There has been more in the news about media co.'s such as Viacom taking issue with unauthorized use of their videos on Google's YouTube. (See today's USA Today, "Google takes hits from YouTube's use of video clips, " 3B).
OK, I see how they have a problem with that. But what I don't get is why media co's aren't more enthusiastic about seeing YouTube as a new source of revenue. In my mind, Google just needs to figure out a way (this may be harder than it sounds, I know) to tag or have users designate who the copyright owner is for what video when it is uploaded. Or maybe the community does it, or YouTube employees do it, whatever.
Then, for whatever ads are run in, around, or before the video, YouTube/Google and the media owner (Viacom, GE/NBC, whoever) split the ad revenue 50-50, or 40-60, or whatever they agree on as a split.
Viacom gets to make money off its tv show clips such as Jon Stewart, the Colbert show, whatever (which, frankly, I don't think people were paying to download in droves before); Google makes money from providing a popular forum for the clips, and the public gets its fun daily fix of short-attention-span videos all on one convenient, homey place. What's not to like?
I don't think the public (if I may speak for the public) wants to see the Balkanization of their online videos, where they have to go to paramount.comedycentral.whatever.com and download three minutes of Jon Stewart, then hunt down Prince playing at the Super Bowl, blah blah blah yaddi yaddi yadda.
OK, so maybe setting up the administration of this would be a nightmare, but I think all the big brains at Google should be able to figure it out. And I hope the big media companies keep an open mind about this because it would be sad to see all this content get scattered will-nilly. (And hey...the copyright owners don't even have to do the tedious job of uploading their own content..someone does it for them!).
Thoughts? Think I'm way off or totally deluded? Feel free to post a comment here. :)
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