Tim Gideon of PC Magazine wrote an article about a SXSW panel I walked out on yesterday–“What Does the Future Hold for Video on the Internet?” Before I vacated the room, I did hear this exchange, and upon reflection believe it’s worth repeating here.
Kent Nichols, from Ask A Ninja, pointed out that most “user-generated” sites like MySpace own all the uploaded content and can do whatever they want with it, including use your videos for their purposes or police the links you include on your page.
Nichols seemed to think that companies like MySpace and YouTube were succeeding very well at tricking people into basically giving them content. The creators of LonelyGirl—the YouTube phenom from last year—are, according to Nichols, kicking themselves for using YouTube as their launch pad instead of just using the YouTube player and embedding it on their own, separate site. Why? Now everything they do involving LonelyGirl must pass through YouTube.
