YouTube are doing to deal with the issue of piracy? Are they doing nothing or even worse are they relying on the piracy and therefore encouraging it to an extent, without crossing the legal line, in order to build their community? And given their business model, scale = revenue. Flickr, by contrast, appear to be more interested in copyright infringement and self-policing. It's possible that if YouTube fail to police themselves adequately that eventually someone else (e.g. the courts) will do it for them.
Technorati Tags: Kent Newsome, Jason Calcanis, YouTube, Flickr
posted by Steve Newson at 8:26 AM
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