1.민간부문의 참여시 공익과 사익의 불균형 초래 가능
When private sector enters U-city project, public interest and private interest will be unbalanced.

2.투자가 점진적으로 이루어지기 때문에 인프라 투자 불균형을 둘러싼 지역간 갈등 발생
Since, investment of U-city can't be conducted at a time. Conflicts will be caused among local societies.

3.개인프라이버시 문제
The problem of privacy

4.시스템 오류에 의한 재앙의 발생가능성
Disasters can be caused by system error.

5.인간성 상실의 문제
The humanity can be disappeared.


영작에 이상한 부분이 있으시면 코멘트에서 수정 부탁드립니다.^^

'유비쿼터스 도시(u-city)' 어디까지 왔나?
[매일신문 2006-10-24 13:42]

유비쿼터스 도시(u-City)가 우리 곁으로 다가오고 있다. 세계 각국 및 국내 각 도시들이 앞다퉈 u-시티를 표방하며 건설에 박차를 가하고 있는 것. 불과 10년 전만 해도 상상하지 못했던 유비쿼터스 적용 아파트가 현실로 나타나고 유비쿼터스 도시 건설도 잇따르면서 점점 데이터에서 유비쿼터스 시대로 전환되고 있다. IT 기술과 건설이 결합해 도시 공간 하나하나에 IT 기술을 내장, 언제 어디서나 IT 기술로 움직이는 미래형 도시인 U-시티. 편리함과 건강, 안전, 쾌적한 생활을 추구하는 유비쿼터스 도시의 개념 및 추진 현황, 문제점 등을 살펴본다.
◆U-시티 개념 및 사업 영역
유비쿼터스 도시(u-City)란 한마디로 첨단 정보통신 인프라와 유비쿼터스 정보서비스를 도시공간에 융합해 도시생활의 편의증대와 삶의 질 향상, 체계적 도시관리에 의한 안전보장, 시민복지 향상, 신산업 창출 등 도시의 기능을 혁신시킬 수 있는 차세대 정보화 도시다.
다시 말해 도시 기능과 관리의 효율화를 위해 기존 정보인프라를 혁신하고 유비쿼터스 기술을 기간시설에 접목시켜 도시 내에서 발생하는 모든 업무를 실시간으로 대처, 주민에게 편리·안전·안락한 생활을 제공하는 신개념의 도시다.
이러한 u-시티의 주체로는 크게 지자체 등 공공기관과 기업, 개인·가정 등이 있다.
공공기관은 u-시티 사업개발 및 운영권, 유비쿼터스 환경의 행정서비스 인프라 개발 및 관리 등을 주요 영역으로 하는데 기상예보 및 방재, 도로교통 시스템 등 도시 관리의 효율화를 통한 대민서비스 향상, 도시 가치 상승 및 이미지 제고, 비용 절감, 지역산업 활성화, 기업유치 등을 기대하고 있다.
기업의 경우 전세계 네트워크를 통한 신속 정확한 서비스는 물론 유비쿼터스 기술 및 인프라를 이용, 자산 및 물류, 생산공정 관리, 연구개발 등 기업 운영 효율성을 극대화시킬 수 있을 것으로 보인다.
개인은 텔레매틱스, u-홈네트워크, u-헬스, u-교육, u-시큐리티 등을 통해 언제, 어디서나 신속하게 정보통신 서비스를 이용하는 한편 편리하고 즐거운 삶을 위한 각종 정보서비스 이용, 생활 지출비용 절감 등의 효과를 누릴 수 있을 것으로 기대된다. 특히 u-헬스 및 u-교육의 경우 실생활에 적용되면 2010년쯤엔 국내시장 규모가 각각 1조8천억 원, 4조4천억 원에 달할 것으로 예상된다.
◆국내 추진 현황
국내의 경우 첨단산업 유치를 목적으로 한 다른 나라 도시들과 달리 실제 유비쿼터스 서비스 구현을 위한 신도시 개발이 지자체, 대기업 및 공사 등 사업자들의 주도로 활발히 추진되고 있다.
