Short Academic Essay on Streaming Video and Copyright Infringement

According to ComScore.com, who is one of the top companies to measure the ‘digital world,’ in May 2007 nearly 75 percent of the internet users in the United States of America spent an average of 158 minutes during the month viewing streaming video with Google Video being ranked at the top. The study states that there were over 8.3 billion video streams online. This, however, are stats based only from video content sites and doesn’t take in account for video server networks. This is just a sample of the whole world population in the developed and developing worlds.

It seems that today’s illegal activities surrounding streaming video and P2P networks are fueling the market for more advanced technological entertainment devices. Or is it the other way around? Can it be that because of the technological advances, we as consumers of entertainment content, or any information for that fact, are all becoming criminals? If we share information that is readily available on the web, even though it may be under a copyright law, is it truly a crime to click on the link that leads us to the data?

As one electronics reviewer stated while testing streaming digital media players that connect your PC to your TV or stereo, “Six of the seven players support HD video to some degree, but as yet there really isn't much true, legal HD video out there.” (Spector)

So what can one do when there is a market of technology pulling us to find illegal content on the web. Are we responsible if we never physically have the content stored on our hard drives, in our personal libraries burned to a DVD disk, but briefly in our cache memory for seconds at a time depending on the hosting site that the illegal content is uploaded to.

But of course, one cannot deny the rights to the owner or author of the content that is posted and streamed. Intellectual property is the oil of the internet. Not oil as in lubricant, but as the cash cow. In the article ‘The Man who could kill YouTube’ in Esquire Magazine, Belloni states that the “American entertainment and technology industries [have created] about $5trillion worth of the country’s largest export: intellectual property.” Be it that America is an import based economy anymore, it is understandable that the large corporations such as Disney, AT&T, NBC Universal, and so on are so bent on controlling the information that is shared on the internet. The videos that people stream illegally are their bread and butter. But even the small guys are fighting against sites like YouTube. From the same article, Bob Tur, a content maker that recorded much of the Rodney King L.A. riot footage from a helicopter, has been fighting to sue Google to get his news footage removed from YouTube. His point of view is this, "If we lose [the lawsuit], what's to stop Google from setting up pay-per-view services or even exhibition halls for Web video.” Tur has lost his wife, and most of his saving for his children’s future, he says.

As much as I enjoy watching what I choose to watch through streaming video, I understand the legalities of copyright infringement and intellectual property. I do not own a television, and I plan not to. At least not to watch what is offered to me here in Czech Republic on the state television or German satellite. I will continue to view illegal content on the web until there is a better solution to the problem of time shifted content and low quality programming.

Belloni, Matthew (2007, July). The Man Who Could Kill

YouTube. Esquire, 148(1), 71. Retrieved January 11, 2008, from Research Library Core database. (Document ID: 1305842001).

Lipsman, Andrew. “3 Out of 4 U.S. Internet Users Streamed Video Online in May.”

Average American Video Streamer Watched More than 2.5 Hours of Video Online. July 17, 2007. ComScore.com. 11 Jan. 2008

Spector, Lincoln; Stafford ,Alan. (2007, August). Entertainment Everywhere. PC

World, 25(8), 92-96,98,102,104,106. Retrieved January 11, 2008, from Research Library Core database. (Document ID: 1308392221).