That's what it comes down to. Sites like Google Video and YouTube wouldn't be allowed to become saturated with illegal content if the MPAA and RIAA didn't think there was some massive profit in it. Don't give me that DMCA crap either.
You think if I start a website tomorrow called MovieUpDownLoad.com and basically just make it into a FTP that you can upload to, and encourage people to throw on whatever pirated content they have, that I'd last a week? You think the DMCA is going to protect me if I simply say that I'll moderate the site once every three months? Once every month? How about once a week? Fat chance. The site would last 30 days at best before a cease and desist showed up at my door and cops raided the place and took all my computers. Hahahaha. I don't have a billion dollars, and probably never will, so the MPAA and RIAA aren't going to wait around to sue me out of existence, they are going to do it right away.
I can virtually gurantee you that later today, somewhere in America, a bunch of high powered attorneys and executives are going to get together behind closed doors in a smoke filled room to discuss how they can best profit from suing Google, when the best time to act is, and how to go about it. I mean, seriously. I can see them coming up with some ridiculous lawsuit for some amount of money that isn't even a real number. What's that? 1,000,000 videos? Well, you've had that for two years now...so lets see...1,000,000x365x2 = 730,000,000...now we are going to fine you 10,000 for each piece for every day....you know what, just give us all your money. Fucking bastards.
One of the big problems is that sites like YouTube and Google Video generate loses, not profits.
AFAIK, YouTube has never made a profit, or even broken even. They were bankrolled the entire time. You ever wonder who got most of that billion dollars for the YouTube deal? Whoever it was that spent $100m and bankrolled YouTube since it's existence, that's who.
Whoever has more epics wins. If both parties have the same amount of epics, they duel. Best 2 out of 3 wins. Glad I could help. That'll be twenty dollars.
Nah. It wouldn't even escalate to that level. YouTube just puts up a little filter with keywords, and anytime you try to submit something with those keywords it has to be moderated before it goes live.
That's because you are in the minority. YouTube has grown beyond the kind of people who read Slashdot, play WoW, and know what a "roflcopter" is. The mainstream YouTube crowd goes there for music videos, comedy central, and other various TV show clips. My ex-girlfriend would watch project runway on YouTube.
Really, there aren't that many people that want to watch some homemade crap. You might think that, but the reality is that's been around forever on various sites, and those sites have been small. The audience just isn't that huge. While it might seem like even a brookers or lonelygirl video has a massive amount of hits, and that's true, that's only one video. For every one of those viral vidoes that gets 100,000 hits in a day, there are 100 clips of copyrighted material that get 5,000 hits.
Just look at the comparison between YouTube and Google Video. The only real difference is that YouTube has copyrighted material, and for that reason YouTube is probably several orders of magnitude more successful.
Overtime you will see YouTube phase out into just another AtomFilms...or iFilm...or Google Video. The only thing that ever made YouTube different was the massive amount of copyrighted material.
This is what I've been saying for a while now. YouTube is over. 6 months from now all the illegal content will be gone and YouTube might as well just divide the sight into two sections: BoobTube and MTVTube, because that's the only content it's going to have. Thing is, we already have BoobTubes all over the internet, and music videos...eh. You can usually find the video you are looking for from the artists website, and it's not in shitty Flash format. If that fails, it's on MySpace.
I really liked YouTube too. It was nice to be able to watch Comedy Central shows, and older Adult Swim stuff that isn't on Fix. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
I still don't get why Google bought YouTube. It's just a giant liability. It's like buying the The Pirate Bay. Sure we all love it, but who actually wants to own that?
PROBLEM:
People are paying 25% less for a product of inferior quality.
Wait...what's the problem? Shit on iTunes is still way to expensive considering the inferior quality, no hard copy, and the inability to burn to disc.
Why don't they just stop playing around, and come up with a unified pricing model for all media. CD, DVD, iTunes, Amazon - $9.99. Make everything $9.99 and I'll go on a buying spree right now. I'll spend $1,000 in the next 20 minutes.
