Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, announced that the company would share revenue with users who upload content at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year. According to an article on Variety.com posted yesterday afternoon, YouTube the launch is imminent.YouTube will allegedly share revenue on a 50-50 basis with users who opt to have advertising coordinate with their videos.
Of course, according to the Variety report, users who choose to participate in the revenue sharing program will have to own all the rights to the works incorporated in the video.
Since its launch, YouTube has relied on content that users upload to attract users to its site. It has exhibited no concern about who owns the rights to the underlying copyrights for the past two years.
In fact, the Google/YouTube party line is that the Viacom lawsuit is a “negotiation strategy.” Just yesterday at the National Association of Broadcaster’s conference in Las Vegas, Eric Schmidt, president and CEO of Google, stated “In Viacom, you’re either doing a business deal with them or being sued by them. We started with the former and ended with the latter.” (see, Google’s Schmidt defends DoubleClick ad deal,
One of the issues being overlooked in the debate is how individual and independent copyright owners are being compensated for the use of their works on YouTube. ALL of the songwriters, performers, record labels and publishers who have had their content performed on YouTube without permission should be compensated.
YouTube continues to claim that the Copyright Act of 1976, as amended by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, exempts them from copyright infringement. According to YouTube, it is the responsibility of copyright owners to request that videos infringing on their rights be removed from the site under its “take down notice.”
Section 512 of the Copyright Act provides exemptions for copyright infringement to service providers that provide the backbone of the Internet. Specifically, there are exemptions for qualifying service providers who offer:
(1) transitory digital network communications, e.g. the highway that carries traffic;
(2) system caching, e.g. the shadows of data that are left along the highway as traffic passes;
(3) server storage for third parties, e.g., rest stops along the highway; and
(4) search engines, e.g., the traffic cop who directs you on the highway.
According to the legislative history associated with the Section, the exemptions were intended for service providers not affiliated with the content being transmitted. That is, the exemptions were intended for “innocent bystanders” to the copyright infringement similarly to the fact that a paperboy is not responsible for what is in the paper delivered.
Now for the Billion Dollar Question:
When will the founders of YouTube the revenue sharing plan for the owners and creators of content that drove the traffic to its site to support a $1.65 billion acquisition.
