Okay. This is turning into Flake Week for me. Sorry. Coming up soon: more audio (a reading from Slow River), another roundup of search terms, and what I think is a pretty interesting question about oppression and lesbian characters.
But that’s later this week. Right now I’m pretty much buried in Hild world. As a peace offering, here’s a post I’d planned for last week that got bumped for something else.
This is pretty interesting:
YouTube, the leading online video community that allows people to discover, watch and share originally created videos, today announced a collaboration with iTunes and Amazon.com that offers the YouTube community direct access to buy and download music, games, and other products with a few clicks of a mouse. This is a first step to building a broader eCommerce platform for content partners and users on YouTube.
The YouTube eCommerce Platform will be rolled out on a larger scale over the coming months to allow partners across all industries including music, film, TV, and publishing to generate additional revenue from their content beyond the advertising we serve against their videos. Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos with a single click, now users can click-to-buy products — like songs, books and movies — related to the content they’re watching on the site.
“YouTube content partners now have the ability to promote and monetize their content in a new and exciting way and create a deeper distribution channel for their content online,” said Chad Hurley, co-founder and CEO, YouTube. “Our goal is to improve the overall YouTube experience by connecting consumers with relevant information and entertaining content. The addition of retail links will enhance the viewing experience and allow people to engage more deeply with the content they want to consume.”
In the short term, this is excellent news for all those vidders out there (hey, Karina!). In the long term it’s a little more problematic. Apple and Amazon are strengthening their market position, which means their control–which means the mainstream consumer may end up with less variety to choose from. The next couple of years will be interesting. As always :)
Nicola Griffith 
I think I’d have to shoot original footage for the entire vid in order to take advantage of that, though. The only reason I’m not getting sued by the people who made the movies and videos and music I used is that I’m not making any money out of the mashup. It still falls within the gray area called “Fair Use”. And I’m hardly a spec of dust by YouTube standards of notoriety. I’m not too worried about Apple and Google controlling distribution. Their founders are cool geeks and encourage experimentation. I know corporations have different priorities than their founders, but in general they’ve maintained a friendly profile. I enjoyed the speech Steve Jobs (Apple Guy) gave to a graduating class at Sanford University: < HREF="http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html" REL="nofollow">“Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.”<> I think the common person had a lot less access to things and information before Apple and Google came along. Less opportunities to express themselves, too. Just the ability to edit videos on the little laptop I use as typewriter is sweet. I remember the old days of video, when a Silicon Graphics editing suite was the only non-linear option and the most basic one cost $6,000 US. That’s six brand new Macs with full video and audio editing capabilities! As far as distribution goes, Google is doing an awesome job. The short films I made back in the day played at a small theater, and maybe 80 people saw them over the course of a year. <>Sun on Dragonfly<> has been up on YouTube for only 2 weeks and has already been viewed 285 times. I’m pretty comfortable with having the geeks take over the world. They ought to do better than most of our current leaders. At least they can spell and do math.
Sounds to me like you might be able to take advantage Karina. I don’t think they will care if you are infringing on the copyright stuff if they get to cash in; it’s free advertising. No telling how long Steve Jobs will be around… After he is gone, no telling what will happen with Apple.And Amazon? Sometimes it seems like they are looking to take over. Everything.That article does mention ‘authorized content,’ but we’ll see what they really mean. Seems like most Youtube content is unauthorized. They may as well benefit somehow.
I think Google and Amazon between them have done amazing things, and I use both of them all the time. I don’t have an opinion on Google, long-term, but Amazon, I’m quite sure, is Not Nice; they fully intend to rule Book World. I think they’ll succeed, at least for a while. With great power comes… But you know how that goes. I don’t believe Bezos is nearly as well meaning as Spiderman.
True, Bezos is not a geek. He’s a corporate guy who has his own satellites and enough aerospace investments to arm-wrestle the NASA one of these days. I’m not sure how to feel about Amazon. For many years, when I lived in Mexico, it was the only way I could order books in English. It still is a reliable source. Maybe bookstores in Vancouver are not well stocked… Some of the titles I need aren’t even in the public library. I usually end up having to order stuff directly from the publisher, which adds the $20 international shipping fee plus another $10-$30 on import taxes. Or I go to Amazon, which carries whatever weird dictionary or translation I need and no local bookstore has. And ships them for free through their Canadian warehouse. I’ll have to consider this carefully. If I do decide Amazon is an evil entity, then it also means I won’t be able to use it anymore so I can be congruent. I’ll have to make a compromise… Ugh. *goes away to the thinking corner, not happy*
I think amazon.com/books is like Russia/gas. They aim to control the pipelines. They’re doing a brilliant job getting books/gas to the consumer, such a good job that other modes of distribution are withering. That’s when they invade Georgia and threaten gas supplies to Europe/dictate terms to POD and e-book publishers by threatening to remove the ‘available’ button. Monopolies are evil. However, amazon.com isn’t a monopoly yet. And given that the US and Europe are suddenly more okay with serious regulation, thanks to the banking/credit fuckup, monopolies, or attempted monopolies, might come in for closer scrutiny in the near future. So it might not happen at all. Until then, use amazon.com. < HREF="http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6604427.html" REL="nofollow">Lots of indy bookstores do<>…