Friday, September 15, 2006

Daily Show off YouTube!?!?!?

While I'm pretty laissez-faire about the idea of certain copywrited materials appearing on sites like YouTube (c'mon, that’s tones for free publicity... I bet Daily Show owes at least some of its enormous popularity to YouTube), Mark Evans makes an interesting point that some hardship may be needed for these video sharing sites to eventually develop some sort of business model.

Basically, he highlights that video sharing sites attract a lot of viewers using clips that are, let's say, ambiguous at best in terms of their legal right to be on these sites. Because they have easy access to content and users, video sharing sites have been able to attract attention, investors and advertisers without too much effort. But if the clip-spigot is turned off and viewers float away, will the business models of these sites still wash?

(Regardless of the outcome… please don’t take Daily Show off of YouTube)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't see the point in the producers of the Daily Show having an issue with their images being on YouTube. The clips are available for free on ComedyCentral.com, that's probably where the clips come from in the first place. Fine, so they could complain that watching it on YT instead of their site will prevent you from seeing what else they have to offer, not to mention their advertisers. But that's rather short sighted as many people probably get a taste for the Daily Show, and other CC shows, from YouTube and then seek out the original source. Weather it be on the web or the actual shows on TV. Though I wouldn't be surprised if CC knows actually what they are doing here and simply creating even more publicity for themselves!