Slashdot Mirror
YouTube To Pay For User-Generated Content
An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at the World Economic Forum, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley has revealed that the company plans to financially compensate users who produce and upload their content. With Google's purchase of YouTube last year, followed by more aggressive attempts to monetize the site (such as the deal struck with Verizon Wireless), it was inevitable that YouTube would come under pressure to share some of those fruits with ordinary users. But why didn't YouTube pay its users from the start? Hurley said: 'We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward. We wanted to really build a true community around video. When you start out with giving money to people from day one, the people you do attract will just switch to the next provider who's paying more. We're at a scale now that we feel we can do that and still have a true community around video.'"
Time to start uploading those old home made videos of the ex-girlfriend (that is if they are paying on a per view basis).
What is to stop the other "communities built around video" from doing the same and turning the thing into the "who'll pay more" type war they say they wanted to avoid?
It's an interesting move (I can't wait for the first "so now they'll pay me for my home pr0n" posts and the "this is /. therefore you are a virgin" replies), but if anyone else decides to pay their uploaders, how different is it going to be?
Ignore this signature. By order.
Seems they need to new find ways to spend their fortunes...
Why don't they start working on their own OS to go head-to-head with Microsoft? If there is one company that can do it, Google Inc. is!
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Step 1: Upload bad/stupid/dumb/etc video
Step 2: Con people into viewing it
Step 3: Profit!
This is just asking for trouble.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
Back when YouTube provided no profits to submitters, the original creators/sources/subjects of a video probably did not care if some fan/bystander copied and posted a video. As long as credit was given where credit was due, the original creator didn't care how it got posted. With pay-for-submissions, the original creator will care very much and object if someone posts their stuff and make money of their images. (We'll also see lawsuits over model releases -- selling a person's image for profit has its own legal complications)
And I'm sure there will be people of both malign and innocent intentions that will mine the web for videos, do some minimal mashup, intro, or clever titling and then submit them for fun-and-profit. In the time it takes one person to create, from scratch, a "good" video, someone else can copy, tweak, and flood YouTube with dozens or hundreds of copies of other peoples' videos.
I think its great and proper that YouTube should share the wealth with the creators of quality content. But I expect more than a few disputes over who created what.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Get ready to see your own videos reposted by others in their name. Of course, that's what "piracy" essentially is, so get ready to see the contenet industry filing a lot of lawsuits. Get ready to see the video recommendation system skewed to big-name media-backed "artists." Get ready to see annoying youtube links posted everywhere on the web.
Of course, there will probably be a lot more skillfully-produced and well thought-out material on youtube, too. But will it drown out the cool crazy stuff that's there now?
I really liked the aspect of youtube that it was a level playing field for everyone - big and small. People generated content for the sake of generating content, or viral marketing campaigns (which I'm SOMETIMES okay with but are usually annoying). Now youtube is going to be a competition with people trying to generate crap that will get a lot of hits rather than good "for the sake of it" art.
Just like what happens to a lot of bands when they sell out and stop caring about the music...
or else!
1. Offer users a relatively tiny cut to boost traffic, hurt the competition and look generous/progressive at the same time.
2. Increase advertising to far more than make up for #1 ("The system would be rolled out in a couple of months, he said, and use a mixture of adverts, including short clips shown ahead of the actual film").
3. Profit!
Hmm. It actually looks like a pretty good plan...
We did this at MP3.com back when it was the "real" MP3.com.
:) Paying users for plays is going to make these problems much worse.
Lemme see if I remember correctly... We had a set amount of money to pay out each month. and we divided it based on some formula based on number of plays. Some of our top artists actually made a decent amount of money.
BUT.
We then had to have several people who's full time job was to catch cheaters. They used to tell me about all the various ways people would cheat. As you might imagine, people can get very ingenious when money is involved.
I'm sure a company like YouTube (google) has the staff to handle it, but my question is: is it worth the headaches? The points other posters brought up about copyright infringement and posting other people's videos are already a problem at YouTube. These are problems we didn't really have at MP3.com (our copyright infringement problems were us being stupid, not our users
--geekd
I don't understand. Last year, the overwhelming consensus was that Youtube was losing phat sacks of cash everyday 'cuz their ad revenue couldn't possibly pay their bandwidth costs. And now they are making enough money to compensate uploaders for the privilege of hosting their videos? I'm sure their profit margin increased now that Google owns them so Youtube doesn't have to deal with a 3rd party ad agency, but does that really make that much of a difference to the bottom line? Or has bandwidth just gotten a lot cheaper? Or are they just looking to corner the market so that as bandwidth prices drop and Internet ads become more lucrative, they'll be in a position to profit?
If this was 5 years ago, the star wars kid would be rich beyond his wildest dreams.
It's quite obvious to distinguish from copyrighted material to web cam material.
.they do have one of the best search engines after all.
Webcam material is copyrighted too.
I also would think Google is smart enough to figure out if content was copyrighted by a person that did not submit the video
Lawyers often have a hard time figuring this out. I record (on my webcam, of which I currently have none) myself playing "This Land is Your Land." Ludlow denies that the copyright has lapsed. The version is one I learned from Jack Elliot (nobody does the original version anymore), but also happens to include variations from Pete and Arlo.
Who cares? Who doesn't? Who cares, but doesn't if they get a cut? Who cares, but doesn't if they get a cut, but don't actually deserve it?
And do I upload it, or does someone else? Whoever might own various copyrights on the subject material, the recording is mine. Maybe it isn't me, but they have my permission. It isn't about who made the content, but who has the right to distribute it. That could be anybody or nobody.
. .
Yes, but how many IP experts searching do they have?
Here is the classic way of figuring it out: upload it and see who, if anybody, complains, then call in the lawyers. In extreme cases perhaps even a jury. Juries are actually the closest thing we have to true assingers of IP rights.
KFG
Actually, there's a real easy way around this: if the profits don't go to the uploader, but to the copyright holder, then all those Simpsons clips won't earn Johnny Basement one penny, but Fox would be pretty happy.
Whatever this man means by the word "community" - it is not what most humans understand it to be.
If you're paying some people to participate, they will not be there for community. In fact, having a mixed paid/volunteer crowd creates a situation where it is almost impossible to maintain community activities without significant hiding of information. Either you have a group who gives freely and members benefit from the giving, or you have people who are being paid to contribute and they run a cost/benefit in their head for their time to participate. You really can't have both simultaneously and keep the group together.
See a recent talk I gave on what a community really is http://tinyurl.com/22j9fy
Also: lassegg's material on youtube may have an amateurish feel, as does Kevin Smith's 1994 cult classic "Clerks" however their works are actually very well put together (given budget and time constraints), and although they may not have the slick, polished feel of a Disney or Dreamworks flick, the material is very enjoyable to watch and enables the underlying talent of those involved in those budget productions to shine through, despite the use of commodity, consumer-level equipment.
Again: Copyright != professional
Every written, audio, and video work produced in America is automatically protected by Copyright, unless it is explicitly disclaimed or is released into the public domain.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Likewise...
Revver (and others) have been doing this for a while, using their brains, not their brawn
All youtube did was allow users to steal my content from revver... but they did take it down, after I went through their notification progress...
This also might be a way that they can fight the pending lawsuits by the studios. If you want to be paid for content you upload then YouTube will need certain details so they can pay you. They can then of course pass those details along to the relevant authorities if they come calling about a copyright violation. Let the uploader and the MPAA/studios slug it out.
Blog