That's because people happen to find other things while looking for illegal content. I've never met anyone outside of my geek circle that actually used YouTube to watch viral internet videos. Every "normie" I know uses YouTube to watch TV shows, anime, and music videos (quasi-legal now).
When you remove the illegal content from YouTube, what is it? It's called Google Video, which probably doesn't even get 1/100th the views. Probably not even 1/1000th.
If you aren't using it to watch illegal content, you're using it to either watch lonelygirl, brookers, or some other hobag play with her boobs. I suppose as long as they keep those three going strong, they will always have an audience. Boobs are always in style.
That's really what happened in North Korea, they just don't want to admit it. Some noob installed Vista on one of the nuclear control computers, and then it crashed, and boom.
Now the world will be destroyed, and we'll find out it was really Steve Ballmer's plan all along...then he'll throw a chair at something.
Take the average piece of illegal contnet. Look at the number of views it has. Scale that according to the amount of time that it's been on YouTube and you'll instantly see what I mean. Aside from videos from lonelygirl or brookers or something like that, things like episodes of South Park or the Colbert Report have the highest amount of views for the amount of time they are on YouTube before they get deleted, only to return again two days later.
It was ineveitable. Looks like Universal gave up waiting for YouTube to make some coin before they filled suit. I guess they realize now that YouTube will never make money.
The reality is that more people use YouTube to view content that shouldn't be on there than to view the content that should. I'm no exception. The only thing I really use YouTube for is watching South Park and other shows off Cartoon Network. I'll also use it to watch music videos, but not even watch the video. I just want to hear the song, and I know YouTube has it.
Sure, there are people who actually don't use YouTube for this purpose, but I'll tell you right now that they are in the minority.
The only way YouTube can save itself is by moderating ALL videos. That is, videos will only appear on the site once they are flagged, much like Google does. If and when that day comes, all the content I want will be gone and there's really no reason for me to ever go to YouTube again.
Did anyone really think YouTube was going to stay around? I'm amazed that investors kept pumping money into it.
It's borderline legal. Production studios make a big deal over EVERYTHING. The only reason they haven't raised their amry of corporate lawyers is because there's no money in it...yet.
You better believe that if YouTube moves to a subscription model, where people are now paying YouTube to watch their movies that they are going to raise all hell. And on the flip side, that's why YouTube likely hasn't gone with a subscription model. It's lose-lose for YouTube. Eventually the debt will just become so large it will collapse into itself. Right now the only way YouTube is able to surive is by corporate investors. As soon as they get tired, YouTube will just become the next AtomFilms...or iFilm...or whatever.
And that's probably what it costs them per month in hardware and bandwidth ALONE, if even.
Given the current model, YouTube will *never* be profitable. And if somehow, by magic they become profitable, the movie and television studios will instantly start pilling on the law suits. The reason no one has sued YouTube yet is because everyone's hoping they will become profitable, just so they can sue them. I wouldn't be suprised if the MPAA and major TV studios have STACKS of paperwork ready to be filed against YouTube for copyright infringement. If the day ever comes when YouTube says, "Hey, we just made our first dollar," that's the day that YouTube gets shut down because of the thousands of cease and desist orders on their doorstep.
YouTube is a perfect example of a dot com site that will eventually go bust. It's just a matter of time.
I wish they'd bring it back. They actually made a color version, but it never saw the light of day. They had it on display at Innovations at Epcot in Disney.
I suppose. But if you remove the illegal content, YouTube loses a lot of it's appeal to a *LOT* of people. In essence, it loses it's "edge" that puts it above Google Video, Atom Films, iFilm, Metacafe, Filecabi.net, etc, etc, to inifnity.
YouTube will continue it's dominance until one of two things happen: a) YouTube actually starts moderating and deleting it's illegal content or b) YouTube starts making money. If they get rid of all their illegal content, half of their userbase is pretty much gone, including me. It's pretty nice to be able to watch episodes of South Park and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, among hundreds of other shows. If they start making money, then production studios and the MPAA are going to want a piece of it and start spitting out law suits and cease and desist orders until the site is FORCED to delete half it's content, run 120% more ads to cover legal fees, and it's subscriber base falls to nothing.
