Is Google Trying to Destroy YouTube?

Update: The YouTube Blog has finally made a statement regarding this new muting policy.

One of the things that made YouTube such a big hit was the fact that it enables users to upload their originally recorded video, be it coming from their videocamera or a slideshow of photos created using Windows Movie Maker. Using Windows Movie Maker, users can easily add MP3 sound to their video to serve as a background music. Unfortunately it looks like YouTube users who are fond of sharing these videos to their friends using YouTube will not longer be able to do it. YouTube is starting to mute videos with copyrighted audios.

After muting the videos, YouTube then displays a note below the video screen saying that the video content contains an unauthorized audio track. This simply means that practically, YouTube is making its video sharing site a silent hill for user-generated content.

Of course, long-time and avid users of YouTube will get appaled by this new policy, which YouTube has so implemented without even a warning posted on their blog (as of this moment, there is still no post explaining this move).

And just so you know, these users are probably composed of majority of YouTube members. You can just imagine how these users would react to YouTube’s decision to mute these kinds of video. And while you are imagining that, imagine also what YouTube could become if it has muted all the video contents with unauthorized audio.

Really, if Google is trying to control the proliferation of unauthorized video and audio content on its site, it might as well close down the service. Because how good is a community site for uploading video if it will not allow videos without audio tracks.

And besides, to what extent does copyrighted music should be used after all?

Certainly, YouTube has nothing to earn from this decision, except for a growing number of irate users who might come a time will shift to other sites without those restrictions.

Then, it could spell the death of YouTube.

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