Dear YouTube… It sure has been great with you all these years. I’ve given you so much creative energy and you’ve shared my work with the world. We had a good thing going, but lately we’ve been through a tough patch.

Whenever we hang out you tell me you don’t like it when I play music that belongs to someone else.  I get that, no problem.  But sometimes you like it when I put music in my movies that you can sell ads on.  Are you feeling okay?  Because I thought you said you didn’t like that?

Just The other day you warned me not to ‘borrow’ content from other people.  But this guy makes mashups with more thank 300k views, borrowing content from both ABC and NBC, and you are happy to sell ad space on them.

And recently things have really gone downhill.  Every time I come and see you recently you’ve been asking me if I want to share revenue with you.  I guess that means you love one of my videos so much that you’d like to sell ads on it.  That doesn’t sound so bad, but I have to ask… have you actually watched the video?

That’s a cool one, right?  Sure I borrowed some content from here or there but I got permission from everyone I could.  The rest of the content, I believe, falls squarely into the category of Fair Use.  You remember Fair Use don’t you?  That’s the part of US copy right law that allows for certain types of uses of copyrighted material without the permission of the author.  In this case short clips that don’t diminish the value of the original work used to create something wholly new for educational purposes.

But I’m concerned that if we do start sharing you might actually watch my movie, decide it violated your terms of use and pull it off the air.  Did you ask me to share revenue with you without actually watching my movie?  Talk about making a guy feel used.

*sigh* YouTube, I love ya and all but I think it might be time for us to start seeing other people.  But don’t worry… it’s not you, it’s me.

What do you think?  Should I start the revenue sharing program despite my concerns?  Let me know your thoughts in the comments!