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YouTube Founders Interviewed
An anonymous reader writes: "FORTUNE's Adam Lashinsky interviews co-founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley.
'In just five months, YouTube has gone from beta testing to part of the national zeitgeist. The website is a place where anyone with a home video can post it online and create an endlessly entertaining diversion for bored office workers -- who've been watching 40 million clips a day.'"
What I'd like to have seen asked is how they plan to deal with copyright infringement on the site with the vast amounts of content which they host. Both technical and legal answers would be interesting, I think.
INAL, but could copyright issues be more problematic once they start making money off these videos? I mean, I know no label really wants to sell old Prince videos, but somehow they're huge on YouTube. Do you really think content producers (record labels, movie studios, musicians, maybe even regular users) would be okay with that, or would they want a piece of the action? I mean, they own the copyright, and I don't think that posting entire music videos online could be considered fair use.
That's the reason Google News doesn't have ads, after all - if they did, they'd run into legal issues (or so I've heard).
P.S. This is a pretty short article with only a bit of information - and it's vague info at that. What gives?
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
My request though, is to have full video controls on thier player. The same applies to Google Video by the way. Many a times, the videos simply need some light.
But many thanks to thier effort.
One simple question: How does YouTube plan to make any money? Right now they're making $0 and spending tons on bandwidth. The main reason people visit the site in the first place is for content that's infringing on someone's copyright: TV shows, commercials and similar fare. There are a few user-created videos that actually draw traffic, but still, that traffic is pure loss. The only thing of value they have is the brand name. Everyone at my college talks about wasting time on YouTube, but their technology itself is worth next to nothing because it's so easy to build. That's my YouTube has so many competitors. If they don't get bought by anyone, they're screwed.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's a good time to be living off of VC money. It's fairly clear that many of them are being advised by underpants gnomes.
I like YouTube because you can upload files and view them with Linux.
I hope Google video supports Linux soon!
I'm sure I'm not the first to think this, but this YouTube thing kinda reminds me of the early days of Napster. They get VC, they spend it allowing people to share copyrighted media, they try to conjure a revenue stream out of a free service, they hope to turn "legit" before the federales shut 'em down, they go halfway and alienate all their users, et cetera. I don't know why these doofuses think this will turn out any differently.
Could it really be that the VC's know this, and have decided that getting the name "YouTube" branded into young people's minds and associated with internet video is worth all the blown money?
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
YouTube is just a fad. As soon as the venture capital dries up they won't be able to afford the bandwidth without massive advertising. As soon as they add that, visitors will start dropping like flies. YouTube is no different than AtomFilms or iFilm. Same shit, different day. AtomFilms used to be the big video content host. Then the adds started poppin' and the hits started droppin'.
The Forbes article from a few weeks ago states that thier bandwidth usage is approximately 200TB per day, the cost of which "may be approaching $1 million a month".