Wired has an interesting article on how the issue of copyright infringement on YouTube is being tackled.
Its ContentID program was initially designed to discover and delete copyrighted material from YouTube. Now, it can also compensate artists whose work is being infringed:
YouTube's database of audio and video fingerprints is learning how to deal with the fact that the guy who added a saxophone part to a particular song deserves a certain minute percentage of revenue when the song appears in your YouTube video. When you upload a video with someone else's song as the soundtrack, you infringe on two exclusive rights of the copyright holder: the right to to distribute the work and the right to synchronize it to video. Nobody cares.
YouTube's database pays the saxophonist (and everyone else with a stake in the song) a percentage of ad revenue, depending on the way their contracts worked out. This explains why the JK Wedding Dance video was able to feature Chris Brown's “Forever” without permission, without being taken down.
That said, you can't please everyone. Warner Music Group thinks YouTube's revenue-sharing deal is too paltry and refuses to participate. The label also has a problem with guitar-themed videogames and a longstanding quarrel with YouTube.
But Warner's in the minority here. Other major (and independent) labels have embraced YouTube's partner program, so that in many cases, you can put entire copyrighted songs in your videos and upload them to YouTube. Just one caveat: If it becomes a hit - as the folks behind the JK Wedding Video found out - the rights-holders of the music will get paid while you, most likely, will not.
Theatre Forum has its own YouTube Channel, which includes videos of interviews, discussions, and panels from its annual Conference last month, which had as its subject "The Way Through".
Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board has announced the new deadline of the short film scheme Virtual Cinema. Applications will be accepted until Friday 14th August
Virtual Cinema aims to encourage the exploration of fresh filmmaking ground with no creative holds barred. We are looking for creative ideas which will exploit interesting, new and traditional filmmaking techniques but can hold the attention of the YouTube audience.
The scheme is dedicated to the making of high-quality short films that are suited to the new forms of digital video consumption. Films made under the scheme can be live-action or can use any kind of animation technique and can be fiction or non-fiction. We are looking for new, imaginative, quirky and original ideas.
Films may be made in Irish or English with Irish language applications actively encouraged.
The first round of Virtual Cinema shorts, which premiered last summer can be viewed on a number of websites including the IFB website and YouTube with a number of the shorts receiving a huge number of hits due to viral marketing.
This round the IFB are funding up to 10 films with a duration of approximately 2 minutes and a maximum budget of €2,000.
According to a news article on CNN YouTube is in negotiations with Sony Pictures to acquire licensing rights to full-length content. Last week Disney agreed to licence short-form content to YouTube. To compete in the burgeoning online video market YouTube must obtain more long-form drama.
Sony Pictures' Web video property, called Crackle, could result in a boost to YouTube's ambitions to become a player in Hollywood.
Sony acquired Crackle in 2006, a year before Google bought YouTube. It's a multi-platform next-generation video entertainment network that distributes digital content including original short form series and full-length traditional programming from Sony Pictures' library of television series and feature films.
YouTube and Google can't be too choosy. The truth is that two years ago they miscalculated how much they needed Hollywood. YouTube frustrated some studio and TV executives by saying "we're not responsible for the actions of our users."
Since then, YouTube managers have changed their attitude and have focused on making the site more appealing to big entertainment companies, such as offering better-quality streams, and filtering for pirated content. Still, what was true two years ago is true now: none of the big entertainment companies is going to allow Google to build YouTube's business on their content without getting something in return.
There's also the question of what the studios intend to do with the traditional distribution model. Hollywood has long had agreements in place to release films through a complex assortment of channels, including theatrical release, DVD sales, and cable, premium, and broadcast outlets. For example, film-industry sources say the money Hollywood earns from the Web is a trickle compared with the ocean of cash it receives each year from cable providers.
Nonetheless, more and more people are canceling their cable subscriptions and turning to the Web for entertainment. Even execs from the cable companies have acknowledged this. Last week, after Disney announced the agreement with YouTube, I asked Jordan Hoffner, YouTube's chief of content partnerships, whether YouTube, Hulu, and the other Web video services can convince Hollywood to wean itself off these other distribution channels.
"I think that what we're doing is we're dealing with a fragmented world," Hoffner said. "You can't just say you're going to count out any distribution channel and focus on one because audiences are moving to other places. We're one of the places they're moving to."
In October The Guardian announced a competition in which playwright Mark Ravenhill challenged Guardian readers to make a YouTube film inspired by his surreal short story "Old School People".
Dominic Currie won the competition with his short film "Machine Time".
Also available on the web site is an interview between Mark Ravenhill and Dominic Currie about the competition and the making of Currie's short film.
The New York Times has an article about the people who are successfully making money from videos that are posted for free on YouTube, but part of its partner program.
The program allows YouTube to highlight videos with original content, and to place advertisements within and around the material. It splits the revenues with the creators.
