Comments on: Viacom says You Can’t Have Our MTV http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/02/02/viacom-says-you-can%e2%80%99t-have-our-mtv/ Gadgets, gear and computer hardware. Tue, 07 Oct 2008 07:18:54 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 By: nobody http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/02/02/viacom-says-you-can%e2%80%99t-have-our-mtv/#comment-88406 nobody Sat, 03 Feb 2007 02:25:53 +0000 http://crunchgear.com/2007/02/02/viacom-says-you-can%e2%80%99t-have-our-mtv/#comment-88406 I really don't understand why these media giants wouldn't reap from this kind of viewer's enthusiasm, but instead, they want to snuff out a source of income for themselves. The Youtube users are actually working for free to put these material up for Viacom. Right now NBC and CBS have to hire a staff to upload their video clips to YouTube. Viacom got that for free. All they need to do is to ask Google to pay them a share of the ad revenue resulting from the traffic these clips bring to the table. Honestly, the low quality clips on YouTube will never cannibalize into the higher def copyrighted original's sales. The low quality, low res, mono audio clips could only bring the audience to pay hard earned cash for the high quality version on DVD or CD. Those YouTube clips are just free commercials. Google could make this work by paying royalty to the copyright owners regardless of who the uploaders are. They can change the business model around. Then the entire YouTube community can change for the better. The viewers got to see what they like and the copyright owners still collect royalty without lifting a finger, there will be millions of enthusiastic users doing the promoting and uploading for them. And when the material is good, sales of the original will definitely go up too. I really don’t understand why these media giants wouldn’t reap from this kind of viewer’s enthusiasm, but instead, they want to snuff out a source of income for themselves.

The Youtube users are actually working for free to put these material up for Viacom. Right now NBC and CBS have to hire a staff to upload their video clips to YouTube. Viacom got that for free. All they need to do is to ask Google to pay them a share of the ad revenue resulting from the traffic these clips bring to the table. Honestly, the low quality clips on YouTube will never cannibalize into the higher def copyrighted original’s sales. The low quality, low res, mono audio clips could only bring the audience to pay hard earned cash for the high quality version on DVD or CD. Those YouTube clips are just free commercials.

Google could make this work by paying royalty to the copyright owners regardless of who the uploaders are. They can change the business model around. Then the entire YouTube community can change for the better. The viewers got to see what they like and the copyright owners still collect royalty without lifting a finger, there will be millions of enthusiastic users doing the promoting and uploading for them. And when the material is good, sales of the original will definitely go up too.

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