Great story on A1 of the WSJ today, looking at the ongoing challenges Google and YouTube face in their desire to strike a deal with video producers. It's long, but well worth the read, because it provides details and perspective not seen elsewhere. Mark Cuban probably woke up this morning, saw the story and screamed "I was right!" And so he was...
A point I've made repeatedly about the myth of "user generated content" is made here as well:
The way TV executives see it, programming they own has contributed to YouTube's success. Thirteen of the 20 most-viewed YouTube videos in the month ending Feb. 15, for example, were professionally made. They included a clip of Ivanka Trump on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and a local TV news report on lock picking.
Thirteen of 20 video owned by someone else and monetized (or not) by Google and YouTube. That's not user generated content in a new world, it's appropriation of talent!
Here's another hooter:
Media companies have grown impatient with Google for not fully implementing its "fingerprinting" system to identify copyrighted work. But Google sees the technology as imperfect and worries that rolling it out now would be problematic, says one person familiar with the matter.
"Of course there are copyright concerns there," said Mr. Schmidt last month. "But we have answered those by saying we're working very hard on fingerprinting technologies." Putting the technology to use, he said, is "a hard problem."
In the physical world, theft is not a "hard problem" that "working on" is an answer to. It shouldn't be in the virtual world either.