중앙정부도 올해 법·제도 정비, u-시티 표준모델 개발, 서비스 표준화, 내년 시범사업 추진 등 u-시티 관련 정책을 추진하고 있다. 특히 올 초 건설교통부와 정보통신부도 u-시티 건설 양해각서를 체결하고 법, 제도 정비와 표준화된 u-시티 모델 개발 등을 본격 추진하고 있다. 또 u-시티 포럼 분과위원회에서 마련된 법안과 외부용역 'u-시티 건설 지원법(가칭)' 등을 통해 법제정에도 착수했다.
현재 u-시티로 개발될 예정인 대표적인 신도시는 화성 동탄, 용인 흥덕, 파주 운정, 수원 광교신도시, 행정중심복합도시와 대구, 김천을 포함, 2012년까지 개발되는 혁신도시 11곳, 기업도시 등이다. 또 상당수 지방자치단체도 이와 별도로 기존 도시의 u-시티 전환에 대한 비전에 대해 활발히 논의하고 있다.
12만 명을 수용할 예정인 화성 동탄신도시의 경우 유비쿼터스 컴퓨팅 기술을 선도적으로 적용, 한국의 도시 수준을 높이는 효과를 기대하고 있는데 내년 사업이 완료되면 국내 최초의 u-시티가 될 것으로 보인다. 사업지구 전체에 광케이블망을 구축하고 무선랜의 AP(Access Point)를 공공장소 및 공공건물 내에 설치하는 한편 주민 안전과 도시기반시설 및 공공정보서비스의 종합적인 관리를 위해 공공정보센터도 설치하게 된다.
파주 운정신도시의 경우 IT와 친수환경생태가 어우러진 u-시티로 건설될 예정으로 12만5천 명의 인구가 거주할 것으로 예상되고, 수원 광교신도시도 수원과 용인에 걸쳐 341만 평 규모의 복합·자족신도시로 건설될 전망이다.
있다.
조병선 한국전자통신연구원 네트워크경제연구팀 팀장은 "u-시티를 건설하더라도 IT, 건설 등 기술 중심이 아닌 인간 중심의 도시로 거듭나야 하는데 이를 위해선 단기적인 성과에 연연해선 안 되고 국가 차원의 거시적이고 장기적인 도시 건설 추진돼야 한다."며 "u 문화 창달을 위해선 IT 전문가 등 특정 분야나 산업이 아닌 사회, 문화 측면 등 전반적인 산업임을 인식하고 다양한 분야를 망라한 민간, 학계, 정부, 기업 등 상호 간 지속적인 협력이 이뤄져야 할 것"이라고 말했다.
◆문제 및 개선점
도시 건설 비용이 많이 드는데다 폐쇄회로, 무선전자태그(RFID) 등의 사용 일상화에 따른 사생활 침해, 개인정보 침해 등 우려도 적잖아 개인정보 침해를 방지하기 위한 사회적 인프라 구축 및 기술적 보완이 필요하다는 지적이다.
범죄예방, 교통정보수집, 환경오염감시 등을 위해 각종 폐쇄회로가 설치될 것으로 보이는데다 개인의 위치추적이나 생체정보인식이 가능한 무선전자태그 사용 등으로 프라이버시 침해 우려가 크다.
특히 도시통합네트워크센터는 u-시티 내 통신망, 교통망, 시설물 등으로부터 수신된 각종 정보가 집중되는 곳인 만큼 보안문제 해결이 최우선 과제로 대두되고 있다.
실제 u-시티에 보급되는 무선전자태그 사용에 관한 현재 법·제도적 기준이 미흡한데다 지난해 정부가 마련한 'RFID 프라이버시보호 가이드라인'도 아직 법적 구속력이 없어 제도 개선이 절실한 상태다.
이에 보안인증제도 및 관련 보험서비스 등을 도입, 시민들의 불안을 최소화하고 보안솔루션 업체를 중심으로 u-시티 내에서의 원천 보안기술을 확보할 필요성이 있다는 주장도 제기되고 있다. 이외 사업 모델 및 재정적 한계, 문화적 거부감 등도 풀어야할 숙제로 남아 있다.
삼성경제연구소는 관계자는 "오는 2015년쯤엔 u-시티에서 생활하게 될 규모가 230여만 명 정도로 추정돼 이에 따른 파급효과도 클 것으로 전망된다."며 "이에 지속적인 제도 개선과 정보보호기술 확보를 통해 프라이버시 존중과 사회적 안전 등의 가치를 모두 구현해 나가야 할 것"이라고 말했다.
이호준기자 hoper@msnet.co.kr Copyrights ⓒ 1995-, 매일신문사 All rights reserved.

