Last night I went to check in on one of my favorite writers, NYC's Rich Juzwiak. Rich's blog FourFour got famous for its hilarious recaps of America's Next Top Model. But you can't let FourFour's pop-culture focus give you the wrong idea. Without reading it for yourself, you won't appreciate FourFour's intelligence, severity, and heart. Whether Rich is writing about Mariah Carey, or museum stuff like Matthew Barney, he just really cares. (Plus he talks about religion and drugs and stuff, too).
It's only natural when you read a personality like Rich's, to totally wish he was your best friend. Rich makes everything more fun. Like outrage. Like, for example, when I went to check in on Rich's blog, and found this:
(via FourFour. Maybe a little over the top.)OK. Clearly somebody isn't happy with YouTube. And on the one hand, I'm mad about anything Rich is mad about. But on the other hand, when Rich is really mad, I, the reader, benefit, because the battle will take place publicly.
Rich has had all of his uploaded videos taken down by YouTube. Yes, there was some copyrighted material in there. But it was painstakingly edited copyrighted material. (Often accompanied by editorial commentary.) And also, some of his videos were not copyrighted. They were his videos. All deleted. His entire account was deleted. It's not unheard for Google-owned YouTube to take down individual videos here and here, but to wipe out a whole account, including personal videos, is some new territory for them.
What's going on?
Some recent headlines:
- Google loses copyright case launched by Belgian newspapers
- YouTube Hands Over User's Info to Fox
- Firms Say Google Benefited From Film Piracy
- New NBC Chief Zucker Takes Swing at YouTube
- Viacom Asks YouTube to Remove 100,000 Clips
Google and YouTube are playing along. It's not that the giant media companies really expect YouTube to be totally copyright-material free. They're just annoyed when Google doesn't act apologetic enough. And so now, temporarily, Google is acting contrite, and doing some hand-slapping. They know they just have to wait it out.
Yes, I'm mad that YouTube took down Rich's Winston videos, but this state of chaos can only last so long. The giant media companies will eventually realize that having their content "out there" is a good thing, or they'll be displaced by companies that already understand it.
I disagree with Rich's concerns:
...As much as this sucks for me and my borderline OCD need to document and log everything (and see how many other people are affected by it), I think it sucks for everyone's future. I don't know how many other people have encountered such unceremonious banishment at this point (I don't think it's been too many, considering the amount of unaccounted for copyrighted material still up), but people should get ready for it. The future of YouTube is no YouTube. The halcyon days are over. As with Napster and AudioGalaxy, the one-stop shop is closing...While it's true that YouTube might get displaced, it's not because of copyright or legal threats, it's just because everything on the web is constantly getting displaced, usually because some new thing solves a problem a little better. No matter how reactive they might appear, Google and YouTube are in a position of power. And while there are plenty of ways in which Google scares the heck out of me, I generally think they're an extremely helpful entity to have on one side of the copyright battle opposite NBC, Viacom, etc.
