In the article "The Copyright Balance and the Weight of DRM," the author Tarleton Gillespie discusses various issues related to the copyright law, especially about how technology has made the copyright law even more complex and vague. In the beginning of the article, Gillespie acknowledges of an assumption that human beings need economic reward "in order to be intellectually or artistically creative." However, he claims that in fact, many people create for reasons other than economic reward. This can be easily supported by looking at YouTube. YouTube has become one of the most widely used websites that provide myriad of videos about anything one can imagine. However, a great proportion of the users who upload videos on YouTube are not companies or indivduals trying to earn money from their creation. Most of these people create and upload videos to share funny moments or knowledge with others, to spread their ideas and have some kind of impact on the society, or just for the pleasure of creating videos.
Another argument made by Gillespie is also true of YouTube. Gillespie explains how "cultural expression is nonexcludable," meaning that the spread of a work and everyone enjoying the work cannot be prevented once a work is sold to just one consumer. It is very easy to discover that many websites make use of videos from YouTube. We know that the Internet can spread any work to any part of the globe at a shockingly rapid rate. Not only are the YouTube videos being uploaded on other websites, they are also downloaded and copied by uncountable number of individuals and spread via e-mails, cell phones, and etc. This nonexcludability of YouTube videos can be both beneficial and detrimental to the creators; they can draw public's attention and spread their ideas and thoughts, but because copying a YouTube require almost no money, the creators are not compensated for their creation.
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