With the first item, Allen and Mike ruminate (aloud) on what Real Networks' freshly minted patent for online streaming video will mean to the nascent online video market.

As for the second item about EMI and Skype? Beats the heck out of us.  We're going off of one press release.

It looks like the folks at Youtube are scouring the grounds and attempting to clean up the debris. The smart money says that Youtube is trying to pretty itself up for two reasons: 1) to attract advertisers and 2) make it more appealing to potential big media partners and buyers.

The cleanup includes mostly getting rid of copyrighted content, like clips of "Family Guy."  I say, Bravo! I say, however, do it right. My take is they are using some sort of program to eliminate things that “appear” copyrighted, but in some cases, they are casting too wide a net. In my case, Youtube nuked one of my World Baseball Classic videos; in fact, the best one of all—the one showing the final out of the championship game. It had to be a machine review of the clip; no editor could have mistaken it for something like ESPN coverage. If so, either I missed my calling as a professional cameraman (which I didn’t) or a career as a play-by-play announcer. Sure, I did call the infamous Muhlenberg College football victory at Dickinson in 1973, but it sure wouldn’t be me in line for Jon Miller’s job. And, by the way, I never received a notice from Youtube about any infraction, offering me the chance to correct its error.

So, Youtube (and all its competitors): I agree you need to clean up your sites. Please, do it right.