Here's an on Business Week about people with creative ideas posting on the Internet, and eventually getting paid for the content they output. For example, YouTube has agreed to share revenue from ad sales with content providers who bring the most Internet traffic to YouTube's website. In return, apparently as based on the article, content creators are required to debut their work on YouTube solely for a certain period of time, after which they can move the work to personal sites, for example. So there's a contract, and the distributor who essentially provides a venue for storage of content, or YouTube, takes a large chunk of revenue and profits.
Somehow this seems to be just a more modern rendition of the relationship between artist and distributor, more concretely let's say, musician and music label. The music companies in the past recorded the music onto CD's and sold them to customers, taking alongside a large chunk of the profits. Musicians certainly became wealthy as well, but they deserve to be recognized in such a way for their creation. The more important issue though, is that of content control. Eventually access to content was controlled in the hands of the distributors. They got to choose what kind of music made it to CD's, and this was largely dictated by what would sell. Sure lots of great music was still made in this way, but I'm certain a lot of interesting, novel music that might become popular never had a chance.
This was supposed to be how the Internet changed everything. The individual gained control. The more logical way for the artist to make substantial income would be to provide content on a personal website. Everyone could be their own distributor, as long as they knew how to set up a website, which is, if one is not looking for the sleekest, most techno-savvy code, not a terribly difficult thing to do.
I believe the original intent of the YouTube creators to provide a space for sharing was noble, and I agree it's important to be able to make a living, as well as continue to support this freely provided content sharing forum. But we can't lose the Internet's most important of qualities---the ability for the individual to decide distribution.
That's where parakey (http://www.blakeross.com/) was supposed to come in, but apparently now that's also gone the private route. I guess we'll just have to keep watching as the web evolves. I certainly believe that in the long run, the webolution, or web evolution, will benefit the individual user.
Somehow this seems to be just a more modern rendition of the relationship between artist and distributor, more concretely let's say, musician and music label. The music companies in the past recorded the music onto CD's and sold them to customers, taking alongside a large chunk of the profits. Musicians certainly became wealthy as well, but they deserve to be recognized in such a way for their creation. The more important issue though, is that of content control. Eventually access to content was controlled in the hands of the distributors. They got to choose what kind of music made it to CD's, and this was largely dictated by what would sell. Sure lots of great music was still made in this way, but I'm certain a lot of interesting, novel music that might become popular never had a chance.
This was supposed to be how the Internet changed everything. The individual gained control. The more logical way for the artist to make substantial income would be to provide content on a personal website. Everyone could be their own distributor, as long as they knew how to set up a website, which is, if one is not looking for the sleekest, most techno-savvy code, not a terribly difficult thing to do.
I believe the original intent of the YouTube creators to provide a space for sharing was noble, and I agree it's important to be able to make a living, as well as continue to support this freely provided content sharing forum. But we can't lose the Internet's most important of qualities---the ability for the individual to decide distribution.
That's where parakey (http://www.blakeross.com/) was supposed to come in, but apparently now that's also gone the private route. I guess we'll just have to keep watching as the web evolves. I certainly believe that in the long run, the webolution, or web evolution, will benefit the individual user.
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