The opportunity and potentiality of U-City


This article was written in korean.

http://kidbs.itfind.or.kr/new-bin/WZIN/WebzineRead.cgi?recno=0901014286&mcode=jugidong

Feds Leapfrog RFID Privacy Study
By Ryan Singel
02:00 AM Oct, 30, 2006


The story seems simple enough. An outside privacy and security advisory committee to the Department of Homeland Security penned a tough report concluding the government should not use chips that can be read remotely in identification documents. But the report remains stuck in draft mode, even as new identification cards with the chips are being announced.
Jim Harper, a Cato Institute fellow who serves on the committee and who recently published a book on identification called Identity Crisis, thinks he knows why the Department of Homeland Security Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee report on the use of Radio Frequency Identification devices for human identification (.pdf) never made it out of the draft stage.
"The powers that be took a good run at deep-sixing this report," Harper said. "There's such a strongly held consensus among industry and DHS that RFID is the way to go that getting people off of that and getting them to examine the technology is very hard to do."
RFID chips, which either have a battery or use the radio waves from a reader to send information, are widely used in tracking inventory or for highway toll payment systems.
But critics argue that hackers can skim information off the chips and that the chips can be used to track individuals. Hackers have also been able to clone some chips, such as those used for payment cards and building security, as well as passports.
The draft report concludes that "RFID appears to offer little benefit when compared to the consequences it brings for privacy and data integrity" -- a finding that was widely criticized by RFID industry officials when the committee met in June.
Meanwhile, the RFIDs just keeping coming. Last week, the State Department announced that it would soon be issuing new cards for visitors to Mexico, Canada and the Bermudas containing a chip that could be read from 20 feet away.
Changes in federal law will require Americans to have either a passport or the new "PASS card" to re-enter the country by air in 2007. Currently a driver's license will suffice to get an American back inside the country from these neighboring spots, but starting in 2008 that won't suffice even for quick, cross-border jaunts by car.
RFID chips are being used in the nation's passports, cards used to identify transportation workers and cards for federal employees, and may be features of the Registered Traveler program, the soon-to-be-released standards for all states' driver's licenses under the REAL-ID act, as well as proposed medical cards.
Homeland Security spokesman Larry Orluskie says no one's trying to kill the report. "The committee is still soliciting input and the draft report is on its website, so I guess they are proceeding," Orluskie said.
In early October, the Center for Democracy and Technology, a civil liberties group known for partnering with industry groups, submitted comments criticizing the draft report, calling for a deeper factual inquiry and analysis, and a broader focus on identification technologies generally.
Jim Dempsey, the policy director for the CDT, says his group doesn't want the report killed -- he just thinks the privacy committee is ignoring the reality that RFID-enabled identification is already here. The report should focus on how secure the cards are, how far they can be read from and the whole backend of how data is stored and shared.
"Basically we were raising a flag on the one hand saying that RFID is already being deployed and we can no longer take the finger-in-the-dike approach," Dempsey said. "And we were saying that RFID is only one facet and not necessarily the most troubling aspect of this broader evolution of the creation and management of identification. The implications are huge, and to focus on RFID is, in that sense, off-target."
For instance, when customs agents begin reading the new PASS cards at the border, the travel data will be stored for up to 50 years, will be shared within Homeland Security and will be made available to law enforcement groups, both domestically and internationally, according to DHS' own privacy assessment (.pdf).
It's unclear whether the new cards will have encryption or other measures to prevent skimming or forgery. That decision was left to the State Department, which will produce the card and has thus far remained mum on the privacy issues.
Harper hopes the committee will vote to finalize the report and that it will have an effect on the design of the PASS card, which currently proposes to let a Customs officer read them from 20 feet away.
"If we don't have a report out before the (PASS card) comment period ends, then we are irrelevant," Harper said.

