If YouTube is Del, then NBC and Fox are the Backstreet Boys

"Del" is Del the Funkee Homosapien. He's a rapper from Oakland. Often respected as one of the most creative, yet under-represented artists in the field of high-rollin', cocaine romance (I'm looking at you Young Jeezy) fueled rap that's out today.

The comparison I'm making here is that YouTube is...or was...the cool "underground" thing. Its coolness was then slightly marred by the purchase of Google, but the nail in the coffin was when litigation suits on copyrighted material flocked upon its carcass of coolness like flies to roadkill. To put it another way, the YouTube lifeclock is blinking, and Sandmen are on the way.

Still, YouTube had something. At least that's what the guys at NBC and Fox News decided. The fast followers that they are seem to be plotting to usurp the successful model of a cool and innovative company in an effort to pump their crappy content in a most un-cool way. It started when Viacom went after YouTube and forced them to drop copyrighted material, solely because they became part of the Google family, which has deep pockets and considerable online presence.

Never mind the fact that Viacom seems to be playing the role of the pot calling the kettle black, as their subsidiary, ifilm.com, has protected material available as well. I'm not the first to say this, but given this instance of hypocrisy I think Viacom might have some difficulty in proving their case if they should file a suit against YouTube.

Regardless, I'm getting on my soapbox and postulatin' my hypotheses that large communication ubercorps like Viacom and NBC would prefer to get have YouTube/Google (YTG) out of the picture in the area of video content delivery because YTG user traffic dilutes the market share that other video content purveyors could claim.

To take it one step further, the YTG product is so cool, but it's too free, and that isn't good because that means that it's something that's popular but not paid for, which isn't right. Thus, ubercorps must crush YTG so that they cannot continue to threaten other media monsters, who in turn will appropriate the model/delivery vector and agri-fatten it up with bloated ads that you'll need to watch before viewing some lame piece on "Bay Area Backroads". To summarize, the fast-follower behemoths seek to leverage their collective capital in order to wrench control of a good thing away from YTG, in order to better commodify the content and space and make it uncool.

Quick...start finding or starting the next YouTube and don't tell anyone. Make it accessible only by way of mouth or a secret knock or something.