In theory, Web 2.0 companies relinquish a certain degree of control to users. What has been described as “putting the We in the Web” (Levy and Stone 2006), however, has brought with it contradictions, conflicts, and schisms, particularly around the imperfectly aligned interests of media producers and audiences.
As José Van Dijck and David Nieborg note in their critique of Web 2.0 management and business manifestos, many corporate practices effectively erode the line between “collective (non-market, public) and commercial (market, private) modes of production.” Such efforts “cleverly combine capital-intensive, profit-oriented industrial production with labor-intensive, non-profit-oriented peer production” (2009, 856). There is a considerable gap between the Web 2.0 rhetoric of happy collaboration and users’ actual experiences working with companies. On the one hand, the mechanisms of Web 2.0 provide the preconditions for spreadable media; many of the key tools and platforms through which material is spread operate according to Web 2.0 principles. On the other hand, conflicting expectations of what constitutes fair participation means that the actual spreading of media content remains a contested practice.
Taking the “You” Out of YouTube
Video-sharing platform YouTube has struggled since its inception to balance the activities of its users with the interests of large copyright holders. Founded in February 2005 and acquired by Google in October 2006, YouTube’s principal business strategy relies on advertising revenue from the attention drawn by the site’s wide range of videos (predominantly created and uploaded by users themselves). From its earliest days, YouTube has also signed revenue-sharing deals with corporate producers to distribute their videos—everything from the latest movie trailers to music videos—alongside user-created content and to provide licenses for some of the varied uses of these texts (Knowledge@Wharton 2006). YouTube has also sought to acquire, develop, implement, and refine digital fingerprinting technologies to identify texts belonging to major copyright holders and to automatically issue “takedown” notices to users presumed to have violated intellectual property law through the unauthorized uploading of videos.
Critics (Aufderheide and Jaszi 2008) have noted that automatic takedown notices fail to protect legitimate “fair use” claims, creating a “chilling effect” on a site where creative remixes of existing cultural materials have long been among the most visible and cherished contributions. However, the enforcement mechanisms and related revenue-sharing deals were developed to shield YouTube from accusations that their business rests primarily on directly or indirectly encouraging copyright infringement, a claim that Viacom leveled at the company in its 2007 legal action (Helft and Fabrikant 2007). Indeed, large media companies have sought compensation from YouTube since the site launched. (See Burgess and Green 2009; Driscoll 2007; Knowledge@Wharton 2006.) Holding users and rights holders in balance is especially difficult for YouTube given the scale of the site (as YouTube reports, more than 24 hours of video is uploaded to the site every minute; see YouTube n.d.) and the diverse range of users—professional and amateur, market and nonmarket driven—who share content through it (Burgess and Green 2009).
On January 14, 2009, some YouTube uploaders found that the soundtracks to their videos had suddenly vanished. After a breakdown in licensing negotiations with Warner Music Group (WMG), YouTube had used an automatic tool to remove audio from videos featuring music from WMG artists. In a controversial post no longer available on the site’s blog, YouTube explained that removing audio shielded users whose videos would have otherwise faced an infringement claim: “Instead of automatically removing the video from YouTube, we give users the option to modify the video by removing the music subject to the copyright claim and post the new version, and many of them are taking that option” (quoted in M. Campbell 2009).
Unaware of the decision, many uploaders wondered whether they were encountering technical difficulties (Arrington 2009), while some were enraged over market forces intruding on their user-created content. One user wrote, “How does a song playing in the background of a slideshow about a colonial reenacting unit harm anyone—least of all Warner Music Group?” (quoted in M. Campbell 2009). Meanwhile, others mused that their use of the audio tracks added value for the music industry: “If we can use it then that would probably get more people to listen to the audio. It’s pretty much like us helping the artist, right?” (quoted in M. Campbell 2009).
While upsetting users, this strategy made business sense for YouTube. It provided the company a way to woo back Warner Music Group while minimizing the likelihood of further legal troubles. Indeed, as Michael Driscoll discusses, YouTube’s strategies for copyright management are generally focused on forging relationships with large copyright holders (2007, 566–567). Even though the site has expanded its “Partner Program” to “ordinary” users, promising them a cut of advertising revenues for videos that might suddenly “go viral” (Kincaid 2009), the company remains primarily focused on policing the copyrights held by large media companies for which the fingerprinting software is made available (Driscoll 2007, 566). Smaller professional and amateur producers who feel that their intellectual property has been infringed—those less likely to constitute a legal threat, to purchase significant ad inventory, or to provide licensed material—must still apply through formal channels to generate a takedown notice under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These various struggles to negotiate between YouTube as a platform for sharing and YouTube as a business model—which have taken place since the platform’s genesis—encapsulate the tensions that run throughout the Web 2.0 model. The rest of this chapter will explore those tensions in detail.
Toward a New Moral Economy
Having embraced rhetoric about enabling and empowering participants, YouTube should scarcely be surprised when users push back against shifts in the site’s policy and practice. Such shifts represent a unilateral reworking of the social contract between the company and its contributors and damage the “moral economy” on which the exchange of user-generated content rests.
The idea of a moral economy comes from E. P. Thompson (1971), who used the term to describe the social norms and mutual understandings that make it possible for two parties to conduct business. Thompson introduced the concept in his work on eighteenth-century food riots, arguing that when the indentured classes challenged landowners, their protests were typically shaped by some “legitimizing notion”: “The men and women in the crowd were informed by the belief that they were defending traditional rights and customs; and in general, that they were supported by the wider consensus of the community” (1971, 78). The relations between landowners and peasants—or, for that matter, between contemporary media producers and audiences—reflect the perceived moral and social value of those transactions. All participants need to feel that the parties involved are behaving in a morally appropriate fashion. In many cases, the moral economy holds in check the aggressive pursuit of short-term self-interest in favor of decisions that preserve long-term social relations among participants. In a small-scale economy, for example, a local dealer is unlikely to “cheat” a customer because the dealer counts on continued trade with the customer (and, the dealer hopes, the customer’s friends) over an extended period and thus must maintain his or her reputation within the community.
Economic systems ideally align the perceived interests of all parties involved in a transaction in ways that are consistent, coherent, and fair. A dramatic shift in economic or technological infrastructure can create a crisis in the moral economy, diminishing the level of trust among participating parties and perhaps tarnishing the legitimacy of economic exchanges. This moral economy might empower corporations that feel their customers, employees, or partners have stepped outside the bounds of arrangements. Or it can motivate and empower individuals or communities when they feel a company has acted inappropriately. In these contexts, both producers and audiences make bids for legitimization, proposing alternative understandings of what constitute