Over the weekend YouTube pulled off most of it's clips from Comedy Central for copyright infringement violation. This includes clips from Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and South Park. Read about it here. Why? you may ask after so long of turning a blind eye did Comedy Central decide that now was the time to start caring? Why, it's Google of course. Pretty obvious actually. Now that Google is pulling the YouTube strings they've started "legitimizing" their relationships with the entertainment industry. Both CBS, and now NBC have recently inked deals with YouTube to distribute material over the netwaves. While maybe people like Jon Stewart see their material on YouTube as free promotion or no different than getting it off the tv, I'm sure there is at least one executive out there who has plans (probably involving heavy advertising) to package this material and serve it up officially.
Is it just me, or does this feel like the beginning of the end? Internet tv, especially clips and snippets of shows have been rolling around online for a few years now. Up to the point of over the past 8 months to a year, where we've been having full episodes of tv shows turn up on Internet, sometimes official sometimes not. Of course the caveat to watching these tv clips on internet is that the more popular it's become and the better quality we're getting, be it official or not, the more likely it was that someone was going to catch on and start royally screwing us for it. I have a feeling that Google buying YouTube, especially at such a high price tag, has just woken everyone up to the fact that there's a whole new secondary market here that has yet to be capitalized on and monetized effectively. Despite the fact that no one really knows how or what this digital market is evolving into; metaphorically speaking Google has just bent us over, and given the call that we're ready and willing, and now we're about to take it from the corporate media, hard.
I was browsing Pop Candy this morning and ran across a lot of this info. For example check out this interesting article from USA Today on the state of TV on the internet, as well as their list of all the major network shows that are currently available officially online. Yes, it may seem great for the moment, but how long is this going to last? Is this possibly an early death thrall for YouTube? Will it become all corporate crap and commercials posing as viral videos? And in what new and unscrupulous ways will corporate media try to screw us this time?
Maybe I'm just jaded, I will say this: for every new DRM there's eventually always a hack...
I don't think Media can ever win against us, but why does it always have to be such a battle.
Is it just me, or does this feel like the beginning of the end? Internet tv, especially clips and snippets of shows have been rolling around online for a few years now. Up to the point of over the past 8 months to a year, where we've been having full episodes of tv shows turn up on Internet, sometimes official sometimes not. Of course the caveat to watching these tv clips on internet is that the more popular it's become and the better quality we're getting, be it official or not, the more likely it was that someone was going to catch on and start royally screwing us for it. I have a feeling that Google buying YouTube, especially at such a high price tag, has just woken everyone up to the fact that there's a whole new secondary market here that has yet to be capitalized on and monetized effectively. Despite the fact that no one really knows how or what this digital market is evolving into; metaphorically speaking Google has just bent us over, and given the call that we're ready and willing, and now we're about to take it from the corporate media, hard.
I was browsing Pop Candy this morning and ran across a lot of this info. For example check out this interesting article from USA Today on the state of TV on the internet, as well as their list of all the major network shows that are currently available officially online. Yes, it may seem great for the moment, but how long is this going to last? Is this possibly an early death thrall for YouTube? Will it become all corporate crap and commercials posing as viral videos? And in what new and unscrupulous ways will corporate media try to screw us this time?
Maybe I'm just jaded, I will say this: for every new DRM there's eventually always a hack...
I don't think Media can ever win against us, but why does it always have to be such a battle.
1 comment:
i was trying to find a colbert clip and youtube denied me.
this blows.
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