2006 was all about user-generated content. Well, probably not really, though everyone says it was. But you cannot deny the impact MySpace and YouTube have had on the media space in 2006. Both were minority interests this time last year, especially outside the US, but now they are hugely significant online services, offering everyone free tools to publish their own thoughts, musings, music, video or content. MySpace, YouTube and their similar rivals may genuinely mean the media in 2007 is increasingly dominated by free thinking independent individuals generating totally original content and distributing it to mass global audiences over the net. Or, perhaps, the same old multi-national conglomerates making vast advertising profits without having to pay any creators, while those creators produce mediocre content because they have no budget to develop their work. Depends how you look at it I suppose.
And of course, a lot of the content on MySpace and especially YouTube is less 'user-generated' and more 'user-nicked'. That is to say, many people simply nick music videos or TV shows they like and post them on their YouTube page. This was, of course, not without controversy, with the music and TV companies whose content was nicked understandably not very impressed with this latest turn of events. A few threatened legal action, Universal Music the most proactive in this domain in the music space. The content sharing platforms stress they don't condone copyright theft, and that all content is streamed (not downloaded like the P2P networks) and therefore supply can be cut off if a content owner points out their copyright content is being distributed without permission. Because of that they claim they are in line with current US copyright law. Not all the content owners agree and Universal has launched several lawsuits - which, assuming they get to court, should provide a test as to whether that defence is valid at some point in 2007. YouTube, of course, managed to avoid litigation from the major labels by giving them a stake in the company, just before Google took them over. All except EMI, that is, who are still to be completely convinced a stake in the company is sufficient compensation for the high number of EMI music videos currently available via the YouTube platform.