One year after its creation by three former Paypal collaborators, the Youtube amateur video accommodation platform is booming. In L’Express, Jacques Attali boasts this model of cooperative sharing by opposing it to the institutional site of the INA which issues knowledge that the State holds, controls and chooses. Behind these two logics, two radically different conceptions of power.
When Google provides internet users free of charge of the millions of digitized books – ridiculing those who, in the libraries of France and elsewhere, have not been able to take the lead – two other projects come to upset what is played in The Internet universe. In France, the magnificent site of the National Audiovisual Institute (INA) puts all the treasures of French audiovisual online. In the Anglo-Saxon world, the extraordinary YouTube site allows everyone to put their personal videos and all the shows of which they have a recording available to everyone.
Two logics are thus clearly opposed, in the virtual world as in the real world: among Anglo-Saxons, cooperative media offer the public to share treasures around the world for free; In France, state media put their own treasures available to the public, so that it feeds on the benefits of the prince. The first will be funded by advertising. Seconds by tax. To be short, youtube against INA. This refers to two radically different conceptions of power. The first trusts individuals to bring what they find and debate with each other, with the risk of undermining the rights of the authors. The second is wary of the people and gives them knowledge that the State holds, controls, chooses. One believes that people have things to bring to each other. The other thinks they have things to hear.
“A French YouTube on the INA website”
The nature of the images thus shared is not the same: while the institutional media register only bad news and only broadcast mass shows, private persons only film happy events and only put online online rare masterpieces; While television newspapers only show dead and burials, private films show only births and weddings.
Ancient lesson: it is by trusting the people that we create a free people. It is by distrust of him that we suffocate creation. It is this confidence that made Anglo-Saxon creativity and American optimism. It is this fear that jeopardizes our universities and threatens us with radical pessimism. No doubt we could have the best of both worlds. The solution: a French YouTube on the INA website. A strong state trusting citizens.
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