YouTube: Becoming a Capitalist Pig

There are a variety of factors that explain the hyper success of YouTube: ease-of-use, guerilla marketing and the power of sharing.

Recently, however, YouTube violated its principle of sharing (and community); that is, it changed its Terms and Conditions (TOC). This is a common feature of Web sites – to handle the legal technicalities. In fact, it's usually a bunch of jargon that most users simply ignore.

Well, given the size of YouTube, some users did read the latest TOC – and it caused an immediate stir in the blogosphere.

Essentially, the new YouTube TOC grants the company the right to sell your content. In legalese: YouTube gets a "worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions ..."

Trying to put out the fire, a YouTube spokesperson indicated that the company does not own the user-generated content.

Although, the clause does give YouTube the right to make money off your content. And, there is no sharing. All the money goes to YouTube.

Interestingly enough, there are other video sites that are giving its content creators a cut of the revenue, such as Revver and Eefoof.com.

Then again, should users really complain? After all, YouTube.com is subsidizing the cost of hosting videos. Besides, YouTube.com gets over 100 million video views per day (and is far ahead of other major sites, like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google). In other words, aspiring film producers have a ready audience for their work.

So, why not allow YouTube.com to make a buck?