Outline for team project

■ Team members
● Gun-Woong Lee 2005021293
● Tae-nyun, Kim 2006021
● Ju-yoon, Lee 2006021820


■ Topic

● Ubiquitous-city‘In this topic we will try to realize what the Ubiquitous city is and what kind of technologies are required with using articles, papers, and real cases. Furthermore we will survey the domestic and oversea cases to reflect various aspects of the reality of ubiquitous city. After all we will be able to evaluate the problems of ubiquitous cities, from our findings, based on academic perspectives.’


■ Basic structure

● BackgroundWhat is the U-city?　
● TechnologiesWhat kinds of technologies are contained in U-tech.?　
● Domestic CasesMajor Korean Cities　
● Overseas Cases- North America- Europe nations- Other Asia countries
● Pros and Cons- Evaluating social and technical problems with Academic perspectives

Ubiquitous city
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A ubiquitous city or U-city is a city or region with ubiquitous information technology. All information systems are linked, and virtually everything is linked to an information system through technologies such as wireless networking and RFID tags.
The concept has received most attention in South Korea, which is planning to build some 15 ubiquitous cities. The largest of these will be Songdo, constructed on fill off the coast of Incheon. Songdo, or New Songdo City, is expected to open in 2014. The smaller Future-X development in Daejeon is scheduled to open in 2009.
The concept has also been studied in other countries such as Japan.

KOREA: Korea embarking on 'u-city' project
Central government aims to network nation with the latest IT infrastructure

The Korea HeraldTuesday, November 22, 2005

By Hwang Si-young

The Korean government plans to take a leading role in building futuristic cities complete with the latest information technology infrastructure and "ubiquitous" environment, officials said yesterday.
A number of local governments, such as New Songdo City and Busan, have expressed interest in pursuing the so-called "u-city" project. However, they have not gone much beyond drawing basic blueprints and have given little consideration on how to connect similar services between cities.
"U-city" refers to an envisioned futuristic city that aims at offering a high quality of life for residents in terms of security, welfare and technology among others. This, officials say, will be achieved by integrating IT infrastructure and ubiquitous information services into urban space. Ubiquitous information services refers to seamless, wireless access from anywhere.
Applied technologies involve broadband convergence network, radio frequency identification, ubiquitous sensor network, home networking, WiBro, digital multimedia broadcasting, telematics, geographic information system, location based system, smart card system and video conference technologies, etc.
The Ministry of Information and Communication, in collaboration with the Ministry of Construction and Transportation, set up a task force for the project last Friday.
The team, headed by a director each from the MIC and MOCT, consists of officials from local governments and related institutes and experts from academia. It will enact a law to support u-city construction next year.
The official u-city project will integrate the existing diverse models and thus make a standardized u-city model based on each city's characteristics, such as "industrial city" or "residential city."
The project calls for connecting and integrating u-city services among cities, said an MIC official. "It is also necessary to harmonize the u-city project with the existing urban planning and revising related laws," the official said.
Korea, with the world's best IT infrastructure, will gain a competitive edge in building u-cities and exporting related technologies, if it successfully proceeds with the u-city project, the official said.

