If you're working in the online video world, you may have to deal with copyright challenges, so it's helpful to know something about the law in this area. The biggest misconception surrounding copyright law is that commercial use nullifies, or invalidates, fair use. That's incorrect.

Is amassing a large YouTube subscriber list the beginning or the end of your video content strategy? If you answered the latter, it may be time to reevaluate your approach. The goal of any branded YouTube channel should not be to simply generate a large subscriber count. Those are vanity metrics that look good on paper but carry less meaning to your bottom line.

Gaming videos are immensely popular on YouTube, and their number is growing by leaps and bounds. For marketers going after this segment, YouTube recently analyzed specific video viewing patterns in a study that reveals interesting details about viewers' consumption habits.

The fastest growing channel in online advertising, online video is exploding. How many times have you heard that before? It's all true. But what's also true is that it could do a lot better.

With half of 2013 completed, we look back at the main stories of the year this far in online video.

I'm angry. I'm an angry customer of Time Warner Cable because, without warning or explanation, my longtime television provider has removed the automatic "jump-back" function that has always existed as part of my DVR subscription.

So is cord-cutting a thing yet? That’s been the debate for the last few years. Sure, we all know there’s cord-shaving, but have we uncovered the cold, hard data to support the actual slicing of multichannel service provider cords? Research firm GfK says cord-cutting is still not a big driver of consumer behavior. That’s in spite of finding in its new report that 19.3% of homes report having broadcast-only TV, up from 17.8% in 2012, and as low as 14% in 2012. Are they snipping cable ties and turning to the online options available from Hulu, Netflix, iTunes, …

Anyone who has recently upgraded a smartphone from one that runs on a 3G network (say, the iPhone 4) to one that streams video and downloads songs on a 4G LTE network (for instance, the iPhone 5) knows anecdotally and intuitively that these activities are generally a better experience on the 4G LTE network. For consumers, 4G LTE is less prone to buffering and stuttering, and is one that, most of the time, just works. Wouldn't it be nice if that were simply the end of the story, and that the problems that have arisen from deluge of high-bandwidth video …

The industry buzzword that is not going away anytime soon is clearly "native advertising." Visit any industry publication, and there will be at least one recent article on the subject (I guess this is one, too). From simply trying to determine what the heck native advertising actually means, to expressing outrage when it's perceived to cross ethical lines (i.e., The Atlantic's Scientology saga), to commentators espousing the virtues of the format - you can't escape it. So let's focus on how we can make native advertising a good experience for the industry and audiences.

If you read my post last week, "Why CPMs May Go Down to Zero," you'd think that I was bearish on online media. Truth is, I'm wildly optimistic at a macro level -- but considering the general flight to quality that all industries eventually endure, I'm a bit cynical when it comes to individual stories.