I was reminded of Lonelygirl15 recently when the December issue of Wired magazine mysteriously turned up on my coffee table. It was only last September that Lonleygirl’s YouTube videos were revealed to be a hoax, yet somehow it seems like decades. The fact that Jessica Rose finally made the cover of Wired in time for the holiday shopping issue says more about the limiting nature of print publication cycles than it does about Lonelygirl’s staying power. Wired might as well have run a picture of Ellen Feiss on their December cover.

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Unversal Music, the mega-major record label that thinks so little of its fans that their CEO, Doug Morris, recently said that iPods were: “just repositories for stolen music,” has evidentally hit upon a new business model: lawsuits and extortion.

Apparently making money by putting good music out there with a price point that might entice people just isn’t good enough. Because, of course, we are all thieves. So instead of that, they’ve decided to go a different route. Instead of using their artists to make money, they’ve decided to fall back upon the lawyers. Hopefully, the lawyers will get a better royalty rate.

Let’s review, shall we?

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It’s hard to imagine a world without YouTube — which is amazing when you consider that the site’s official launch was less than a year ago. In its brief existence YouTube has become an unstoppable force, hosting 65,000 new videos per day and 20 million users per month. YouTube’s mojo is so strong that masters of world domination, Google, finally gave up trying to compete and bought the company outright.

What makes YouTube so great? Videos, of course. By simplifying the process of uploading video content YouTube has become a repository for millions of videos. The site hosts a huge number of obscure video clips you never thought you’d see again, and in many cases clips you never thought you’d see in the first place.

I visit YouTube regularly to get my fix of weird Japanese television shows, rare music videos and live performances, vintage television commercials and movie trailers, and strange public access programming.

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As you might have heard, Google went and acquired YouTube for a mere $1.65 billion. Time will tell if this was a brilliant business move or not. I believe Google’s acquisition is far more savvy than News Corps’ purchase of MySpace. MySpace is a mess and by the time anyone figures out how to make lots of money from the venture, the kids who give the site its buzz will be on to the next big thing.

But YouTube? There’s a different animal. Whether it’s $1.65 billion is debatable, but YouTube’s model — easily syndicated and shared content — gives the site a broader appeal. You don’t have to go to YouTube; it can come to you. Every time a little player is embedded in a website, YouTube’s brand is extended into the public consciousness. Google, being Google, will not be long in figuring out how to turn this into money. Simplest way is to leverage the sites who use AdSense and embed video.
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So we here at Medialoper have a friend named Joe. It’s not that Joe is a Luddite, but he’s maintained for years that this whole Internet thing is a fad. He’s warned us — oh, has he warned us! — not to get too comfortable with this whole online culture. Nothing good can come from it.

Then Joe discovered YouTube and a treasure trove of classic rockabilly videos (or whatever they were called before they were called videos). At least one ‘loper mother is sending her son links to old Buck Owens recordings. And so it goes. A lot of filmed material, stuff that formerly sat on the shelf, gathering dust, is being released into the YouTube wild.
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In the past several months, YouTube has gone from “wha?” to something mainstream enough to be the source of Jay Leno bits. The mainstreaming of YouTube has been formalized by the deal they struck with Warner Music, the first of no doubt several they will be striking with the music labels, despite the bluster from Universal.

Of course, they only faced two choices: go legit or go the Napster route. They went legit, and I get that. We all know what happened to Napster when they fought the power. And yet, I wonder if this means that YouTube has peaked in terms of cultural influence.

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With only a month left before the launch of Season Three of what is probably our consensus favorite show around here, Battlestar Galactica, Sci-Fi.com has launched a series of “webisodes” — internet-only episodes with brand-new content.

Obviously, Battlestar isn’t the first TV show to do this, but the webisodes were actually delayed for a month or so because of controversy over compensation. It’s the latest variation of the “new media meets old contracts” meta-issue we’ve seen played out over and over again.

In this case, the legal issue can be boiled down to this: what is a “webisode” anyways? Is it strictly promotional? Or is it brand-new content for a brand-new medium?

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This summer YouTube users have eagerly followed the story of lonelygirl15, a 16 year old home-schooled girl, and her friend Daniel. Since June the pair have posted a couple dozen short video clips that mix slice of life vignettes with a very thin plot line involving the girl’s eccentric family. It’s sort of like microwave reality TV. Except it’s not on TV. And it’s not real.

While the videos have found a willing audience, some having been viewed nearly a half million times, they’ve also create a mini-backlash among YouTube viewers who fear they’re deceived. I’m not sure which I find more unlikely, the fact that someone would believe the lonelygirl15 videos are actually produced by a 16 year-old with a webcam, or the possibility that viewers feel betrayed because a video they saw on YouTube turned out to be fictional. Hell, these days even television news isn’t alway real. Why should we hold YouTube to a higher standard?

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Two big stories raced through Hollywood yesterday (though one was less discussed than you’d think). First, Sony Pictures Entertainment paid $65 million for a social networking site called Grouper. Second, Paramount ended its deal with Cruise/Wagner Productions. Neither of these things will likely affect you as you go about your daily business, but they’re fascinating to people like me.

The Grouper thing? Well, Sony had a few choices there. They could have built something for a lot less. A lot less. The technology is cheap and the video sharing market is wide open. Do not believe the hype about YouTube ruling the world. There is plenty of room for competition. You need to recall that YouTube is only now approaching its first birthday.

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Because in Hollywood, no idea is ever too good not to try over and over and over again until it’s made the transformation from unique to ubiqutious, rejected pilots are now popping up all over YouTube and other sites like break.com.

As if the set of circumstances that made NBC’s picking up of Nobody’s Watching were, you know, easily duplicated.

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