Korea's High-Tech Utopia, Where Everything Is Observed

By PAMELA LICALZI O'CONNELL
Published: October 5, 2005

IMAGINE public recycling bins that use radio-frequency identification technology to credit recyclers every time they toss in a bottle; pressure-sensitive floors in the homes of older people that can detect the impact of a fall and immediately contact help; cellphones that store health records and can be used to pay for prescriptions.
These are among the services dreamed up by industrial-design students at California State University, Long Beach, for possible use in New Songdo City, a large "ubiquitous city" being built in South Korea.
A ubiquitous city is where all major information systems (residential, medical, business, governmental and the like) share data, and computers are built into the houses, streets and office buildings. New Songdo, located on a man-made island of nearly 1,500 acres off the Incheon coast about 40 miles from Seoul, is rising from the ground up as a U-city.
Although there are other U-city efforts in South Korea, officials see New Songdo as one apart. "New Songdo will be the first to fully adapt the U-city concept, not only in Korea but in the world," said Mike An via an e-mail message. Mr. An is the chief project manager of the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority, the government agency overseeing the project.
In the West, ubiquitous computing is a controversial idea that raises privacy concerns and the specter of a surveillance society. (They'll know whether I recycled my Coke bottle?!) But in Asia the concept is viewed as an opportunity to show off technological prowess and attract foreign investment.
"Korea has gathered the world's attention with its CDMA and mobile technologies," Mr. An wrote, referring to digital cellular standards. "Now we need to prepare ourselves for the next market," which he said was radio-frequency identification, or RFID, and for U-cities. South Korea's Ministry of Information and Communication has earmarked $297 million to build an RFID research center in New Songdo.
Fulfilling this ambition, to a large degree, resides with John Kim, a 35-year-old Korean-American who leads New Songdo's U-city planning. Mr. Kim is vice president for strategy at New Songdo City Development, a joint venture of the Gale Company, an American developer, and POSCO E&C, a subsidiary of South Korea's giant steel company.
Mr. Kim, formerly a design leader at Yahoo, said the city's high-tech infrastructure will be a giant test bed for new technologies, and the city itself will exemplify a digital way of life, what he calls "U-life."
"U-life will become its own brand, its own lifestyle," Mr. Kim said. It all starts with a resident's smart-card house key. "The same key can be used to get on the subway, pay a parking meter, see a movie, borrow a free public bicycle and so on. It'll be anonymous, won't be linked to your identity, and if lost you can quickly cancel the card and reset your door lock."
Residents will enjoy "full videoconferencing calls between neighbors, video on demand and wireless access to their digital content and property from anywhere in Songdo," he said.
Whether it lives up to its billing as an exportable city of the future - its critics fear another planned-city disappointment like Brazil's capital, Brasília - New Songdo will most likely be a chance to study the large-scale use of RFID, smart cards and sensor-based devices even as Western societies lag in this next wave of computing.
"There are really no comparable comprehensive frameworks for ubiquitous computing," said Anthony Townsend, a research director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, Calif., and a former Fulbright scholar in Seoul. "U-city is a uniquely Korean idea."
New Songdo, a free-enterprise zone where English will be the lingua franca, is often called the largest private real-estate development in the world. When completed in 2014, it is estimated that this $25 billion project will be home to 65,000 people and that 300,000 will work there. Amenities will include an aquarium, golf course, American-managed hospital and preparatory schools, a central park (like New York's), a system of canals (like Venice's) and pocket parks (like Savannah's), a self-described patchwork of elements gleaned from other cities.
People from Seoul and other crowded South Korean cities are already applying for apartments, and planners are counting on luring attractive businesses.
The technology infrastructure will be built and managed by Songdo U-Life, a partnership of New Songdo City Development and the South Korean network integrator LG CNS, which is recruiting foreign information-technology companies as partners.
"This is a profit-generating model, unlike other U-city projects," Mr. Kim said. "Songdo U-Life will charge building owners for facilities management and act as a gateway to services. Our partners will test market services that require, say, wireless data access everywhere or a common ID system, without having to build anything themselves."
More philosophically, "New Songdo sounds like it will be one big Petri dish for understanding how people want to use technology," said B. J. Fogg, the director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University.
If so, it is an experiment much easier to do in Asia than in the West.
"Much of this technology was developed in U.S. research labs, but there are fewer social and regulatory obstacles to implementing them in Korea," said Mr. Townsend, who consulted on Seoul's own U-city plan, known as Digital Media City. "There is an historical expectation of less privacy. Korea is willing to put off the hard questions to take the early lead and set standards."
Two things Mr. Kim insists on are that U-life will not be used to test "junk" and that the digital services will be designed around people's needs rather than around the technology. "We'll be doing marketing and ethnographic research, digging deeper," he said. As part of that research, Mr. Kim asked the Cal State students to submit ideas for U-life.
While New Songdo's publicity material states that it seeks to avoid the "stressful flaws that compromise" existing cities, Mr. Townsend says he doubts that it will be able to emulate the creative energy of, say, Seoul. "Will it really be a place where people want to experiment?" he asked.
South Korea perceives an economic imperative in the answer. "Korea has a very strong I.T. industry, but our other economic sectors are not so good," said Geunho Lee, a senior research fellow at the Korea U-City Forum, a public-private group involved in supporting U-city projects across the country. "We need to test the business validity of these services in order to generate new value and economic growth."
The ability to do such vast market testing is enviable, said Dr. Fogg, of Stanford. "This is a competitive advantage for the Koreans," he said. "They will know before anyone else what flies."
"But I foresee that many services will fail," he added. "That's the nature of experimentation. They should be prepared for the frailties of human nature to emerge."

