Charles Cooper seems to think that Web 2.0 is synonymous with "rip-off" and on some level, I can't say that I disagree with him. Just his opening example:
Pardonnez-moi? Yes, you read it right the first time. A European court last month agreed with a group of regional publishers in Belgium that accused Google of ripping off their content. The court ordered Google to remove text summaries of the newspapers' articles, along with Web links to the publishers' sites.
Not very much was made of the decision on this side of the pond. Investors shrugged off the news and continued to send Google's stock ever higher. Google subsequently cried foul and said it would challenge the ruling. No surprise there.
The problem with his using the Google News example is that it is the only major example of potential copyright infringement which provides some sort of clear benefit to the copyright holder. See, Google doesn't place ads on Google News so the advertising revenues stay with the media companies that host them on their websites. For many outlets, Google News is a powerful way to get exposure online, which is something they desparately need since the web is a lot less hospitable to newspapers.
YouTube on the otherhand has the potential to be a tremendously nasty hot potato for Google. Copyright holders that have been injured by distribution of their goods on YouTube are no doubt going to be very interested in carving up a little piece of Google if things don't get fix--fast. And these two examples are where things get cut and dry. Google News has no ads, YouTube does; Google News loses money, YouTube tries to make money, but fails.
My prediction is that Google will within the next year make YouTube a very sanitized service that will ultimately kill off a lot of its appeal to the public.
Under - Misc Geekery, nice however I prefer on top ;)
Here's a solution, why doesn't some group like pay-pal or "ad-sense" devise some way in which advertising profits are split between content-provider and host? That way the content provider benefits fully from the transaction and the host cannot help himself without helping the content provider?
I think that it has to do with the fact that bandwidth is so expensive relative to the amount of advertising that they can bring in. What they need are good video advertisements as part of the process so that they can charge more and get ads on sites that embed their content.