From the courtroom to the living room: web video in 2006

The past year was viewed by many as the 'year of the user' in the tech world. Perhaps in no place was this more true than in online video.

Users shared, downloaded and discussed videos online in greater numbers than ever before, making video sharing services among the most popular sites on the internet.

The explosion of online video in 2006 also, however, brought the familiar subject of copyright infringement back to center stage as studios came in search of royalties from copyrighted videos.

As the studios began to see just how much money was to be made from online video, they began to form new partnerships and launch new services to compete with the already booming video-sharing sites.

2006 was a banner year for YouTube. The video-sharing site, launched in February 2005, had claimed over 40 per cent of the online video market share by May.

By October, YouTube was logging more than 100 million video downloads per day and by the end of the year, the site had become the number six most popular on the internet, according to Alexa Web Search.

The biggest news to concern YouTube, however, had nothing to do site traffic. In October, Google announced that it had agreed to purchase the video-sharing site for $1.65bn in stock.

The deal was Google's largest purchase to-date and gave the search giant control of nearly half of all online video-sharing.

While writing about the Google purchase, Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li offered an explanation for the phenomenal success of YouTube.

"YouTube is a gem because it figured out what Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and all the other video players in the marketplace could not," wrote Li. "It is not about the video, it is about the community around the video."

Members of the community were some of the biggest stars on YouTube in 2006. The saga of 'Lonelygirl115' garnered worldwide media attention over the summer, while everyone from 78 year-old pensioners to blender salesmen became cult celebrities through YouTube.

With the building of that community, however, came a slew of legal headaches for YouTube.

Users routinely posted videos of copyrighted programs and films, and as YouTube's success soared so did interest from the studios whose work was being posted.

YouTube avoided litigation from Universal by signing a licensing deal with the studio just before it filed suit against two other video-sharing sites, and the merger with Google allowed the site to take advantage of Google's deals with Sony BMG and Warner Music Group.

YouTube, which has a policy of removing any copyrighted material at the request of the owner, was forced to take down tens of thousands of videos in two high-profile claims from Comedy Central and the Japan Society for the Rights of Authors, Composers, and Publishers.

Some companies decided to introduce video-sharing services of their own rather than fight the battle over copyrights.

In August, Sony announced the purchase of video-sharing site Grouper, and early in December rumours began to surface that four major media networks were discussing the launch of a video-sharing site that some dubbed a 'YouTube killer'.

Even CurrentTV, a television network that airs user-generated content, attempted to get in on the video-sharing market by launching a joint venture with Yahoo.

While TV and film studios attempted to make the jump from the TV to the computer, Apple made a move in the opposite direction.

Staying true to their old tagline, Steve Jobs and Co. decided to "Think Different" and the company announced a service that lets users download feature-length movies over their internet connection and watch them on their PC, iPod or even their TV.

The iTunes Movie Store allows users to download movies for prices ranging from $9.99 to $14.99 and transfer them to their iPods or to a set-top box dubbed the iTV that the company plans to release early in 2007.

Following the announcement, Jupiter Research vice president and research director Michael Gartenberg told vnunet.com that "the big news is that Apple wants to be in every room of your home".

Gartenberg's sentiments were backed up by Jobs, who outilined a vision of " itunes in the den, the living room, the car and the pocket".

Apple appears to not be the only company with this vision heading into 2007. YouTube recently announced a deal to distribute mobile video with wireless carrier Cingular, and in October Microsoft's Zune portable media player was released.

The Zune sports wireless networking capabilities and the ability to play video, so, while 2006 was the year of user video, 2007 may become the year of mobile video.