Google Is Said to Set Sights on YouTube

By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and PETER EDMONSTON
Published: October 7, 2006

YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site that has yet to celebrate its first anniversary or its first profit, is quickly becoming the must-have prize for media and technology giants.
Google is in discussions to acquire YouTube for $1.6 billion, people involved in the talks said yesterday. While the talks are in the early stages, and may fall apart, the size of Google’s offer may push YouTube closer to a deal. Other companies have also expressed interest and could swoop in with a higher offer.
Microsoft, Yahoo, Viacom and the News Corporation, among others, have all visited YouTube’s headquarters in San Mateo, Calif., in recent months to inquire about buying the company.
The frenzied hunt to acquire the next hot Internet property — MySpace last year and now YouTube — has become reminiscent of the first Internet boom, as companies bid up prices of sites whose ability to generate profits is the subject of much debate.
A deal for YouTube would be the crowning moment for a property that emerged as a cultural phenomenon almost immediately after it officially began last December. Its site, which delivers more than 100 million video clips a day, allows users to share a broad array of offerings from news clips to home movies to spoofs — sometimes funny but often simply crude — created by ordinary users.
Almost single-handedly, YouTube has both popularized the sharing of videos and empowered would-be movie makers around the world. The site is also facing possible legal challenges over the unauthorized posting and sharing of videos. Yet a number of media companies would prefer to embrace YouTube as a partner, rather than treat it as a pariah, as was the case with Napster.
If YouTube agrees to a deal, it would be a sudden change of heart. Chad Hurley, a founder of the company, has said that he prefers to stay independent. “We’re not even thinking about being acquired or going public,” he said in a meeting with New York Times editors and reporters last month.
A spokesman for Google declined to comment. A spokeswoman for YouTube did not return calls for comment.
YouTube’s meteoric rise has made it one of the most closely watched of the new generation of Internet companies created since the technology bust of 2000 and the fallow period that followed. The millions of people that visit YouTube each day make it a valuable property, though it has yet to turn a profit.
Rumors of YouTube’s talks with Google first appeared yesterday on TechCrunch, a Web site about Internet start-ups.
The $1.6 billion price tag, while seemingly rich for so young a company, makes sense, research analysts said.
“That’s expensive but not unreasonable,” said Charlene Li, an analyst with Forrester Research. Ms. Li estimated that the company has about 50 million users worldwide, which works out to a purchase price of about $32 a user.
The deal would make sense from the perspective of both companies, Ms. Li and others said.
“Google Video has not gotten any traction,” Ms. Li said.
Despite Google’s broad reach as an Internet search service and its well-known brand name, Google Video has only a 10 percent market share, according to Hitwise, which monitors Web traffic. YouTube has a 46 percent share, and MySpace has 23 percent.
“YouTube figured out what Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and all the others in the marketplace didn’t,” she said. “It’s not about the video. It’s about creating a community around the video.”
