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YouTube is quickly becoming the most popular site on the Internet for an obvious reason: it's a great way to see anything-pretty much anything at all-that you've ever wanted to see. Any television show, any kid falling off of a trampoline and breaking his ankle, any clip from any movie, anything.

YouTube allows its users to upload content onto their massive servers for the world to see, and provides big exposure to those with an interesting idea; one YouTube user decided to put his cell phone number on the website in order to see how many calls he'd get. Many other users have developed huge amounts of viewers for their independent movies and comedy skits.

The problem is that YouTube doesn't regulate what goes on their site, and as a result, there are hundreds of television shows and movie clips hosted illegally. Right now, when a network or studio asks to have a clip removed, YouTube usually complies. The problem is that since their content isn't monitored, it's basically impossible to ensure that nothing copyrighted is on the site, so YouTube is constantly in violation of hundreds of copyright laws.

It's a reflection of Napster's heyday. Back in the late nineties, Napster was the digital music download service, with its peer to peer software promoting countless independent artistsand countless acts of piracy. After lengthy lawsuits from the RIAA, Napster was forced to shut down. It's currently in a new incarnation that charges subscriptions to allow its users to legally obtain copyrighted musicbut it's not nearly as free or as massive.

We may see the same thing with YouTube. No matter how you look at it, it's just not legal or practical to allow anyone from anywhere in the world to post anything at all to a website without inevitably breaking hundreds of laws. And the copyright holders deserve money for the work, as much as the recording industry deserved money for the copyrighted work that Napster users were pirating.

The Brazilian government recently ruled against YouTube, ordering the service to comply with that country's laws. The real test will come when the American government inevitably looks at YouTube's practices. If history is any indicationand it always iswe won't see YouTube continue to operate in the same way once the American government is through with it. It happened to Napster, Grokster, and other peer to peer companies. YouTube's practices are essentially no different, and it's unlikely that they'll be able to survive as an unmoderated source of video for much longer.

Learn more about this author, Phil Dotree.
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