Challenging the media conglomerate business model???

It is simple to understand why Viacom has filed this lawsuit in the first place. Viacom wants to have control over work it creates and distributes. Their business model is closely tailored to maximize their profits. They control how their content is distributed by dictating to the TV cable companies how the content will be bundled and sold. In example, in US if you want to purchase cable subscription you as a user do not have the opportunity to choose the channels you want to pay for, instead you are accepting an offer (package) out of which only a small subset of channels you explicitly have interest in and rest of them are pushed on you in order to get the subscription. Companies (studio owners) make large amounts of money from advertisements they distribute on the TV channels – the ones that you wanted and the ones you got pushed on to you - and their business model works (successfully).

On the other hand, here comes YouTube which turns the big companies’ business model upside down by closely tailoring the content to the need of the customers. They make watching the content more appealing to you by providing social commentary and videos related to the content you are already watching. It is undisputable that their business model is to make money as well but the most important difference is that YouTube tailors the content to fit the customers’ needs and interests. In my opinion that’s what drives the customers towards YouTube. People always look for more and expect more when new technologies arise. It is true that the content owners provide some of the shows on their home websites, but again this content is controlled by them and the consumer is not really able to immerse themselves in the social commentary and discover content similar to what they are watching.

YouTube looks like a clever player “hiding” behind the safe harbors provisions of the DMCA and making us believe that really it is not that easy to control every upload of the content on their site. If we turn to Sony and analyze YouTube from perspective of new technology arising capable of non infringing use YouTube may be off the hook. We must not forget the initial purpose of YouTube –sharing home videos.

Personally, I love YouTube. It’s cool and fun and I can find tons of videos that if it was left up to the studios I would never be able to watch on my schedule.