The Internet is the future of Media: Convergence Culture (Week 3 Revision)

YouTube matters, not because you can find your favorite videos on the site. YouTube is important because it represents the next generation of media. As Jean Burgess and Joshua Green state “YouTube represents  not so much the collision as the co-evolution and uneasy co-existence  of ‘old’ and ‘new’ media industries, forms, and practices”(Burgess, Green 14). Some corporate interests of big business want to destroy sites like YouTube for piracy reasons while other have learned to embrace. Yet most fail to realize the history of music, film, dance, etc… is a history of piracy. Other professionals such as Henry Jenkins view the site as a location of convergence culture, a place where the old forms of media meet the new. Convergence culture is growing and slowly becoming a phenomenon.

Jean Burgess and Joshua Green view YouTube as a place where participatory culture converges with the culture of corporate America. YouTube is interesting because it is one of the first sites in a long list to represent the people’s interests and corporate interests converging. Some big business found a way to profit off the peoples free culture of the Internet without major disruption by working within the system. YouTube is still around and used across the globe.  Yet some industries fear the transition, and attempt to impede the free culture to secure their profits. The media industry is at the forefront of this campaign.

Hundreds of sites have been shutdown due to copyright infringement or piracy violations. Napster is a particularly good example because it was the first major peer-to-peer music-sharing site. Record companies became furious because album sales dropped. They sued nester and won but new sites pop up just as quickly as they are destroyed. The actions of record companies are somewhat ironic because they claim to protect artists, even though the company owns the music produced and profits off of it. Media industries do not accept the fact the internet has become a source of major economic power and are willing to compromise the free culture of the internet to prevent the co-evolution of media.

Burgess, Jean, Joshua Green. "YouTube and mainstream media," YouTube.