The role and the sole existence of YouTube seem not to be understood. Viacom filed a U.S $ 1 Billion lawsuit against YouTube claiming that YouTube created and has benefited from a successful media business which according to them reaps its benefits from copyright infringement.
Viacom and others claim that the site owes its popularity to display of content from large media producers without monitoring uploading of copyrighted material. However the issue of determining popularity of content by looking at the most viewed content seems to be misunderstood since we should also be looking at what is most discussed or most responded to. The big question that everyone needs to ask themselves is whether YouTube and Google really benefit from the materials claimed to come from the large media producers (Green 2).
YouTube can be seen as an interactive distribution platform whereby the audience has a hand in shaping the media content. YouTube should be seen as a media platform that facilitates practices of “audience-ing” just as publishing. Linked clip and quote should be viewed as active audience-hood. With time the platform has become so popular not because of the content from large media producers but because of its interactive nature which has also made it achieve economies of scale due to widespread distribution (Green 3).
It should also be understood that materials posted may go beyond the local community but that may be attributed to nature of the system that leaves the content long enough in the site till it becomes searchable. We have to come to terms with the reality that media has changed platform to a new one whereby existing content is edited to produce yet another materials and that is what YouTube is all about and this should not be seen as entirely as copyright infringement or piracy (Green 3).
It is important to note that the short snippets of YouTube materials though profitable for media companies have been misunderstood and the society should understand that we are living in a new era of the audience editing their materials.
By having a different thought about the snippets being a product of audience hood rather than unlawful distribution then we may be in a position of understanding more about ownership, value and labor. It may be true that Viacom may have exclusive rights over the valuable content they seek to reign in but they should understand that they are not the sole producers of the value of that content.
Viacom should understand that commercial media on YouTube is like transformational of cultural commodities to cultural resources and YouTube just offers a platform for the audience to produce second order commodities that they can and still trade on. It may be true that YouTube may have gained promotional value from programming brands, channels and broadcasters and Viacom may be seeing that YouTube is generating revenues they have no control over. Hitting on YouTube would amount at striking on the YouTube community.
Viacom and others like Berlusconi’s and TF1’s should come to the terms of the reality that the audience has its input in the creation of value around their property unlike in their mode of presentation whereby they still cling to the thought that they are solely responsible for the value of commodity whereas in the real sense the value they claim is attributed to the effort of both the company and the audience.
Work Cited
Green, Joshua. Misunderstanding You Tube. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008. Print.