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In their conviction in a trial in Italy, Google execs’ defense was simply that they were not involved in any way with the production of the video or uploading it onto the viewing platform.

This is a bit like saying: “We didn’t do any beating, we only provided the batons and a nice comfy place to carry out the beating, and umm, yes, we did make it profitable for the people to carry out the beating.”

The only way Google can come out of this is either by spinning out YouTube as a separate entity, or considering this:

A New financial model for YouTube
Publishing model

• When a user uploads a video, the user can only share it with selected group of people (25 email addresses).
• If you want to upload a video and make it available to everyone, you have to pay an entry fee – say 5$. That entry fee pays for your video to be reviewed (for legal violations, ownership, etc) and rated (MPAA or some other rating).
• If your video does get viewed by millions of users, you get a fixed cut at it (0.1 cents per view or some other fraction).

Consumer Model

• You should need an account to watch a video.
• You can watch a certain number of videos for free.
• If you want to watch more, you need to pay a fee (NetFlix like monthly fee model)

The thing that jumps out is that NetFlix could become the next LEGAL YouTube. All it needs to do, is to allow users to upload and charge a fee for doing that.

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Posted on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 10:15 PM in tech industry   |  RSS feed