LostRemote has an interesting take on CNet's article analyzing this piece on the Forrester research blog from last week.Here's the thing, Forrester's Josh Bernoff, like Mark Cuban before him thinks that YouTube is going to face a major battle over copyright. Specifically, he figures it's just a matter of time before the studios sue YouTube for hosting copyrighted videos online. And Bernoff predicts YouTube will lose and go the way of Napster, Grokster, and other filesharing sites.
But here's the thing -- those companies generally tried to argue two things.
- Our users are responsible for uploading copyrighted material and should be held accountable, not the company itself.
- There are legitimate non-infringing uses for our software.
Right now, YouTube tries to police its network, removing copyrighted material brought to its attention. Rather than bringing down the site, a lawsuit would probably just result in YouTube stepping up those efforts.
But there is another major copyright issue to consider. Even if users aren't uploading copyrighted clips, but are instead posting home made videos, it's hard to resist adding your own soundtrack. What if you post a video of yourself singing along to your favorite song. Yeah, that's copyrighted. What if you make a video of your friends skateboarding and set it to music. Good chance that song's copyrighted too.
Sure, there's plenty of Creative Commons and other podsafe music around, but try explaining to a 13 year old that they should dance around their room to those songs instead of to the latest Justin Timberlake track or risk having their video removed from the site.
So there you have it... YouTube has some serious copyright issues to deal with. But I predict that they're more likely to face a lawsuit from the RIAA than the MPAA. Or something like that.
