A tech opinion piece today. I used up all my "funny-making" earlier this week. Bear with me, it'll be short.

It has been rumored in several places (I'm not going to even bother to link, you can search or look on Digg) that Google is either in talks or has already bought YouTube. Does anyone else think this spells the end of everyone's favorite video site as we know it?

Certainly I wouldn't begrudge the creators of YouTube for selling. If I was in their place, I would take the money and run, especially considering their whopping bandwidth bills each month. But it seems to me that purchase of the site by any large and legitimate business means the end of what we love most about YouTube.

I am, of course, referring to all the ("illegal") copyrighted material.

For the most part I visit YouTube to watch video clips of television shows, movies, music videos, etc. that some intrepid individual has uploaded for the good of all. There is certainly some interesting homebrew content there as well, and I think it is great that there is a place were people can easily contribute it, but it's not the main reason I'm at the site. I want to catch clips from the other day's Daily Show that I missed, or Weird Al's White and Nerdy video. That other stuff is great and all, but then, a lot of it isn't.

The question has been raised, "Well, why hasn't YouTube been sued out of existence by the copyright holders?" It could be for any number of reasons (maybe these folks are starting to realize that free advertising is a good thing) but the best reason was offered by one of the members of the Buzz Out Loud crew: They aren't worth anything. Until YouTube makes some money, they aren't worth suing for damages.

What this means, of course, is that if someone big like Google steps in, they are immediately in the crosshairs of the many corporate lawyers who keep an eye on such things. Since Google doesn't want to be sued for infringement, they would naturally go in and thoroughly remove copyrighted material from YouTube (as well as likely enacting a system to prevent such content from appearing there in the future). At least that is my guess--I don't know much about how they run their own video site (which is arguably much less popular) so I can't speak for certain.

I always assumed that YouTube's days were numbered, anyway. I think eventually they will go the way of Napster, and site traffic will dwindle until it's closed altogether. And since Google already has a video site, what would they want with another one, other than to shut it down or fold it into their existing architecture.

Of course, what the hell do I know, I'm just a computer guy from Ohio.

Then again, I would even be writing this post if we were to get rid of the DMCA, fix our broken copyright laws, and force entertainment companies to realize that without us they are nothing and that they need to abandon their old business models and get with the times.