Would you mind telling us which company his was? Unless they also got you to sign an NDA on this of course.

Okay, so this sounds really smart at first: studios get some money when people watch something they have helped create, and the mashup artist gets some peace to show his stuff.

But wait... the ad would not be beside the video, but *overlaid* ????

So let me get this straight:

    - knock knock, we're from the 'church' of Scientology, and we own the content to that (anti-scientology) clip. Can we overlay it with an ad for us, which lasts for the whole duration of the video, and cover the whole screen?
    - Sure, I'm just an automated bot; pay me 10$ and you'll be on your way!

First, there is specialised hardware to handle that kind of amount of data. Someone in the thread is apparently trying to sell a Narus, and I'm sure there are a ton more.

Second, you don't need to store or even process all the information; remember when the NSA were saying that listening to every phone call was impossible. Well, they could (and iirc did) simply build a graph where two people were the more connected the more time they spent together on the phone. Then, when someone was suspected of terrorism (or being an anti-war activist), they could just ask the computer who were the first, second and third level aquintances of that guy; which is plenty scary already.

And of course, that's just a simple, simple example: there is a whole science devoted to that kind of data anilysis.

You mean you think it does not mean what he thinks it mean?