I didn't read up on the patent, and you are mostly right with regards to credit card processing and video chat, but streaming media isn't always live. Were there quite as many of these lawsuits in the first round?

Honestly, the porn industry was always making large sums of money in this type of field, so perhaps Youtube was a little short-sighted. For a more general statement, they started the lawsuits when it became economically viable to, i.e. the companies using the "infringing" patented methods made enough money to sue for / strike a license deal.