A link-up with Google might also carry benefits for YouTube as it tries to clear up its legal picture. Google and its lawyers are already addressing similar questions involving copyrighted works on the Internet and working on technology to deal with them.
“Who is in a better position to develop that technology,” Ms. Li wrote in a blog entry posted yesterday. “Sixty burnt-out people at YouTube or the legendary technical minds at Google?”
Mr. Hurley and Steve Chen started YouTube after the two struggled to share videos of a dinner party in January 2005. In a sense, YouTube is the classic Silicon Valley start-up. The pair, working out of a garage and still in their 20’s, went on to secure $3.5 million in venture capital from Sequoia Capital, one of the two venture firms that invested in Google when it was a small, relatively anonymous company.
The recent takeover frenzy is being fueled in part by the News Corporation’s acquisition of MySpace, a social networking site immensely popular among teenagers. The company, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, bought MySpace last year for $580 million in cash, and it is now worth as much as $2 billion by some analysts’ estimates.
Sumner M. Redstone, the chairman of Viacom, recently called losing MySpace to Mr. Murdoch “humiliating.” He also said that one reason he fired Tom Freston as Viacom’s chief executive last month was because he failed to secure that deal and did not move fast enough to push Viacom’s Internet activities.
Yahoo, meanwhile, is in negotiations to buy Facebook, a social networking site originally aimed at college students, for more than $1 billion, according to people involved in those talks.
But while media moguls are fascinated by YouTube, they also harbor deep concerns.
The site’s mix of videos includes many clips from television shows and movies, often posted without a thought to who might own the copyright. As a result, there are widespread concerns that YouTube may eventually draw a hailstorm of lawsuits — especially if the company becomes part of a deep-pocketed acquirer.
Doug Morris, the chief executive of the Universal Music Group, recently called YouTube and MySpace “copyright infringers” and said that the sites “owe us tens of millions of dollars.”
Mark Cuban, who founded Broadcast.com, an early Internet video site that was bought by Yahoo, has suggested that YouTube is essentially a business based on piracy.
Some in the industry have even compared YouTube to Napster, which, before it adopted its current subscription-based model, was a hugely popular free music-swapping service. Lawsuits from the recording industry forced the original Napster to shut down, and it eventually filed for bankruptcy protection.
YouTube says it is different from Napster because it removes content when a copyright holder informs the company of a violation. It points to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which in general does not require Internet companies to screen material in advance.
Despite these legal uncertainties, YouTube holds obvious appeal for any potential acquirer. Buying YouTube would instantly vault Google to the lead in the business of online video, which is drawing increased interest from advertisers. Its own fledgling offering, Google Video, remains a relatively small player.
At $1.6 billion, YouTube would be Google’s most expensive acquisition. In fact, it would cost nearly as much as Google’s total acquisitions budget since 2001, according to a recent estimate from Citigroup. Google’s largest investment to date was its $1 billion equity investment in Time Warner’s AOL subsidiary, which was part of a multiyear advertising deal.
Google had cash and marketable securities of about $9.8 billion as of June 30, and its market capitalization stands at about $129 billion.

