Is YouTube worth all that moolah? Well, yes, because it's just a seedy dive.

Way back when we were still earning a regular monthly salary (and PF, and medical, and conveyance, and Diwali bonusses.. sigh), a Very Senior Person in our organisation used to deliver these occasional little mini-speeches about the business world, because we lower mortals needed to be kept informed. And because he was this incredibly brainy sort, he would kinda break things down for us slower types by equating everything with some kind of, um, inter-personal activity. Like "X Group is courting Y Company," and "Q Ltd and R Inc are in bed together, but are not married yet," and, well, you get the drift.

Yennyway. FOnD* memories wafted back to the forebrain when we read this on Slate:

If the Internet were not a bookstore, or tubes, but rather a red-light district, YouTube would best be imagined as the hotel, and Napster, well, the pimp. YouTube, like a hotel, provides space for people to do things, legal or not. It's not doing anything illegal itself, but its visitors may be. But Napster, everyone more or less now admits, was cast as the pimp: It was mainly a means of getting illegal stuff. Right or wrong, we seem to accept the benign vision of YouTube as an entity which, unlike Napster, was basically born as a place to showcase stupid human tricks.

* Yes, there is a reason for the irregular capitalisation.