YouTube has only existed for just over a year-and-a-half. A great many of us, myself included, have used YouTube to watch videos of our favourite musicians, clips of television shows, and homemade tomfoolery of all stripes, as well as to post our own. All of it for free, and all of it without fear.
It was a brilliant business concept, started, as so many brilliant business concepts do, in a garage.
Now YouTube has signed a deal with Time Warner, which is going to insert a new copyright-tracking software on YouTube, along with allowing them total legal access to all Warner products, in exchange for a cut of the advertizing dollars.
Here's the bizarre part, the aforementioned copyright-tracking software will alert Time Warner when any TW owned product is uploaded, which will allow them to recalculate their cut of the advertizing money.
Digression: our modern commercial culture, which creates overnight millionaires, and leaves people destitute by lunchtime, can all be traced back to the invention of the clock. [end digression]
The changes we are seeing in ownership & the merging of properties seem to be accelerating. So here's the question; do we feed off the fat of this frenzy, or are we chum?