Real with Rhapsody. Not the regular Rhapsody, but Rhapsody.com. It runs right through your browser via plugin and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The only problem is that at $9.99 it's a little to expensive, and the web-based version still has ads even for subscribers. Granted, it's only in version 0.1 Beta, but I could see this being the alternative to iTunes. It would be intresting if Rhapsody.com cost a little less, didn't have ads to subscribers, and had a linking system that would let you buy the CD straight from Amazon.
I was really surprised to find out that I can run Rhapsody.com and have access to the entire library on my Mac.
Lie. Lie about everything.
Writing an email to your friend? Lie about it. Lie about everything that happened to you. Lie about who you are. IT DOESN'T MATTER.
Signing up for some new service? Lie. Lie about your name, age, race, sex, address, credit card, whatever. Actually need to recieve the package? Send it to your neighbor and pick it up at the FedEx office with a fake ID that goes with your fake personality.
Sometimes if you lie enough to a girl, you even get to sleep with her. Then, if you get herpes you can just lie to everyone else and say you don't have it! IT'S THE SAME THING IF YOU USE WINDOWS AND GET A VIRUS!! HOORAH!
The lies will set you free.
Then how the hell are you posting this message? Let's look at this seriously. The probability that you have never been, "hacked, rooted, afflicted with spyware, or even infected by a single virus of any sort" in 15 years of using Windows is (or ANY platform for that matter), effectively, zero. Come on. No spyware? Be realistic.
I'm a Windows user too, but let's be realistic. Unless today is the first day you put your computer on the internet, what you say is impossible.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what it comes down to. Sites like Google Video and YouTube wouldn't be allowed to become saturated with illegal content if the MPAA and RIAA didn't think there was some massive profit in it. Don't give me that DMCA crap either. You think if I start a website tomorrow called MovieUpDownLoad.com and basically just make it into a FTP that you can upload to, and encourage people to throw on whatever pirated content they have, that I'd last a week? You think the DMCA is going to protect me if I simply say that I'll moderate the site once every three months? Once every month? How about once a week? Fat chance. The site would last 30 days at best before a cease and desist showed up at my door and cops raided the place and took all my computers. Hahahaha. I don't have a billion dollars, and probably never will, so the MPAA and RIAA aren't going to wait around to sue me out of existence, they are going to do it right away. I can virtually gurantee you that later today, somewhere in America, a bunch of high powered attorneys and executives are going to get together behind closed doors in a smoke filled room to discuss how they can best profit from suing Google, when the best time to act is, and how to go about it. I mean, seriously. I can see them coming up with some ridiculous lawsuit for some amount of money that isn't even a real number. What's that? 1,000,000 videos? Well, you've had that for two years now...so lets see...1,000,000x365x2 = 730,000,000...now we are going to fine you 10,000 for each piece for every day....you know what, just give us all your money. Fucking bastards.
One of the big problems is that sites like YouTube and Google Video generate loses, not profits.
AFAIK, YouTube has never made a profit, or even broken even. They were bankrolled the entire time. You ever wonder who got most of that billion dollars for the YouTube deal? Whoever it was that spent $100m and bankrolled YouTube since it's existence, that's who.
In real [2006] dollars, most of the consoles that have ever existed cost more than $300, save for maybe the N64.
Whoever has more epics wins. If both parties have the same amount of epics, they duel. Best 2 out of 3 wins. Glad I could help. That'll be twenty dollars.
Nah. It wouldn't even escalate to that level. YouTube just puts up a little filter with keywords, and anytime you try to submit something with those keywords it has to be moderated before it goes live.
That's because you are in the minority. YouTube has grown beyond the kind of people who read Slashdot, play WoW, and know what a "roflcopter" is. The mainstream YouTube crowd goes there for music videos, comedy central, and other various TV show clips. My ex-girlfriend would watch project runway on YouTube.
