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YouTube To Pay For User-Generated Content
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at the World Economic Forum, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley has revealed that the company plans to financially compensate users who produce and upload their content. With Google's purchase of YouTube last year, followed by more aggressive attempts to monetize the site (such as the deal struck with Verizon Wireless), it was inevitable that YouTube would come under pressure to share some of those fruits with ordinary users. But why didn't YouTube pay its users from the start? Hurley said: 'We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward. We wanted to really build a true community around video. When you start out with giving money to people from day one, the people you do attract will just switch to the next provider who's paying more. We're at a scale now that we feel we can do that and still have a true community around video.'"
What is to stop the other "communities built around video" from doing the same and turning the thing into the "who'll pay more" type war they say they wanted to avoid?
Who cares? These communities were built on ideas of "democracy", yet haven't shared a single dime to the people actually doing the work. Taking the work of a million people and distributing the profits to a small group who control everything is not democracy, it's fascism.
Sharing the profits with the workers who actually create the content the people want to see is ultimately a good thing. If a fight breaks out over who gets paid more, then that's a better thing.
It'll mean true democracy is actually working for once with these websites instead of the current fascism labeled as democracy.