Kurt's Thoughts

Wow.  I’m surprised that this took quite as long as it has.  It’s about time the lawsuits started flying around the Internet about publicly shared video.

LINK:  YouTube sued over video

People have been creating this entire ecosystem around pirated video on Google Video & YouTube and it’s taken a relatively long time for someone to break out the legal whoopin’ stick to sue one of the hosting providers of these pirated videos.

The media, in it’s general circus atmosphere ridiculousness, has been drumming up the hype for sites like these, which blatently host video that violates IP rights all over the Internet.  The sites wink wink, nudge nudge the posting of said content, grin all the while it goes uncontested while the publicity comes in from a popular video’s posting, then after going weeks undetected, when they’re finally caught with copyrighted content posted on their property they sheepishly slink away claiming, "Hey… it’s not our fault people violate our policies.  There’s nothing we can do."  <wink wink nudge nudge> 

And as the video gets taken down, and the hosting company gets served with a cease and desist order, the anarchist, liberal peanut gallery shouts, "Awwwwww… BOOOOO!  Evil corporate demons!  The man is trying to keep us down!  BOOOOOO!"

Folks: 

1) If I copy a PC game and I post it to the Internet, making it freely available to anyone in the world, and subsequently receiving fame and popularity from such a post, this is illegal. 

2) If I rip a MovieDVD or a MusicCD and post it to the Internet, sharing it with the world in an effort to get others to share their multimedia collection with me, this is illegal.

3) If I take your intellectual property, make it available for free for everyone to get on the Internet and subsequently profit through it, in this case through advertisement views, it’s not right.

I’m not saying that YouTube and these video sites aren’t at least making some modicum of an effort to moderate copyrighted video posting… (as weak as that effort may be) and I’m not condemning them for their business.  What I’m saying is that no one should be surprised – least of all them – that the world of capitalism is coming down upon them like Thor’s hammer.  Their popularity stemmed from the bypass of normal commercial exchange:  Content that was once owned and licensed is now distributed without restriction. 

Now it’s coming back to bite them in the ass.