Really, there aren't that many people that want to watch some homemade crap. You might think that, but the reality is that's been around forever on various sites, and those sites have been small. The audience just isn't that huge. While it might seem like even a brookers or lonelygirl video has a massive amount of hits, and that's true, that's only one video. For every one of those viral vidoes that gets 100,000 hits in a day, there are 100 clips of copyrighted material that get 5,000 hits.
Just look at the comparison between YouTube and Google Video. The only real difference is that YouTube has copyrighted material, and for that reason YouTube is probably several orders of magnitude more successful.
Overtime you will see YouTube phase out into just another AtomFilms...or iFilm...or Google Video. The only thing that ever made YouTube different was the massive amount of copyrighted material.
This is what I've been saying for a while now. YouTube is over. 6 months from now all the illegal content will be gone and YouTube might as well just divide the sight into two sections: BoobTube and MTVTube, because that's the only content it's going to have. Thing is, we already have BoobTubes all over the internet, and music videos...eh. You can usually find the video you are looking for from the artists website, and it's not in shitty Flash format. If that fails, it's on MySpace.
I really liked YouTube too. It was nice to be able to watch Comedy Central shows, and older Adult Swim stuff that isn't on Fix. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.
I still don't get why Google bought YouTube. It's just a giant liability. It's like buying the The Pirate Bay. Sure we all love it, but who actually wants to own that?
PROBLEM: People are paying 25% less for a product of inferior quality. Wait...what's the problem? Shit on iTunes is still way to expensive considering the inferior quality, no hard copy, and the inability to burn to disc. Why don't they just stop playing around, and come up with a unified pricing model for all media. CD, DVD, iTunes, Amazon - $9.99. Make everything $9.99 and I'll go on a buying spree right now. I'll spend $1,000 in the next 20 minutes.
That's because people happen to find other things while looking for illegal content. I've never met anyone outside of my geek circle that actually used YouTube to watch viral internet videos. Every "normie" I know uses YouTube to watch TV shows, anime, and music videos (quasi-legal now). When you remove the illegal content from YouTube, what is it? It's called Google Video, which probably doesn't even get 1/100th the views. Probably not even 1/1000th. If you aren't using it to watch illegal content, you're using it to either watch lonelygirl, brookers, or some other hobag play with her boobs. I suppose as long as they keep those three going strong, they will always have an audience. Boobs are always in style.
How many people are going to go to YouTube when all the copyrighted material is gone?
Not many.
That's really what happened in North Korea, they just don't want to admit it. Some noob installed Vista on one of the nuclear control computers, and then it crashed, and boom.
Now the world will be destroyed, and we'll find out it was really Steve Ballmer's plan all along...then he'll throw a chair at something.
Begun the dark times have.
The only fair thing to do is delete MySpace entirely.
Take the average piece of illegal contnet. Look at the number of views it has. Scale that according to the amount of time that it's been on YouTube and you'll instantly see what I mean. Aside from videos from lonelygirl or brookers or something like that, things like episodes of South Park or the Colbert Report have the highest amount of views for the amount of time they are on YouTube before they get deleted, only to return again two days later.
It was ineveitable. Looks like Universal gave up waiting for YouTube to make some coin before they filled suit. I guess they realize now that YouTube will never make money.
The reality is that more people use YouTube to view content that shouldn't be on there than to view the content that should. I'm no exception. The only thing I really use YouTube for is watching South Park and other shows off Cartoon Network. I'll also use it to watch music videos, but not even watch the video. I just want to hear the song, and I know YouTube has it.
Sure, there are people who actually don't use YouTube for this purpose, but I'll tell you right now that they are in the minority.
The only way YouTube can save itself is by moderating ALL videos. That is, videos will only appear on the site once they are flagged, much like Google does. If and when that day comes, all the content I want will be gone and there's really no reason for me to ever go to YouTube again.
