Dylan Tweney is right:
Media companies should pay attention to the Napster story when they consider YouTube.
Lots of excellent observations here, and some good advice that, if history is any guide, the big media companies will ignore.
One key difference in this comparison is that Napster didn’t have much of a justification under the doctrine of fair use, whereas using YouTube as a repository for short clips from much longer video works can often be justified, especially when there’s substantial commentary that goes with the clip.
But since the very idea of fair use seems to be near death, maybe I’m just dreaming.
Ed Bott 
They’ll pay close attention to the Napster story, all right. What it means to them is that they can sue it to death, buy the name, and bring it back online on their own terms.
The events of the past week show how Jobs is on the right track and Bill Gates is not. Gates’Zume is a failed product
right out of the gate. Zume allows one to share tunes which
can only be used three times and then they disappear. That is not going to be acceptable to consumers. Gates is on the wrong side of consumer history. Microsoft has always been on the side of corporate america. Jobs, on the other hand, straddled the copyright ownership issue to forge ahead with the Ipod. The product he released this week allows one to transport programs thru the air to multiplem tv sets in the house, seems to have more prospects. I hope it works better than the rabbit of the 1980s and 90s did.
For years Gates has been telling his people that MS is the innovator in the computer world. I think he may now have accepted that they are great businessmen, not great innovators. I don’t expect MS to invent anything that will
turn the tide of history again. They’ll be lucky to not be
selling buggy whips in ten years.
Mike Rice
Mike, first of all, it’s Zune, not Zume.
Second, the iTV (Apple’s newly announced product that will “transport programs thru the air to multiplem tv sets in the house”) is a ripoff of Microsoft’s Media Center Extenders, the latest generation of which is the Xbox 360. Only Apple’s new product seems to do a lot less.
Finally, what the hell does this have to do with YouTube and Napster?
Mike, iPod sales have dropped from 14 million a quarter to 8.1 million. Not a good thing.
Second, iTV is in reality just Steve Jobs begging: “Please, we’ll be cool again next year. Don’t abandon us!”
iTV is last years technology arriving next year.
Ed, thanks for the link and the commentary! Re the comment that the industry will sue YouTube to oblivion and then resurrect it on their own terms: It’s possible. But the new Napster isn’t exactly a raging success.
Also, there is one big difference between now & the early Napster days. There are a lot of alternatives to YouTube — Yahoo Video (which is actually the #1 video sharing site), Google Video, Revver, and lots more. So eliminating YouTube would only solve part of the “problem” for the big media companies.