Business
Once were digital warriors: are BitTorrent, YouTube and MySpace losing their soul?
Just today BitTorrent announced content deals with 20th Century Fox (hey Rupert, its the 21st century now) G4, Kadokawa Pictures USA, Lionsgate, MTV Networks (including COMEDY CENTRAL, Logo, MTV: Music Television, MTV2, Nickelodeon, Nicktoons Network, SpikeTV, The N, TV Land and VH1), Palm Pictures, Paramount Pictures and Starz Media. These companies, and for sure more TBA, will publish movies and TV shows on BitTorrent.
That's the same BitTorrent that I, and others derided, for providing enabling technology for unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works.
MySpace and YouTube are also announcing aggregation deals and promotions almost any day now. Just like that Cingular promotion I show you at the top of this post.
While I am a firm believer in copyright protections, the anti-establishment side of me is starting to get a little concerned. Actually, more than a little.
All these BitTorrent You Tube and MySpace content deals in recent days/weeks follows a think outside the system, live on the edge copyright-wise, have such a great idea and such huge traffic numbers that major content providers decide to ally or acquire rather than sue.
What happens next? Seems to me the issue is whether the BT's and YT's become such an enabler to big media digital distribution that they start to lose their soul. Obviously that's subjective but one way to tell is whether or not the BT's/YT's start to forget about the little guy- making their content harder to find because they are featuring big media content on their front doors to the diminution of the cutting-edge user-generated content that got them there.
Or, as in the Cingular deal, they will brand deals hammered out between a bunch of big media attorneys and licensing companies as "underground." That kind of stuff.
Once that happens is the smaller YT/BT clones have a decision to make: try to pursue their own content distribution deals or stick to their roots.
And you know that once the major content creators come knocking with offers, the mid-line players aren't going to be able to hold out.
What we will then see is a cycle where a new crop of at the edge (or in some cases over the edge) companies will arise to take their place and thumb their nose at copyrighted media.
And then they will get traction and be subsumed by alliances, acqusitions or injunctions. None of which are mutually exclusive of each other.
I see this going on and on, through various iterations.
I really sense this playing out here.
Do you?
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