Friday, March 16, 2007

SF Chronicle Obsesses Over Viacom/YouTube Tussle

Earlier this week, I lambasted San Francisco Chronicle writer David Lazarus for his column proposing that since newspapers couldn't seem to charge for online content on their own, they should band together to do so.

Lazarus wrote his column based on the Viacom/Google lawsuit, and today his colleagues at the Chron are weighing in on the subject of content ownership, copyright, and all that jazz.

Columnist Jon Carroll -- known for writing about his cats as much as anything else -- agreed with my take, pretty much, although he was much nicer about it.

TV columnist John Goodman had a different take. Falling back on the "content is king" idea, he claims that "Hollywood" will rule until Google starts creating content of its own. I'm not so sure. People do care about some user-generated content, the famous Macaca clip, for example. And delivery systems do matter. Just ask the record companies if "owning" the content is doing them much good these days. (They may be too busy suing music lovers to answer, though.)

Heck, I don't know how this is going to play out, but I suspect that it's going to be messy and difficult and uncomfortable for everyone.

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