Stop The YouTube Hating!

I love YouTube. It is the single best thing that has happened to the Net in the past several years. Nobody is going to convince me otherwise, no matter how hard they try. Calacanis won't. Cuban won't. Doug Morris won't.

What all these YouTube haters don't see is that it isn't the "pirated content" that gets me to YouTube everyday. I can get that plenty of other places on the Net (bittorrent, limewire, pando). It isn't the "free hosting" that gets me to YouTube everyday. I can get that at plenty of other places on the Net (revver, vimeo, bliptv, motionbox).

It's the experience. The tools. The player. The comments. The community. That is the essence of YouTube. These guys invented the embeddable flash player. The single best move in the online video game to date. I love them and the service they've built and the community that exists there.

Bob Lefsetz captures all of that in this wonderful post where he takes it to Mark Cuban. And he uses this amazing YouTube video of John Lennon singing Ticket To Ride to make his point:

It’s not like this footage, and that of other performers all over YouTube, was lost, it’s not like the owners didn’t know they had it. They were just too lazy, or too preoccupied, to exploit it.  THAT’S what YouTube has done, shown there’s a MARKET!

Damn Straight Bob. Enjoy.

UPDATE: Saul Hansell has a story in today's NY Times about YouTube where he covers some of these same issues and has a number of good quotes from Chad Hurley, Founder and CEO of YouTube.

Comments

[Erik Schwartz]

Didn't Macromedia (now owned by Adobe) invent the embeddable flash player?

YT's challenge is monetizing their audience without alienating either the audience or the people posting content. If they do it wrong, there's 500 companies (literally) ready to step up. Until they prove they know how to monetize acquiring them is fraught with peril.

[carol mc]

I love YouTube for the easy access to pirated content (let's face it, my mom can figure out YouTube but not Limewire or Bitorrent) and the Beatles video is a perfect example. I'm sure someone technically owns the right to it but I wouldn't pay them a nickel to see it. I want it free.

Furthermore, even when I do get it free it won't lead me to buy any of their music when I can find that online for free too. All music, all art, all content should be free. (Are you sensing a theme here?) Money taints the equation. Content has been "cheapened" because there's so much of it out there. Simple economics. Supply has brought the "value" of everything done to zero.

Oh sure, purists might moan about "quality" and "rare talent" but that's a bunch of hogwash. There's an old saying (which I learned during my Capitol Hill intern days) that goes: there's always someone smarter than you who is willing to work harder and longer for less money than you. This applies to "art" as well. This is a tremendous benefit to consumers.

Do "creators" deserve compensation? Yes but ONLY when you're paying them by attending a live concert, performance, movie screening, reading, lecture, art exhibit, etc. Unique physical experiences OF COURSE have value, it's the ultimate in feeling "community." The Internet is the greatest thing to happen in global human communications history and only evil-thinking people want to charge us for exchanging information.

You're damn right Mr. Cool-for-a-VC, guys like Cuban just don't get it. We've won the revolution, it can't be stopped and if YouTube can monetize it by wrapping stupid ads around it that I will never pay attention to, then all the better. Content and information *begs* to be freed. The people have the keys and we're using them. Anyone who expects us to pay them for something that can be found in the "virtual world" will be locked out.

[Justin Ward]

These guys invented the embeddable flash player.

I completely agree.

[Tom Guarriello]

I love the way this YouTube argument is shaping up. Calacanis denying community; Cuban poo-pooing a non-theatre based video channel. Meanwhile, thousands of us make videos and put them up on YouTube daily for the kick of it, and the fun of watching, and interacting with, folks like SuttSteve and Geriatric1927. Oh yeah, wait, the old man's used some copyrighted music in his videos...that must be why people watch him. Like you say, if you want stuff free, there's bittorrent; if you want it cheap, there's allofmp3.

Please. Weren't these guys big Web 2.0 folks? Isn't that what YouTube is?

[SonnyK]

I think you hit the nail right on the head. YouTube is unique in the "community" interactive experience that it offers. That is what keeps bringing people back.

Case in point: YouTube showing some love for Mark Cuban.....NOT!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3eAti34hXo

[Jason]

Just posted my response at my blog:
www.calacanis.com

[Rob Hyndman]

I've never read a single YouTube comment. I want the video; couldn't care less about the community. And I doubt very much that the people in my community care very much about that community. And I also doubt that more than a few would spend much time on on bittorrent, limewire and pando getting video if YT didn't exist - it's simply much easier on YT - largely because of the flash player and the syndication - and it's that ease that's made the difference. There were video sharing tools before YT and no one used them - why? - because they weren't point-and-click. YT made it easy, that's all.

