YouTube recently announced Content ID, a system which automatically works out the original copyright ownership of user-uploaded content, allowing the owners to then take it down - or monetise it. They are reporting that content owners are choosing to monetise 90% of this content.
For YouTube, this could prove transformational; for a long time they've only been able to monetise 'official' content, a tiny part of their video library. With content ID, there's potential to monetise almost 100% of their content.
Even more exciting for me is the prospect of this extending in the future to become a complete web copyright management and revenue sharing system, reaching across all of the major websites. Potentially this could allow content creators to freely distribute their works, whether text, music or video, and allow users to share, distribute and mash-up, safe in the knowledge that they'll get a revenue share from all the sites the content is being accessed. If a user uploads a music video to YouTube, they'll automatically get a revenue share of the YouTube video. If someone then posts this to Facebook, they'll continue to revenue share from the Facebook monetisation, and so on.
This has the potential to completely revolutionise both the spread and monetisation of all content on the web. That the beginnings of the system are being developed by Google mean it will be able to spread across multiple properties and link up to thousands of content creators far quicker than otherwise; however, it is highly unlikely that major non-Google properties will hand control over their content monetisation to Google. Ideally, a non-profit organisation needs to be running the system. Less ideally (but more likely) it could turn into a joint venture between a number of major sites, like Visa for card payments, eventually becoming an independent entity (Visa recently IPO'd).
We're at an early stage, but this is a big step forward - and could herald some serious changes in the coming years.
2 comments:
Hi Josh - interesting development you've picked up on there. Does seem like a much more user-friendly version of the lawyer-backed sledgehammers currently used by music/film companies.
Not sure any non-profit will get anywhere near it though, there's too much money for whichever middleman owns that space. The Empire of Goo has to be a front-runner.
Agreed - just a bit of utopian idealism. My main preference for a non-profit is that it would minimise the cut the middleman takes, maximising it for both the site owners and content creators, and would allow competing sites to sign up and work together (much like the Open Social initiative).
As you said though, unlikely to go this way - expect to see competing systems and some major bust ups! All good capitalism, the best way will come out in the end...
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