Did anyone really think YouTube was going to stay around? I'm amazed that investors kept pumping money into it.
It's borderline legal. Production studios make a big deal over EVERYTHING. The only reason they haven't raised their amry of corporate lawyers is because there's no money in it...yet.
You better believe that if YouTube moves to a subscription model, where people are now paying YouTube to watch their movies that they are going to raise all hell. And on the flip side, that's why YouTube likely hasn't gone with a subscription model. It's lose-lose for YouTube. Eventually the debt will just become so large it will collapse into itself. Right now the only way YouTube is able to surive is by corporate investors. As soon as they get tired, YouTube will just become the next AtomFilms...or iFilm...or whatever.
And that's probably what it costs them per month in hardware and bandwidth ALONE, if even.
Given the current model, YouTube will *never* be profitable. And if somehow, by magic they become profitable, the movie and television studios will instantly start pilling on the law suits. The reason no one has sued YouTube yet is because everyone's hoping they will become profitable, just so they can sue them. I wouldn't be suprised if the MPAA and major TV studios have STACKS of paperwork ready to be filed against YouTube for copyright infringement. If the day ever comes when YouTube says, "Hey, we just made our first dollar," that's the day that YouTube gets shut down because of the thousands of cease and desist orders on their doorstep.
YouTube is a perfect example of a dot com site that will eventually go bust. It's just a matter of time.
I wish they'd bring it back. They actually made a color version, but it never saw the light of day. They had it on display at Innovations at Epcot in Disney.
I play a Night Elf female. The free gold rules.
I suppose. But if you remove the illegal content, YouTube loses a lot of it's appeal to a *LOT* of people. In essence, it loses it's "edge" that puts it above Google Video, Atom Films, iFilm, Metacafe, Filecabi.net, etc, etc, to inifnity.
YouTube will continue it's dominance until one of two things happen: a) YouTube actually starts moderating and deleting it's illegal content or b) YouTube starts making money. If they get rid of all their illegal content, half of their userbase is pretty much gone, including me. It's pretty nice to be able to watch episodes of South Park and Aqua Teen Hunger Force, among hundreds of other shows. If they start making money, then production studios and the MPAA are going to want a piece of it and start spitting out law suits and cease and desist orders until the site is FORCED to delete half it's content, run 120% more ads to cover legal fees, and it's subscriber base falls to nothing.
Real with Rhapsody. Not the regular Rhapsody, but Rhapsody.com. It runs right through your browser via plugin and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The only problem is that at $9.99 it's a little to expensive, and the web-based version still has ads even for subscribers. Granted, it's only in version 0.1 Beta, but I could see this being the alternative to iTunes. It would be intresting if Rhapsody.com cost a little less, didn't have ads to subscribers, and had a linking system that would let you buy the CD straight from Amazon.
I was really surprised to find out that I can run Rhapsody.com and have access to the entire library on my Mac.
Lie. Lie about everything. Writing an email to your friend? Lie about it. Lie about everything that happened to you. Lie about who you are. IT DOESN'T MATTER. Signing up for some new service? Lie. Lie about your name, age, race, sex, address, credit card, whatever. Actually need to recieve the package? Send it to your neighbor and pick it up at the FedEx office with a fake ID that goes with your fake personality. Sometimes if you lie enough to a girl, you even get to sleep with her. Then, if you get herpes you can just lie to everyone else and say you don't have it! IT'S THE SAME THING IF YOU USE WINDOWS AND GET A VIRUS!! HOORAH! The lies will set you free.
+1 with the mod points I don't have.
That's as good an explanation as any I've seen.
Then how the hell are you posting this message? Let's look at this seriously. The probability that you have never been, "hacked, rooted, afflicted with spyware, or even infected by a single virus of any sort" in 15 years of using Windows is (or ANY platform for that matter), effectively, zero. Come on. No spyware? Be realistic. I'm a Windows user too, but let's be realistic. Unless today is the first day you put your computer on the internet, what you say is impossible.