When the music industry pretty much sued Napster out of existence (I know they're still here), they had a side issue that they didn't understand: they took one of the best ways of offering music off of the web. They suffered for several years as a result, and aren't close to recovering from their mistake.
With YouTube, the company did the same thing with video and music clips, but flew under the radar until they were so big that the companies knew if they did the same thing they did to Napster, it could hurt them for years also.
As a result, it put YouTube in a place of power that made them one of the most desirable companies to be acquired. Now that YouTube has value to media companies, the media companies are going after smaller competitors. Isn't it interesting that Universal Music Group revealed that it has filed lawsuits against video-sharing sites Grouper and 
Bolt.com, but not YouTube?
Now that YouTube is getting together with media companies, they will start to go against those that helped to bring them where they are: unauthorized movie and TV clip posters.
The first big cut has already begun as Japanese media companies insisted that YouTube remove almost 30,000 videos; YouTube did it right away. They will become more proactive with this in the days ahead; they have no choice.
You have to like how it has all worked out though. They develop a policy of removing clips once they are notified that they are online. This keeps companies away while they grow traffic exponentially. All the time they know that people are going to continually upload unauthorized videos. Smart if it was done as a strategy.
The other side of the equation is that people have become almost addicted to putting up videos, and so may not even care that there is more policing of the site. With the media companys going after their competitors, this will eliminate a lot of people going to other sites to upload copyrighted material.
Whether people know it or not, YouTube is now one of them. Now that they will continually crack down on copyright violators and develop technology to prevent it better, it will be interesting to see the direction that YouTube will take.
If the creators of YouTube and its investors planned on this from the beginning, it was a brilliant strategy. The media companies had to do business or look to Apple and Steve Jobs as the only game in town. That's something they didn't want to do.
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