YouTube. Is YouTube a threat to the film industries or a democratic godsend to the masses - Essay Example

? YouTube - Is YouTube a threat to the film industries or a democratic godsend to the masses? October 16 Introduction YouTube is a peer-to-peer video sharing website and the firm is based in San Bruna, California. User-generated content can be uploaded and viewed by other users free, subject to some restrictions. Content available includes movie clips, video songs, TV shows and clips, video blogging, sports events, business management speech; user generated content and other types of video content (Miller, 2011). The company was acquired by Google in 2006 for 1.65 billion USD by Google. Only registered users are allowed to upload content and they can upload unlimited number of videos. Unregistered users can however view all types of barring movies flagged as premium. The viewership figures are very high. In 2010, more than 14 billion movies were viewed while 800 unique users visited the site every month. About 60 hours equivalent of new movies are uploaded to the site every minute (Anderson, et al, 2012). With such a large portfolio of movies and entertainment available, the statement that examined is ‘if YouTube is a threat to the film industries or a democratic godsend to people’. Thus, two issues will be examined and these are the threat to film industries and the advantages for the masses. Various issues such as nature of content, partnerships formed with media houses, business model and other such issues are examined in detail. An analysis and discussion is then formed along with a conclusion. The position taken by the paper is that YouTube is not a competitor to media houses and the film industry but it acts as a channel partner and media outlet and that the masses use the services for learning new skills, entertainment, for advertisements and product demos. 1.1. Problems and issues faced by the film industry The film industry across the world is facing increasing competition, cannibalisation and parasitic behaviour by a number of entities. These include pirated and illegal CDs of movies that are sold for a few Pounds on the sidewalks and which are also available as illegal downloads. Then there are the satellite channels such as HBO, Star Movies and others that broadcast reruns of old movies by paying some amount to the movie production house. Then there are websites such as NetFlix that offer legal movies on rent but the revenue earned by the film producer is less. The film industry makes profits mainly when patrons visit movie theatres (Jenkins, 2009). People tend to stay away from theatres since they can view movies through other legal and illegal channels. People will of course flock to the movie theatres to see hit films such as Avatar and the Harry Potter series but older movies see near empty houses. In such a case, a movie-sharing website such as YouTube that offers movies free viewing would be highly unwelcome since the website will further reduce the revenue (Lievrouw and Livingstone, 2012). The point is that the film industry would stand to suffer monetary loss and not loss of any reputation or identity theft since YouTube would not claim that a particular movie was filmed in-house. However, media houses are willing to consider services and offers that help them to obtain additional revenue. This issue is examined in the next section. 2. Analysis of YouTube Some important topics are first analysed with reference to the business model and content related topics. Observations from these discussions will be used in arguing for the statement. 2.1. Business Model Used The business model used by YouTube is advertisement revenue obtained from click through rates by users when they visit pages that host the movies. Advertisers pay a certain amount to the website to carry the Ads. It differs from the retail model of Netflix and Spotify in that it does not directly charge rentals for movies that are hosted. It is somewhat similar to Napster and Limewire but YouTube does not encourage illegal hosting of movies and it is not possible to download movies easily unless some special downloader’s are used. In any case, the quality of such downloaded movies is of low quality (Benevenuto, et al, 2008). Many of the Ads placed are integrated in the movies and shown as pre-roll ads of a few seconds length. These cannot be avoided by free users and premium users who pay a certain registration fee can skip the Ads. In addition, click through Ads are also placed. Billing is done as per the click through rates for the Ads (Hunter, et al, 2012). The implication for the film industries is therefore very clear that YouTube does not allow people to download movies, it does not charge people to view movies online and the only revenue it generates is through Ads (Ying, 2007). 2.2. Restrictions placed on movies To avoid IPR and copyright issues, YouTube has placed a restriction that movies of 15 minutes cannot be uploaded by users. If users want to upload longer movies then they must register and authenticate using mobile phones. Other restrictions relate to inappropriate content such as pornography, hate speech and content, excessive violence and so on. Users can flag the content as inappropriate and YouTube will then decide to either allow the movie to run or block it (Hartley, 2009). The implication for film industries is that there is a limit of 15 minutes on the uploaded movies. Hence, there is no threat for the film industries. However, YouTube has developed special features for channel partners and these are discussed in the next section. 