Youtube.com Jumps the Shark

Call me a curmudgeon, but I think that the owners of Youtube.com have just lost their minds. Cutting a deal with Warner Music to allow the music giant to collect royalties from PPC advertising sounds like a great idea. But it completely destroys the social compact which allowed Youtube to become a video powerhouse, namely that if I upload something, the site will display it. Independent content creators do what they do because they don't want the copyright police, not the RIAA, not the MPAA, nor Warner Music's copyright lawyers - nobody.

Why couldn't Youtube.com simply let well enough alone? Well, obviously, someone held a gun to their heads, and told them "make a deal or get killed by the copyright police." And Youtube.com caved in.

This is what happens when brilliant ideas become too successful for their own good. Youtube.com, like it or not, has "jumped the shark," and my prediction is that this once popular site will become the next mp3.com, on the fast track toward becoming a Ghost SIte.