Google-owned YouTube suffered its latest attack from the media giants yesterday, when NBC, News Corp., AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo dropped the royal P-bomb…”partnership.”

 

Per today’s Washington Post:

The partnership announced yesterday by NBC, News Corp., AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft creates a first-of-its-kind alternative to some of YouTube’s most popular content: TV and movie clips and music videos that were often posted there without permission. Unlike YouTube, the new competitor—which says it will launch its Web site this summer—has proposed a wide offering of videos, borrowing the iTunes model of offering some files for free and others, in this case movies and TV shows.

The impetus behind the venture is to provide an authorized, copyright-protected and ad-supported alternative to YouTube, which has turned into an enormously popular online destination, with some of its hits coming from user-uploaded shows from television.

So, copyright issues have led to the development of a copycat “legal” site (with some cool enhancements) that charges for media or makes users sit through ads to view it. It’s like 2001 all over again (Napster anyone?).

Much like pre-2001 Napster, one of the things users love about YouTube is that it’s truly free—they don’t have to pay to see stuff or watch ads before clips (standard practice on AOL & Yahoo Video).

Napster users didn’t switch to pay-per-song sites because they thought it was cool; most switched because court decisions forced them to (although illegal file sharing did not come to an end). Since the legalities are unclear here, I wonder how competitive this new partnership’s format can really be—especially since the bulk of this media’s audience comprises marketing- and media-savvy (and big-business-suspicious) Gen Y and X users. Do you think YouTube has anything to worry about?