April 02, 2006
You may wonder why I ask the question: Does YouTube have a future? The reason I am asking that is that because their users are uploading copyrighted material, they are already getting requests from networks to remove all the video that is pirated from them.
It has a lot of similarities with the Napster case. You can also bet that just like
Napster, there is some company in the wings waiting to produce their equivalent video version of iTunes.
While they aren't fighting it the way that Napster did, (they remove all video requested by the networks) will that be enough for the networks if the number of videos become so prolific that they can't practically control the situation? Another similarity is that the advertising dollars of television has been going down, and the networks will look for something or someone to blame. Right now it is DVRs, but how long will that last?
