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.'"

Old "Home Made" Videos

Time to start uploading those old home made videos of the ex-girlfriend (that is if they are paying on a per view basis).

So...

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?

Re:So...

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 a matter of inertia and first-mover advantage. YouTube will have run away with the online video audience, much as eBay ran away with the auction marketplace more than 7 years ago.

Others might pay more for content but it won't change the fact that YouTube is where everyone visits.

By way of example, Yahoo! Auctions finally did away with fees a couple years ago. It did not suddenly catapult them to parity with eBay.

So long as YouTube doesn't do anything to endanger their organic draw (e.g. FaceBook's privacy gaffes, Friendster's performance issues), they are poised to hold onto their user base indefinitely.

User-generated?

And they'll distinguish this reliably from copyright infringement how?

Re:User-generated?

It's quite obvious to distinguish from copyrighted material to web cam material.

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.

. . .they do have one of the best search engines after all.

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

Re:User-generated?

It's quite obvious to distinguish from copyrighted material to web cam material.

How so? Your post is automatically copyrighted since it was posted to an American site. I copied part of it (the statement above) in accordance with the Fair Use clause of Copyright Law. Do not confuse Copyright with professionalism. Hell, even that idiotic bigot Fred Phelps' material is copyrighted, even though he produces the most idiotic, incorrect, and unprofessional tripe on the planet on a daily basis.

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.

Google is so rich...

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!

View fraud

Step 1: Upload bad/stupid/dumb/etc video
Step 2: Con people into viewing it
Step 3: Profit!

This is just asking for trouble.

Don't suppose

they got wind of any service that would pay for user content in the wind did they?

And they're not interested anymore?

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.'

And they're not interested in a "true community" anymore?
Pfft -- I checked out some other sites before that were offering money. I kept my videos on YouTube because I didn't want to monetize my own work!
So... will they pay me retroactively for my 60,000 views?

Let the lawsuits begin

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.

Hello Spam

Money changes everything. When you bring in money, you bring in the motivation to subvert the system by whatever means necessary to turn a buck.

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?

Sell outs!

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...

The real plan

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...

Honesty

"We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward"

Umm, didn't want a system with monetary awards? That's why Youtube was sold for 1.3 billion and has ads?

Ohhh.. you meant didn't want monetary rewards for the users! i see.

AmericaFree.TV is doing this already...

AmericaFree.TV offers a 50-50 advertising split to indy films as part of the IndyReels [indyreels.tv] program; the money is already going out to ePremier's [forbes.com].

Of course, this is aimed at independent films, not just everyone's home video's.

shoot self in foot

1) upload episodes of 24 and simpsons or any already heavily viewed video really
2) profit

or

1) upload some clip to youtube
2) have friendly neigborhood botnet controller set up fake views for share
3) profit

Seriously where is the revenue going to come from? They are already paying to license media content from the studios, now they are going to pay users who upload content. So how are they planning on making an actual profit? A five second ad before each clip? That will annoy most of us, and lead to some fun videos like anti-GM videos following GM commercial. Also I imagine a nasty suit from anyone who uploaded any popular video in the past because they helped build YouTube's popularity.

Copyright

...and, presumably you won't get paid if what you uploaded is copyright - as it should be and a great incentive to upload original content.

The 'community thing' is bullshit of course - I was only looking at metacafe the other day thinking wait... these guys will pay me for the views of my videos? Why am I using YouTube...?

If they didn't pay now, people would move to those who did - it's not about who pays most (yet - that will come in the future when people are used to being paid).

Lookout for cheaters

We did this at MP3.com back when it was the "real" MP3.com.

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 :) Paying users for plays is going to make these problems much worse.

--geekd

Same as "paying" for Blood

An interesting comparison is to consider why the red cross does not pay for blood "donations." We always hear the pitch to donate blood, but never let market forces solve the supply shortage. The red cross claims if they paid, then they would have all sorts of "undesirables" donating just to get the cash. Perhaps YouTube doesn't have to worry about quality control.

MP3.com Lives Again!

Perhaps Google can actually afford to pay users this time around, but still. The former MP3.com CEO has shown little ability to actually turn a profit wiht any venture he touches. However, it is proof that Google will then go on to make their own version of Linux. Maybe they'll call it Gindows or Ginspire.

Well...

Aside from the obvious popularity contest this will turn into with nothing of real interest to watch, I wonder what legal implications this will have for those of us who use downloading tools for You Tube. All the server sees is a video download, and it couldn't easily tell from the legitmate Flash Player or Video Downloader, right?

Also, as someone who actually wrote a program to crawl YouTube and download what it finds (in Perl no less), what legal implications does that have for me? Am I now a criminal for "falsibly generating views"?

And what about various tricks I've seen on other sites like this [newgrounds.com] where people just watch the first 2 seconds then exit out, knowing that that counts as a "view" and therefore inflates the view counter and enables the voting box?

Bandwidth Costs

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?

18/20

18/20 of the top 20 videos are blatant copyright violations when I looked. There isn't much else down lower either.

It's gonna be funny as hell to watch the lawyers devour Google.

This is gonna really distract them from their core business of spying on everyone.

Re:18/20

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.

Too late for some

If this was 5 years ago, the star wars kid would be rich beyond his wildest dreams.

I'll stick with Revver

Unless something significantly better comes along, I'm sticking with Revver. The pay has been decent so far for the relatively low effort I've put into it, and they have a history of respecting copyrights and rewarding creators, rather than a history of building audience by hosting copyright violations that ignore the rights of creators. Revver uses Creative Commons licensing, with some added terms to allow for appending an ad and supporting "affiliate" sharing. I can't imagine switching to YouTube, other than to create teasers that direct people over to my content on Revver.

Why didn't YouTube pay its users from the start

> "But why didn't YouTube pay its users from the start? "

Actually, this is a true story: they posted an ad on craigslist in their first months of business,
offering cute girls $100 to upload video blogs or videos of themselves and their friends.

Not one single girl responded.

There's a video on YouTube somewhere of the "early days" when the YouTube guys were discussing
this "plan". Its actually pretty funny.

Competition!

They are doing this because they don't want to be outdone by the other (better) video sites that are paying and slowly but surely taking users away. (www.revver.com, www.metacafe.com just to name a few)

http://vewgle.com/ [vewgle.com] The video forum.

lack of understanding of real "community"

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 [tinyurl.com]

Metacafe.com has been doing this...

And it leads to old math tricks, computer 'hacks' being video taped, put online. It looks like content pollution to me.

A bone for the MPAA and ilk

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.

Donating the YouTube sale proceeds to charity?

> 'We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward.'

He's talking about *you*. He was *very* motivated by monetary reward.

Oh no!

Up to now we only had 14 year olds which posed in their underpants because they wanted attention.......

Pointless lawsuits here we come...

I can see it now. The "starving artist" that creates a video "masterpiece" sues Google since a return was expected that he never got. Take what I just said as you will, but in some shape or form it will probably happen.

not good news for everyone

That history of dance guy is gonna be pissed !

This is the first step towards...

This is the first step in a monetization process that involves
Google placing ads on every single video.

The only reason they're paying is because soon they'll be profiting...

Quality?

I have only skimmed those replies before me, but haven't you people thought of the possible rise in quality of the videos on YouTube? Hopefully, Google will put some sort of verification process into the system so that people aren't getting paid for their shitty videos. Right now, most of the videos are crap. You can hear the microphone buzz louder than the dialogue, and most of the humor is painfully immature. Now more, better movies should be at the top of the most-viewed lists.