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88% of YouTube is New and Original Content, Professor Says

By Pamela Jones et al.

Dear Viacom, and everybody who thinks like you,

I want you to watch a video that goes beyond that statistic, although it's where I found it. It's a video produced by Dr. Michael Wesch, an anthropologist at Kansas State University who teaches a class on Digital Ethnography and who studied the YouTube phenomenon. He calls it participatory observation. After studying hundreds of thousands of videos, he came up with that statistic.

This video, "An anthopological introduction to YouTube", is a presentation he gave at the Library of Congress on June 23, 2008. Aside from being fascinating, it's fun and enjoyable to watch.

If you watch it, you'll find out why fair use matters, what it makes possible, and how big media is endangering it with their closed and restricted concept of what fair use allows. Actually, they'd prefer to kill fair use altogether. It's only fair if *they* do it. Yoo hoo, Disney, where did you get the idea for Mickey Mouse? Or Cindarella? Or Snow White?

If you can watch it without dropping your litigation against YouTube, Viacom, you need to see a doctor right away. Seriously. I hope YouTube lawyers play it for the judge if you insist on going to trial.

Watch the part about the song that ended up being professionally released. It made the company some money. Cluestick: there is more than one business model, for those who can get with the new. Sooner or later, your shareholders will be furious with you if you don't course-correct and modernize. Yes. They will. Eventually, your shareholders will be YouTubers, you know. And you'll be what media used to be.

Full post as published by Groklaw on August 04, 2008 (boomark / email).