• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, February 22, 2016

In the relatively short history of the Internet, it’s been proved over and over that there’s pretty heavy resistance to paying for stuff that you’ve always gotten for free. Indeed, that's a truism that was established long before the Internet.  

That’s the short, in-a-nutshell problem with print publications that put all their goods online for free, and only later tried to get people to buy in.

Plus, the Internet has a punked attitude.  Those banditos in “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” didn’t need no stinkin’ badges and a good portion of the online community just does not want to pay to play, no matter how rational the proposition. They just don’t. When YouTube Red was announced, I was doubtful many would care to pay $9.99 a month  to get YouTube fare, only better, or quicker, and with a little of it exclusively.  

Online, if there’s a will, there’s a way to work around roadblocks.

As it turns out, YouTube Red exclusive material last week ended up being freebooted to Facebook, but even more remarkably, to the free YouTube itself. VideoInk’s Jocelyn Johnson pointed that out last Friday.

In particular, she wrote, "various episodes of PewDiePie’s series, ‘Scare PewDiePie’ which premiered on YouTube Red just over a week ago on Feb. 10th, has multipleepisodes on both YouTube and Facebook.” 

That’s not true anymore. They’ve been taken down, as were some other YouTube Red material has been removed from YouTube and/or Facebook.

A layer of intrigue about those traveling videos is that YouTube’s ContentID is supposed to guard against that as a protection to itself and its creators but apparently it does not always work. 

But to me, it’s just as interesting that when YouTube Red’s very first exclusive material was release, it was immediately swiped and re-uploaded elsewhere.

You could say that’s not unexpected, but it does leave an indelible marker of YouTube Red’s earlier history. And as word spreads that YouTube Red material has a way of getting around, it’s not a great inducement for anybody to sign up.  

The original YouTube, with easily skippable ads, is a reasonably painless--or at least familiar--way to access video. It could not have expected a stampede to Red.

YouTube users are everybody, but its most avid proponents are younger people. Opined Business Insider, it you’re over 13, YouTube Red is “boring and irrelevant.” But even users in that age range--maybe particularly in that age bracket-- make tough love decisions about the best way to blow ten bucks. YouTube Red ain’t it.

pj@mediapost.com