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Late Friday, early Saturday...watching ripped youtube videos?!

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Not having a television can get boring sometimes. Given the status quo, I sought entertainment value on the internet, YouTube primarily. In the light of the latest Viacom suing YouTube scandal my Friday evening entertainment seemed particularly relevant. I watched television shows "clipped together" with no commercials.

Any catch?

  • Breaks were between swapping video clips to continue and my ability to search for them successfully although it did a good job of recommending clips to me in order. Not very seamless, but hey, I did not have an "Ambien" ad with its zillion side-effects to put up with.
  • The quality of video and audio was exceptionally poor, which was granted given they were uploaded by amateur TV junkies wanting to share their favorite TV shows.
  • And a delay of perhaps some hours after the show had been telecast live before I could watch it.

Am I complaining? Not really...I may not need a television after all...unless YouTube meets the Napster fate. All the contentious content is on YouTube servers and not on its users' machines making it more susceptible to the "copyright infringement" charge.

The moral implications? No deep analysis, but some points that come quickly to mind...

On a personal level...

  • I will not be able to buy the products whose commercials were shown during the breaks? I am a channel-swapper so breaks don't bring any profit to the media companies with a viewer like me. Seems like I did not really cause a dent in their advertising revenue in any significant fashion.
  • I would not see advertisements for products I would ever buy in the first place, so my watching the advertisement would not have made any difference to the company in any conceivable way.

On a larger scale though...

  • Will the companies be able to provide the same content if they are unable to generate ad revenues given a majority section of viewers will be watching clips online?
  • Is it fair to consume content without remunerating the content generators in some form or the other?

The answer? Dilbert's "Sanitation Engineer" says that "Water will find its own level" and using the much revered Darwin's evolutionary know-how, "Survival of the fittest". It is hard to say what is right or wrong because the answer changes depending on what your own stakes are. Who will win? The stronger and the smarter one...