Youtube, and Anti-Corporate Rhetoric

Before I get into this I would like to say, most days I am a chaotic good anti-authoritarian dude who thinks that the powers that be should sod off, and let folks do what they're going to do. Annoyance makes me shift into lawful good where I want to wag my finger and say, " You... You can't do that. It's just not right." This is one of my lawful good posts. Enjoy.

I admit it. I waste a lot of time watching music videos on Youtube. Now there are a lot of stupid comments on Youtube, but this one is devoted to one special subset of stupidity, People who in the music video comments cry out about the ads. I'm not talking about those guys who just complain about them being a little annoying. Heck I am one of those guys. I'm talking about those jerkwads who think the concept of advertising is an affront to anything artistic.

I'll be honest. I think that as it stands copyright law in the U.S. needs some work, especially with the advent of the internet and new technology, but I understand why we have it. Most people think that copyright is just about making sure you give due credit, but actually it's about making sure that only the people who make a work, and the people they give permission to can profit from it though exclusive distribution rights. Like I said I think in this day and age we need to re-examine what that means, but this post isn't about that.

Youtube has costs. For any website to be able to handle the scale of users and content that Youtube does, massive amounts of bandwidth and server space are required. That costs money. Youtube is owned by Google and they've always made their money though advertising. That's why it costs us, the end user, bupkis to do a Google search. The same thing goes for Vevo, except for the ownership thing.

For years people have said that the reason why the record companies suck is that they don't offer online distribution for a reasonable cost. On Vevo they're doing just that. You don't even need a cable subscription like in the old days to watch music videos. Of course, MTV is no longer music television. That's another rant. Annnywaaaaay. It's frickin' free. It doesn't get more reasonable than free. Unless those idiots think they should pay us for the to listen to music. Everybody thinks things should be free on the internet and honestly I agree. The price we pay for that is sometimes we have to watch a 30 second ad.