I haven’t had a quote-of-the-day for a while, and I just fell across this which really made me think:

The big media companies shouldn’t worry that people will post their copyrighted material on YouTube. They should worry that people will post their own stuff on YouTube, and audiences will watch that instead.

Its from The Power of the Marginal , a long but riveting article that appeared in my RSS feed from joel.reddit.com

The point being made here is spot on. The problem with easily-available media isn’t the proliferation of existing material being accessed by people who haven’t paid for the privilege. The risk is that the “little people”, the non-corporate-financed underlings, will be able to tap into the same channels as the big guys and reach the same audiences. We live in interesting times, don’t you think?