Here's a question: who's paying for the bandwidth upgrade that YouTube just got?

"We selected Level 3 because we needed a carrier with a highly advanced, stable, scalable network and a service portfolio that would enable us to manage the magnitude of growth that we continue to experience with more than 100 million videos being watched per day on our site," said Steve Chen, chief technology officer and co-founder at YouTube. YouTube has been one of the Web's breakout hits, hitting the spotlight late last year with the popularity of the "Lazy Sunday" video from Saturday Night Live's Adam Samberg and Chris Parnell (which was later "reclaimed" by NBC and moved to its site). YouTube's subsequent popularity has led to substantial bandwidth requirements, estimated by some reports to cost up to $1 million a month.

Note the comment about NBC reclaiming popular content. I still don't know what the heck the business model for YouTube is, or how they intend to keep paying the bandwidth bills. Sure, they have tons of viewers. Monetizing that is an entirely different question though, and thus far, I just haven't seen anything.

I'll go back to something Jason Calacanis let slip on a Gillmor Gang podcast awhile back, too - if a big player were to buy YouTube, then the mother of all lawsuits would fall on them (copyright infringement) about a nanosecond after the deal was closed.

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