Youtube: Copyright Infringement or Bad Publicity?

Youtube.com, the internet video sharing site dedicated to user-posted videos, exploded on the internet scene in 2006. Intended to host user-created, original videos, it soon became apparent that you could find anything on Youtube: old and new TV shows, commercials, music videos, movies, and TV news clips. Youtube became the one-stop, be all, end all of multimedia video.

Recently, Youtube has fallen under attack for having copyrighted material on their website. Media giants Viacom and Twentieth Century Fox failed to reach copyright agreements with Youtube, so instead they issued notices to remove over 100,000 of their copyrighted material that appears on the Youtube servers.

One has to wonder if these actions would have come about had Youtube not been acquired for a billion-plus dollars by Google, Inc. Though as history shows, Viacom and Fox have never been friendly to "the little guy," either. Over the past ten years of the Internet explosion, many fan-run sites have felt the wrath of large media companies. Site owners have regularly received letters from these companies, demanding that their photos, screen captures, audio and video clips, and logos of their programs be removed, or face legal action.

What I don't understand is how do people - producers, creators, actors, owners - not welcome the Youtube phenomena and accept the free promotion? I can't tell you how many funny "Family Guy" or "Simpsons" clips I've sent people. Or how about all the old '80s and '90s music videos that you never see anymore? Youtube had them all. With each television or video clip I'd find, I was inspired - inspired to watch the show (new episodes or a DVD collection), or listen to the CD again (or, in some cases, go out and buy the CD for the first time!)

Some members of the Youtube community have gone a bit far by posting entire movies (conveniently broken into 10-minute clips). But, certain scenes or montages only help a movie (a good movie, anyway). When I'm thinking about watching or buying a movie, I look it up on imdb.com and Youtube, which can make or break my decision to get it. If I can't even bear to watch a short clip, I'm certainly not going to waste my time or money on the whole film.

So next time you're looking for something on Youtube and you find it's been removed, stop and think about it: with all this "free" publicity, is the copyright owner really just trying to hide something that isn't worth seeing?