And I think Jason's right when he notes that there is little innovation there - hence easy duplication (and so, everyone now is), and that Cuban is right when he says there's a big "?" over valuation there.

IMO.

[Doctoe]

I am totally with you on that one. Made for TV stuff comes to me in other ways. I might watch a "pirated" clip when I stumble across one. We don't get to see William Shatner's Roast here in the UK. I could see each comedian's efforts one by one on youtube.

But I am much more interested in digging down into the video responses to some nutter video reviewer with tin foil on his face etc etc.

It makes for fantastic blog fodder too. Too easy. I even have my own cat channel.

[Sebastian]

"It's the experience. The tools. The player. The comments. The community."

hahaha...you're joking, right? YouTube has a community? I'll wager it has the biggest % of 'one and done' hits on the net. Absolute minimum PVs per unique visitor.

They're not even close to being the first site to use an embedded Flash video player, but I will say that theirs is one of the best.

[John Dodds]

Sorry to spoil the open source party but this is not some long lost video - it's ripped from the Beatles Anthology DVD released in 2003. It's copyright theft. Again.

[Steve Rosenbaum]

What's interesting is just how emotional the whole YouTube argument is. There is lots going on. Sure there are some legitimate people defending the rights of 'creators' but folks, as one - let me tell you, the current system sucks for creators. Working for large media companies (TV, Music, Books) it's not likely that you'll see any money and certainly not retain any rights.

So let's not pretend that this is really about making life worse for creative folks. It can't get worse.

It CAN get better. As fans connect with creators - and economic systems grow up around a relationship between makers and their community. Revver is doing interesting things in this space. Others will follow.

And to YouTube - i wish a few of you would go and look at the top 20 videos before you launch into the copyright argument. Admittedly, some of the popular videos are bizarre. But of the Top 20 (i just checked) only 2 were from network TV. One fro the Daily Show, and one from CNN. The rest were home-made, and generating plenty of traffic.

The YouTube guys have been pretty out spoken about dealing with copyright - and i think the Sequoia guys aren't dummies. So let's assume they'll do more deals like NBC and Warner. Regarding music, it's not really clear that the music industry want to stop home made music videos and lip-sync performance stuff. It's pretty viral.

So YouTube is critical in helping launch the UGV wave. And having them go away would be bad for creatives and audiences. Having the whole space evolve seems essential and inevitable. But YouTube hating doesn't do anything to move the conversation forward.

[Eric Rice]

I love how YouTube lets me download videos to my iPod.

Oh, wait... nevermind.

[fred]

john,

this has nothing to do with "open source"

it has everything to do with discovery.

i had never seen that video. didn't know it existed.

now i do. and thanks for letting me know where it came from.

now i might go buy the DVD.

fred

[John Dodds]

I said open source because I think a lot of people believe YouTube and similar sites have a right to exist in the way that Napster did. I fully accept your argument about discovery but worry about the attitude to copyright that has developed.

I think back to a panel I attended when Napster was being discussed. Many were arguing that copyright was protectionist and restrictive, but they had little response to an elderly man who stood up and announced himself a composer who made an income of maybe $15,000 from his work and would be in penury if copyright was easily infringed.

EMI's relative failure to market what was a huge selling DVD to you is one thing, but to generate income or a sale from it is entirely another. Thus, I'm wholly in agreement with your post today - a number of issues have to be settled before a sale can occur.

[Dimitar Vesselinov]

Is YouTube One Half of the next Excite@Home?
http://tombomb.typepad.com/tombomb/2006/09/is_youtube_the_.html

[Rick]

Compare YouTube to Google...

Does Google infringe on other's copyrights? Probably. In essence, they steal people's photos, have cached versions of articles, people's PDFs, etc.

But few big companies are lining up to sue Google (at least not to the point of putting them out of business).

Meanwhile, just about everyone I know have watched a video from YouTube. It's probably the first web company since Yahoo and Google that my parents have used.

"To YouTube" is not quite a verb yet, but they've definetly invaded our vernacular the way Google did before the IPO.

Worth a ton of money - way more exciting than MySpace.

[jackson]

Originally I was a YouTube hater because of the content piracy it embraces, but now I hate it because it sucked up all my day, and I didn't get any work done, but watched a lot of Scorpions videos...ja, das ist eine gut idee!

[po]

These guys invented the embeddable flash player.

huh? Thats news to me. Big news.

[po]

Im shocked that people think youtube invented anything. Really. Whoever runs this site has lost his mind, as has most of you other circle jerkers. Weren't you around a few years ago? Sheesh.