You don't see how, say, someone who wants to teach a class and collect tuition might not want to put all their content on YouTube and get a pittance?

And now replace teaching with pretty much any other content. A musician giving a concert, TED talks, etc.

Well, the concern I have is about alternatives. Joanna Videoessayist might not have the technical know-how, the business acumen, or the capital to build her own platform — she just wants to make great video essays. Eliminating platforms like YouTube wouldn’t make Joanna better off, it would just cause her to return to her marketing job.

No one is eliminating YouTube. We're making a better open source alternative.

If it's good enough, she will leave YouTube just like her mom left AOL and embraced the open Web. Why did content creators leave MSN, CompuServe, et al ?

They should treat youtube as another marketing channel (as a showcase on the street is), but not as their main source of income or backup for example.

- They can run a website with their own personal brand and collect emails there. - They can backup their videos in other services in case youtube close their account ...