I didn’t think i would comment any more on this topic. But I couldn’t help myself.
Riddle me this
If Youtube is all about User Generated Content. If Free Hugs, fake Kevin Federlines and Diet Coke and Mentos can be the core of an entertainment business. If Youtube is completely protected under the DMCA Safe Harbor acts. Then why in the world would Youtube spend any money on licensing content ?
If copyrighted materials are just a minimal amount of content and traffic, just deal with it through take down notices. Its your DMCA right. Right ? Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars in equity and cash money for licenses that are probably no more than a few years in length and give some level of corporate “veto power” to the rights holders as to how users can use the content ?
Unless of course you think that original User Generated Content is not enough to bring in traffic.
Unless of course you think you will be sued under the DMCA and lose.
Unless of course you realize that such a huge percentage of your audience is foreign and there are laws across countries that aren’t quite in sync with US Copyright laws.
Im sure GooTube is already waist deep in this, but if observors think its hard to do rights deals now, realize that lots of TV shows, movies and other content is parcelled off to rightsholders in foreign countries. So Gootube may have a deal with a huge US Media company that produced a show, but they sold off the right to the show in Japan, or France, or Kazakhstan and you have to do seperate deals with the rights holder in each of those countries or block access to the content to those countries, and deal with the copyright laws of each. You want fun. Now that is fun.
All of which is a lot of time, money and uncertainty for such a simple, riskless deal.
Im not saying Google shouldn’t have bought Youtube. Im just saying that maybe only Google was crazy enough to take on the responsibilities of such a deal.