You can almost hear the Jack Bauer style counting down in the background. It seems like YouTube can’t get out of its own way at the moment. Blunder after blunder. Bad PR. Bad jokes at industry shmoozers.

Last week Viacom pulled more than 100,000 clips from the popular video portal, in a move that indicates big publishers of content getting back in the driver’s seat. And it appears to be not a moment to soon.

As reported by Reuters, YouTube seems to only be offering its anti-piracy tools to companies with distribution deals with the GooTube.

We aren’t suggesting that this is an easy problem to solve. But before Google bought up the ‘Tube, they seemed to be a lot friendlier in the sandbox. Their new, G-style negotiating tactics aren’t going over well with traditional media giants like Viacom, and most likely not with others.

As new platforms like Brightcove and Joost emerge from their betas, they’ll offer solid DRM and quality distribution for content owners, as well as monetization of their content. Real business models for real content owners will emerge from the primordial soup of today’s online video landscape. YouTube’s novelty will wear off, and it will be tomorrow’s punchline.

The real question to ask: With more and more companies entering our daily lexicon, will “YouTubed” come to mean “Jumping the Shark?”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 2:45 pm and is filed under News, Streaming, User Generated, Viral. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.