Are Youtube/Pornotube bad news?

[sonohocoder]

Do you think sites like Youtube (or more particularly, Pornotube) are bad news? I’ve had a couple of webmasters wringing their hands saying that they’re potentially harmful to what they’ve been trying to do for years (err, make money), which I think, IS understandable if you visualise a huge server being populated by visitors uploading “bought” content, but I keep looking at these kinds of webscripts, and seeing the flip-side, which is that they are a very effective and addictive way of getting a visitor to pop the play button a number of times in quick succession, and maybe…getting a signup for more instant vids. I guess all it would need is a few lines of code to count the views, then load the payment prompt, and write the billing user/password data to .htaccess. That wouldn’t take long at all.

The key difference with this I guess, is that the site would be a fixed portfolio of content, and not user-generated.

I’ve got a few ideas about additions to the user-generated kind of site, but I think in terms of a traditional site (structured/themed around licensed content), it would be a neat way of bringing the “tour” mechanic up-to-date?