AOL Should Be More Like Apple By Adam L. Penenberg


America Online and Apple Computer have loads in common.
Both earned fortunes by creating simple-to-use interfaces for the masses. AOL did it by attracting legions of technophobes to the internet, while Apple succeeded with an elegant operating system that was so intuitive even those who wouldn't know a GUI from a geoduck could use a computer.
The companies attract almost cultlike followings. Apple evangelists are famously devoted and greet every new product with the fervor of dancers in a mosh pit. And AOL remains the last refuge for people afraid to venture out on the web without a virtual bodyguard.
Each has perfected the art of Hollywood product placement. AOL's catch phrase, "You've got mail," spawned a popular movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan; Jeff Goldblum used an Apple PowerBook to launch a computer virus against aliens intent on destroying the Earth in Independence Day.
Their histories are also characterized by missteps. For Apple, it was the Newton, a PDA before there were PDAs; Lisa, a pricey desktop computer for the corporate market; and the abject embarrassment of being propped up by its mortal enemy, Microsoft, which bailed out the company in 1997 by investing $150 million to settle a long-running patent dispute.
For AOL, stumbles include its merger with Time Warner, sluggishness in adopting broadband, and an inability to prop up its deteriorating subscriber base -- from about 25 million in 2002 to 21.7 million today, equal to 2000 levels -- as consumers switch to high-speed and cheaper dialup services.
There is, however, a significant difference between the two companies.
Whenever Apple is down, it bounces back with a product that is so imaginative and innovative it redefines an entire industry. For example, after experiencing stagnating sales and staggering losses, the company in 1998 released the translucent-backed iMac, which sold a million units in its first year on the market. Then, of course, there are the iPod and the iTunes online music store, which have revolutionized digital music (and generate almost 40 percent of the company's revenue).
The same can't be said for AOL, a company that continues to market itself by mailing out millions of free CD-ROMs with net-access come-ons. It is, in short, a technology company that eschews technology. So it's not surprising that Apple is hot and AOL is not, even though in AOL's latest quarterly report it had $2.133 billion in revenue (20 percent of Time Warner's overall revenues).
For AOL to succeed, it has to change. Not only must it take a page out of Google's playbook, but it has to attack Google.
Here's why: AOL knows it can tread water only so long. Its future is in paid search advertising. But, as Joe Holcomb, a search-engine expert formerly with second-tier meta-engine BlowSearch, puts it, "What AOL does not control is a complete advertising platform with search as its key component" -- and that's where the money is.
Remember, AOL still has 20 million subscribers, and perhaps as many as 50 million AOL instant-messaging users. Yet whenever any of them conducts a search, they use Google, because Google is the engine that powers AOL's search. But think of the revenue AOL could generate if it got rid of Google and created its own search engine.
I'm not talking from scratch, like Microsoft has been trying to do for MSN. AOL users don't need state-of-the-art search capabilities. In fact, the company could buy an existing meta-search engine, which combines results from several search engines, and retrofit it to its own network. Then AOL would be able to compete with the other portals -- Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Take this AOL-branded search capability for keywords, news and video, and fold it into the new AOL homepage, which is in beta, and "AOL in conjunction with Time Warner could become the cornerstone of Time's media business," Holcomb said.
Not only would this benefit AOL, but it would also hurt Google, which would go from friend to foe, something Google is well aware of. In its latest quarterly report, Google pointed out that AOL accounts for almost 12 percent of the search giant's revenues. Twelve percent of $5 billion is $600 million --­ and all of it could be flowing into AOL's coffers.
AOL "would be crazy if they were not bound and determined internally to have their own platform for both pay-per-click and contextual advertising," Holcomb said. By combining AOL properties like MapQuest, Moviefone, Winamp and the Netscape browser, plus the multimedia search engine SingingFish.com, "AOL is putting together a complete offering to give Yahoo, MSN and Google a run for their money."
Of course, not everyone agrees. Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, views a gambit like this as a long shot at best, and questions just how much it would harm Google.
And Charlene Li, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, said, "AOL is sitting in a very nice position -- rather than spend lots of cycles having to deal with search algorithms, they can play Google, Yahoo and MSN off of each other in the future. So for at least the next few years, I don't think AOL will do anything." Instead, the company will focus on the overall user experience and "just make sure that search hums along."
But AOL executives should ask themselves: What would Steve Jobs do? He sure wouldn't let a golden opportunity slip away to make a splash, would he?
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Adam L. Penenberg is an assistant professor at New York University and the assistant director of the business and economic reporting program in the school's department of journalism.

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