I like YouTube. I really like it. I think it might change or have already changed the world. As I think this, I feel a slight tug behind my navel and I realize why YouTube will fail, or be crushed. It will never be bought, and the reason is liability. The ammount of copyrighted material is so volumous that it may NEVER all be cataloged. Not because it can’t be tracked today, but because of the rate of growth. With the DMCA in place, everyone, EVERYONE who has something on YouTube that is copyrighted must defend it. Imagine a world where if you have an idea, song, logo, or other such intellectual property, you must spend every waking hour firing off cease and desist orders all over the internet. YouTube isn’t alone as a multimedia behemoth.

Google, Yahoo, Aol, MySpace, etc. all have video repositories. All with copyrighted content. This begs a bigger question: will this create another mercury effect? When Napster was shut down, before its rebirth, 15+ other peer-to-peer clients emerged. They all tried to fill the void and capitalize on the audience with ads built into the client. I was so taken with the trend that at first I imaged cockroaches that scurried from object to object as you lifted them. But it is more like mercury flowing to the lowest spot. I can put video on no less that 25 sites in the next hour. If it violates copyright, that is 25 C&D’s that have to be fired off PRONTO.

I think when I get my movie cut together, I am just going to sit on it.

UPDATE: Google buys YouTube; I guess I was wrong, I didn’t take into account that the best way to deal with lawsuits is to consolidate mega-video sites and make yourself a bigger target. However, according to the damned DMCA, the uploaders bear a substancial liability and if YouTube had be slapped by say Time-Warner, they wouldn’t have the warchest and army of litigators that Google does. If a precedent was set with YT going it alone, Google would be next, and with an uphill battle. Perhaps it was defensive but also offensive to prevent say News Corp. or Microsoft from getting ahead of the game with one purchase.

I still feel that this leaves independant content creators out in the cold. Without exclusive deals from YT or Google like Warner Bros. will get, there is no way to protect yourself from the YT version of ebauming. Everyone will steal your work and not even have to worry about hosting fees, just put it up and claim it. If I were to author the next Numa Numa, and 40,000 people uploaded it to YT, how the hell would I defend it? It would become a class action copyright suit, and without actually making any money on it myself, why would I go to the trouble?

Thats it, I am coining it here… if you want to use this phrase you must attribute it to me. I don’t think Morgan is going to sue me, because it is just to good of a description.

Imagine you are in a field, with a large lone oak tree and a cow. You have a 16mm camera with 3 min worth of film and you are feeling “artistic.” Although your budget is $22mil for your fun little arthouse project…you want it to be as obscure and obtuse as possible. Fuck the studio. So, you are running around with your “crew,” through fields and past barns trying to shoot as much film of cow dung as possible. Six months later, you decide you want plot, not just plop. You hire a mediocre writer to dust of a easy retro-fit and find yourself back in the pastures, but this time there is a boy…a boy obsessed with poo. Think “My Left Foot” but with crap.

You cut together a mastershiest with all of the latest bells and whistles, and effects team to color your scenes(you bought 14 miles of B&W), hire two professional editors to spend day and night on your epic and turn it in for a cursury viewing. The Studio heads give you a few notes, mainly they want you to cut the crap, all of it. Of the 6 and 3/4 hour film, only 17 min is left without the poo. You again hire another writer, this time sci-fi and decide that your protagonist, the boy(now a young man) will be going into space. He still thinks about poo.

Eight more months of your life, script supervising, directing and editing and you give it to the studio… more space, sci-fi is BIG this year.

More shooting, more writing, more cutting, you now are using mini-DV and have hired the neighbors kids to work the lights due to “artistic differences.” Now you have StarShiest Space Doodie, and more notes. But this time, you have a secret weapon. The brilliant heads of the studio want lest space and more…you know farmboy(ala rocket boys). So you pick up the phone. There is only one man who can save this project…

Morgan Freeman.

You hold for seven minutes and then, as if the heavens part, you have HIM on the phone. ‘Hi Morgan, I have a little project that I think you would be good for.’ You also ask him if he would audition on the phone, maybe read the back of a cereal box, or War and Peace… the whole thing. After hanging up, you know everything is going to be alright.

Your movie opens to worldwide acclaim, you hear Oscar whispered when you pass… oh yes, on the night when you win the awards for best screenplay, director, and editing you realize that you too have benefited from:

The Morgan Freeman effect.

Are you listening Mr. Lucas? What say we cut Episodes I, II, and III into about 45 mins of sweet, sweet MF voice over. We could help Gigli, and Snakes on a Plane to.