2.3. Channel Partners for YouTube Many media firms such as BBC, CNN, Fox, Hulu, CBS, Vevo, MGM, Disney, Lions Gate Entertainment and others have developed partnership programs with YouTube. A new feature called Shows was launched by YouTube and it offered more around 4000 full TV shows and episodes from 60 TV production houses. These TV shows are popular comedies and soap operas; family shows that run on many channels (Paolillo, 2010). Some of the shows are available free while others can be seen with a small prescription fee shared between YouTube and the TV production house. YouTube announced an online film rental service from 2010 onwards. More than 6000 movies are available for online viewing only with a sharing agreement for the fees. The popular cricket matches, of the Indian Premier League were hosted live with streaming media service. The transmission was seen by millions of people who resided in different in countries where TV relay was not available. Advertisements were also shown during breaks in the game, similar to what one sees on TV (Cunningham, et al, 2010). The implications for film industries and media houses are that YouTube is acting as a media channel partner. The website uses advanced technology and has high bandwidth that the websites of movie firms and even news sites such as BBC and CNN doe not have. This technology advantage brings in more opportunities since films, movies, TV shows and live sports events can be shown on a prescription fee to an audience that would not affect the audience of regular shows. Thus, YouTube is not competing with the film industries but helping them in a mutually beneficial manner. 2.3. How people regard YouTube YouTube has emerged as one of the most user-friendly tools that help people to not only share personal videos but also share product information, allow personal marketing and create product demos. In the field of education, YouTube is widely adopted by tutors and peers to demonstrate the use of software use, in trouble shooting, for installation of equipment, and many other instructional programs including learning musical instruments. It allows new talent to make videos of their bands and share them on YouTube (Davidson, et al, 2010). One does not need the services of professionals in making the movie and a digital camera, a web cam and even free tools that allow screen capture videos can be used. The content can be uploaded as movie files, various mpg formats, Flash files and other media contents formats (Burgess and Green, 2010). YouTube also helps to create advertisement campaigns that can be viewed by focussed interest groups thus increasing the efficiency. Links to the video files can be shared through social media such as Facebok, Orkut and others. This YouTube allows users freedom to control their media plan, helps them to demonstrate and sell their products, allows people to learn new skills and develop their career and hobbies. Movies relating to these topics form about 78% of the video content and accounts for 98% of views. Thus, it is seen that YouTube is much more than free videos of film industry and it offers masses with limited resources a chance to display their talent and come up in life (Zink, et al, 2010). 3. Discussions The previous sections have discussed the issues related to the threat faced by film industry, nature of content on You Tube and the manner in which people use the service. Important points that emerge are given as below. Threat to film industries: Arguments and evidence from the previous sections show that YouTube is not a threat to film industry. Rather it acts as a channel partner and helps to generate revenue for the film industry and TV media houses. These firms can host their movies and reruns of past shows and even stream live sports events. Interested subscribers then use a pay per view options and log on to the website and see programs. Movies are not available for download and can only be seen online. While some third party tools allow download of movies, these are not of very high quality. YouTube allows legal download of some movies on a paid basis. Thus, YouTube serves as an additional revenue generation mechanisms for the film industries. There are no indications that YouTube will change this model and offer full-length movies for illegal download. Hence, there is no threat to film industries. Godsend to the masses: Users of YouTube, registered, unregistered, individuals and organisations make use of YouTube in many ways. They can view user-generated content for entertainment. They can also use the services for product promotion, offer educational and training videos, teach how to play musical instruments, offer online coaching and business management speeches and offer hundreds of other services. By linking the videos from their social media page, people have many extra benefits and advantages. Thus, YouTube helps people to take up self promotion and seek free entertainment. 4. Conclusion The previous sections have discussed YouTube and examined the threat to film industries and the help for masses. The technology used by YouTube, the immense viewership figures and the business model shows that YouTube is not a threat to the film industry. Many instances and examples are seen where the two have worked collaboratively for mutual benefit. Thus, there is no justification for the film industry to view YouTube as a threat. The issue of help and use of YouTube for the masses was also examined. It is clear that millions of people and small firms use the free services of YouTube to share content, sell products, promote their business, and seek entertainment and education. Thus, the common masses receive sufficient benefits form YouTube that helps them to increase their carrier options. However, using words such as ‘godsend’ is excessive since YouTube does not offer miracles free but only free video sharing services. References Anderson, B., Brynin. M., Rabin, Y., and Gershuny. J., 2012. Information and Communications Technologies in Society. London: Routledge Publications Benevenuto, F., Duarte. F., Rodrigues. T., and Almeida. V. A. F., 2008. Understanding video interactions in youtube. MM '08 Proceedings of the 16th ACM international conference on Multimedia. NY, pp. 761-764 Burgess, J., E. and Green, J. B., 2012. YouTube : online video and participatory culture. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology Cunningham, S.D., Silver, J., and McDonnell, J., 2010. 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