Geeks on Film (Two Minutes Later)...
Lots of reaction and analysis is poring through the digital spigot about The Meaning of the YouTube/Warner deal. A sampling...
It's way too early to say what the deal really means. The two companies have been stingy with details about the pact, so it's hard to assess exactly what they intend to do and how they plan to do it. More important, the deal only works for both Warner and YouTube if the myriad other companies with legal claims on the work YouTube shows decide to play along...
Rafat Ali at paidContent thinks "playing along" includes the labels taking a stake in YouTube. AFX notes that the Warner deal is only the first to come and includes confirmation that the previously hostile Universal is indeed in the process of negotiations with YouTube.
And, if you think about it, it makes sense that equity offers will be optimized if all the labels came on board. It would be a sticky situation if Warner had a stake in a company that Universal was suing, for example. The whole Bertelsmann and Napster-thing didn't work out so well, despite this 2000 bit from the CNET piece announcing it...
"My message to Napster users: If you think Napster is great now, just wait," Fanning said. "We're just getting started."
Fanning and Middelhoff then embraced.
Speaking of Fanning, how YouTube's eventual filtering technology will work will clearly be a big story-line in the months to come...
Kevin Delaney and Ethan Smith team at the WSJ write:
YouTube's agreement with Warner hinges on a digital system YouTube is developing to identify automatically copyrighted music or other audio, and related video its users upload. The system relies partly on what's known as "fingerprinting" -- comparing audio uploaded to the site to unique attributes of copyrighted content it already knows. YouTube's planned system is similar in some respects to one proposed last year by an online music startup, Snocap Inc., which was launched by Shawn Fanning, the founder of Napster. Snocap is seeking to help peer-to-peer music services and other online outlets become legitimate music distributors. YouTube said the audio-identification system could potentially be used to locate non-music content such as video clips from TV shows, and that it could eventually use video-identification technology as well.
Noted YouTube cynic Mark Cuban said yesterday on a music mailing list that such a scheme will probably make YouTube the target of patent lawsuits from others who have previously developed similar filtering applications.
Forbes' Kafka gets explanation on how the filtering tech will work:
YouTube wouldn't discuss its technical plans (or anything else beyond a press release issued Monday morning), but Alex Zubillaga, who heads up Warner's digital division, confirmed that the company plans to implement a "fingerprinting" system that automatically identifies content and matches it to a master list that Warner will help create. If Warner wants to let someone use Led Zepplin's "Stairway to Heaven," it will stay on the site; if not, YouTube will take it off.
The WSJ notes that the system is going to be first used for labels and major studios and any tweaks to facilitate the monetization of user generated content will come later...
In announcing the system, YouTube could open itself up to a flood of requests by creators of videos looking for their own share of advertising revenue. Other sites such as Revver Inc. currently give amateur video creators a percentage of ad revenue. YouTube in the future will explore options for sharing online ad revenue with smaller, or amateur creators, Mr. Hurley said. But "right now we're building tools for record labels, TV networks and movie studios."
Valleywag cuts the snark for a moment and (rightly) opines that UGC issue opens the door for more "hard-wired" Creative Commons licensing.
A VC counters the Cuban and Calcanis crowd and crows:
YouTube is going to win bigtime. They've built the audience. They've built the value added services that make their service fun to use. And eventually they are going to get the content owners to play ball.
GigaOm thinks that the filtering gives YouTube a better chance at selling itself.
If they did anytime soon, it would be hard to imagine online video being any hotter than it is now. Microsoft announced their YouTube clone today. Matt Marshall's VentureWire has his take:
YouTube, the two-year-old San Mateo start-up that raced ahead to become the leader of online video sharing, is facing the fight of its life. Microsoft’s launch of its YouTube clone, called the Soapbox, made official today ... is only the latest challenge....
...The YouTube story is significant because there’s more confusion about YouTube’s prospects, its inherent uniqueness and its legality than ever before. Moreover, there’s more at stake in the world of online video than most of us realized just a few months ago. It is where movies, music and advertising meet — and billions are at stake, and anxious incumbent music giants are angry. The proliferation of broadband, new technologies making loading videos dead easy, and the high price of buying music compared to simply sharing it free on YouTube, is giving that upstart the edge....
Here in Silicon Valley, the buzz is all about video, music and then more video — and throw in some talk about how to take it mobile. There’s a new announcement every day. (Just yesterday: Silicon Valley chip giant Intel announced a deal with AOL to place AOL Video onto Intel’s Viiv home computers. SanDisk, the Milpitas maker of music players competing with Apple’s iPod, signed a deal with Seattle’s RealNetworks, owner of music service Rhapsody, to imbed that service direclty into its Sansa e200 MP3 player).
Finally, in a perfect example of why the music skirmish and deal making is only the tip-of-the-spear in dealing with the complexities (some would say fun) here, Adam Thierer presages at the Tech Liberation Front about future video control battles between the NFL and fans in the stands...
Restricting the big cameras a local TV station might want to bring into a stadium will be easy, but what about all those little cameras many of us have in pockets today embedded in our cell phones? I was recently at a ballgame and took a video of my kids using my new cell phone. As I was doing so, someone made a stupid play in the field behind them and I actually played the clip back to a friend later in the day. Taking this a step further, imagine I snapped a few video clips of an NFL game using my cell phone and later posted them on a webpage along with some amateur commentary breaking down the plays. Is the NFL going to come after me, my website operator or my ISP? Even if my site was not commercial and my video was fuzzy, the NFL might still be able to make a copyright case against me.
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