Who hasn't heard of YouTube by now? It's a Web-based video scrapbook cum social network that features thousands, perhaps by now millions of videos submitted by professional producers and marketers, aspiring actors and musicians, parents and children, and the family dog. Many are original, most probably contain copyrighted material. This week it was revealed that while Universal pictures has threatened to sue YouTube for copyright infringement, other leading movie and TV distributors, including Warner, will be offering their properties on YouTube for playing, sale, and incorporation into mashed-up derivative products. Even the Bush Administration is posting ... anti-drug videos. YouTube is the largest of the Web's video scrapbooks, but it's got plenty of company, ranging from iTunes to Atom Films to AOL to Yahoo! 9 to Google Video and more.

Obviously, there's a sea change happening in the way Internet users are accessing their media. Or is there? I'm not so sure.

I was a participant in the Public Access Movement of the late 60s and early 70s (chronicled in its irregular journal, Radical Software, archived online). Its basis was the belief, based on various strands of critical communication theory, that via the media, we know our world -- and to the extent that the media are free for any point of view to be expressed, our individual and collective knowledge of the world, and our ability to act in it, is enhanced. Unable to penetrate the television establishment, public-access media activists used the first portable video cameras -- Sony Portapaks and Hitachi hand-helds, recording on narrow-gauge videotape -- to document local people, places, and events, hoping to distribute them over then burgeoning cable TV networks. The Movement's purpose was the democratization of the media, beginning with cable TV, which appeared vulnerable to local pressure. Most of the time, however, Movement “productions” showed mainly offline, in lofts and warehouses, not on cable. Cable operators fiercely defended their “right” to restrict access to their networks, especially those who wouldn't pay for the privilege. Over time, their position softened thanks to federal, state, and local regulation that opened a few channels to public producers. But not in time to save the Movement. Without broad public awareness or support, it evaporated. Many activists went on to careers in the media, but most, I suspect, couldn't bear to abet America's Funniest Home Videos posing as the legacy of public access.

Given my background, you'd think I'd be head over heels about the success of YouTube et al. Doesn't it signal the triumph of media democratization after all? Hardly. For several reasons, I remain skeptical and even concerned about the future of media on the Internet. These factors are, in serial order:

1. Video publishing is a fad, visual “long-tailism.” Yes, millions are publishing video content on the net. Some is original, most is not. Some is exquisite (so far as can be told from a three-inch image on a four-inch window on a 15“ screen). Most is not. Some is funny, most is banal. What are the motivations of those who publish the ”most“ stuff? Novelty is a leading cause. They do it because it can be done. Rank self-promotion is another. There are those who use the Internet for artistic expression, though art per se will only come off well when Apple's mythical iTV or some other device for easily sending video from the computer to the TV becomes available. Probably millions of parents are using YouTube like they used their wallets in the past, or Flickr more recently, to show off their kids. Kids are using it to show off their vacations, friends, really good rock shows, and the family dog. (We won't talk about the soft porn that consumes petabits of bandwidth.)

Wow. That's a lot of video. Try plowing through it sometime for something truly informative or edifying, or exceptionally entertaining, and you'll realize just how much. One's only recourse are the recommendations of colleagues, friends, and family, who -- according to the network Power Laws, first enunciated by Clay Shirky right here on Corante.com -- are drawn to that which is already best known. Blogs are still going strong even though only a fraction of a fraction ever have a readership, so maybe video publishing could continue indefinitely as the global community's video scrapbook and broadsheet. Probably not. We may never find out, because other forces are at work.

2. Multitasking leads to the demise of attention. Recent research indicates that the more individuals multitask -- the more things they try to accomplish simultaneously -- the less able they are to focus their attention. Follow-up tests and surveys almost always indicate reduced awareness and memory of experiences had while in a multitasking situation, compared to the results when individuals attend to only one thing at a time. Implicit in this diminution of experience is finding joy in it. I don't mean momentary hah-hah, as when the guy juggles balls to Jimi Hendrix, or a soccer match in Manchester makes it to the Little Screen. I mean something that would bring one back repeatedly, not just to the production, but to the genre of production. Call me old school, but I see a lot of fall-off as people grok that more video doesn't necessarily mean better video, or even good video. It's just video, probably better when seen without an iPod impairing one's hearing, the cellphone urgently texting, and business or school homework -- homeWORK? -- waiting to be done. Unless we're evolving into homo mediocritus.

3. Professionalization of the medium. As a result of the aforementioned banality of most online video, professionals are stepping in in hopes of elevating themselves and their work above the fray. I enjoy many of the shorts on Atom Films. The ones I like best are produced by professionals, ad agencies, indie producers, and similarly skilled individuals. The computer monitor doesn't do their work justice, but at least it can be seen. Gradually, it's noticed. Over time, word gets out. The Power Laws kick in. In no time we have a cadre of media producers, larger than the one that serves broadcast and cable, but vastly smaller than the total audience of publishers who are now blasting the numbers -- postings and pageviews -- into the stratosphere. Video viewing is Newtonian, not quantum: what goes up must come down. The other consequence of professionalization is that real money starts to get necessary as the ambitions of producers and artists is fueled by the celebrity of public attention. Can Procter & Gamble, Chevron, and Target be far behind?

4. Invasion of the corporations. BMW pioneered major-corporation videos online, first with excellent 3D product graphics, then with engaging short stories featuring Beemers for sale (now beamed straight to your iPod as "vodcasts"). Amazon.com now hosts features with big name stars and full production quality. Little by little, branded novellas are showing up on proprietary websites and on the scrapbook sites. As is said in Hollywood, money talks, everything else walks. YouTube is furiously cutting deals with big distributors in anticipation of an IPO. (YouTube as a public company? More like TheirTube.) Apple can't get enough high-quality product from Disney to fill the l iTunes Store, so it's after big money too, this time from its customers, to pay for the best. What remains to be seen is which corps win and which lose in the new ratings game.

5. The total valorization of online visual experience. Not wanting to play Cassandra more than I already have, I was reluctant to include Reason 5. But it's the honest truth. With the rise of total monitoring comes total marketing and in its wake, total merchandising. The end of Net Neutrality as a policy option, the edict of a Republican Congress hypocritically for the little guy (”having it out for the little guy“ is more like it), means that additional, invisible infrastructural pressures will soon be brought to bear on those who produce and distribute the most video content, raising its price. Within the decade, virtually everything online that's truly watchable -- pleasurable, memorable, edifying, and attractive -- will have a price (extracted in dollars and cents or time spent dully watching mandatory ads). That price will go up, and up, and up, reducing the amount of time people spend watching, in the same way the rising price of oil is gradually constricting commuting and leisure driving alike.

So, sorry: no democratization of media this time around. It shouldn't be a surprise. Each time a new medium struts onto the proscenium, the hopeful audience shouts ”Freedom!“, ”Democratic communications!“, and ”Information just wants to be free!“ For a little while, it is. But as happened before with the printing press, photography, radio, TV, and cable, over time the numbers of content producers and controllers of distribution ceases to be proportionate to the volume of material available over the medium. I'm not saying this is wrong or conspiratorial, though the hegemonists do do their darnedest to preserve their advantages. It's just human nature. Only, this is about more than human nature. It's about messing with the media by which most of us come to know the world and our place in it, and to learn from others what their places are. When organic, democratic expression ceases to be free, what we're left with is paid expression. And paid expression...well, you get what whoever pays for it wants it to be. The new media is the old media. Good night, and good luck.