The program is a partial solution to a nagging problem for YouTube. The site records 10 times the video views as any other video-sharing Web site in the United States, yet it has proven to be hard for Google to profit from, because a vast majority of the videos are posted by anonymous users who may or may not own the copyrights to the content they upload. While YouTube has halted much of the illegal video sharing on the site, it remains wary of placing advertisements against content without explicit permission from the owners. As a result, only about 3 percent of the videos on the site are supported by advertising.
But the company has high hopes for the partner program. Executives liken it to Google AdSense, the technology that revolutionized advertising and made it possible for publishers to place text advertisements next to their content.
"Some of these people are making videos in their spare time," said Chad Hurley, a co-founder of YouTube. "We felt that if we were able to provide them a true revenue source, they'd be able to hone their skills and create better content."
The New York Times reports that the existence of storytelling in film is under review in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, which is creating a new Centre for Future Storytelling.
The people at M.I.T., in any case, may figure out whether classic storytellers like Homer, Shakespeare and Spielberg have had their day.
Starting in 2010, a handful of faculty members — "principal investigators," the university calls them — will join graduate students, undergraduate interns and visitors from the film and book worlds in examining, among other things, how virtual actors and "morphable" projectors (which instantly change the appearance of physical scenes) might affect a storytelling process that has already been considerably democratized by digital delivery.
A possible outcome, they speculate, is that future stories might not stop in Hollywood all. "The business model is definitely being transformed, maybe even blown apart," said Frank Moss, a former entrepreneur who is now the media lab's director.
The Washington Post reports that Hollywood executives are in discussions with Google over the possibility of streaming full-length feature films on YouTube.
Besides the challenge of becoming a cash cow, YouTube also must now face the hurdle of upping its quality and garnering content. YouTube is infamous for its grainy video and spotty audio. If Google cannot somehow rev up the quality, will people want to check it out at all? I wouldn't want to watch a blurry and distorted two-hour film when crisper options exist in the land of Hulu and the now multi-platform "Watch it Now" Netflix service.
In terms of content, Hulu has an exclusive partnership with NBC and News Corp., which owns all Fox-related programming, so the prospect of YouTube nabbing any of those companies' content is doubtful at best. But with YouTube getting 80 million visitors each month, it definitely has a great consumer backing and could use that to bolster negotiations.
The rumor is that this service could arrive as soon as early as next month. So far the only official word from Google comes from a spokesperson who told CNET, "We are in negotiations with a variety of entertainment companies. Our goal is to offer maximum choice for our users, partners, and advertisers."
In June this year the YouTube Screening Room was set up as a platform for films from around the world to find a new audience.
Every other Friday four new films are featured in the YouTube Screening Room.
These films always appear with the permission and involvement of the filmmakers, so be sure to rate, share and leave comments. This is your chance to not only watch great films from all corners of the globe, but also to converse with the filmmakers behind them.
While the majority of these films have played at international film festivals, occasionally you'll find films that have never before screened for wide audiences.
All films playing in the YouTube Screening Room are displayed within our High Quality player to give you the best viewing experience possible.
Want to watch Irish films online? Check out Virtual Cinema, a YouTube channel operated by the Irish Film Board, which showcases many of its short and animated films.
According to The Guardian YouTube has unveiled filtering tools that will allow owners of copyrighted material to block their content from appearing on the video-sharing website.
"We are delighted that Google appears to be stepping up to its responsibility and end the practice of infringement," said a lawyer for Viacom, Mike Fricklas, without specifying whether the new technology would affect the seven-month-old lawsuit, which will be examined by a US court later this month.
YouTube has been working on the new technology with engineers from Google ever since the latter bought it in a record $1.7bn (£835m) deal 11 months ago. Five months later, executives from both companies began promising the new copyright protection technology. "It has taken until now to get it right," said David King, a YouTube product manager, during a conference call with reporters yesterday.
The Guardian reports that MySpace is relaunching its video section as a separate web domain (myspacetv.com), in a bid to usurp YouTube's dominion of online video-sharing.
"User generated videos are enormously popular but so are professionally created clips," said Mr Berman [MySpace GM for video]. "We want to create a destination for casual consumers who want to watch say one or two videos and film-makers who may want to be the next Steven Spielberg."
Mr Berman said MySpace would continue innovative promotions such as My Movie Mash Up, a competition that allows budding film-makers in Britain to submit content in the hope of winning a £1m-plus budget. Judges include actress Sienna Miller.
Last week MySpace signed a deal with Sony for its "minisodes" - five-minute clips of 80s comedies such as Silver Spoons and Diff'rent Strokes.
YouTube has gone global, according to the BBC. The Internet video site has launched local language versions of its popular portal in Brazil, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the UK.
Over half of YouTube viewers are based outside of the USA, so the push into new territories will continue. The company has also announced international content partners including deals with France 24, Antena 3 in Spain, European football clubs such as AC Milan, Chelsea, Barcelona and Real Madrid, as well as organisations such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. This means, of course, that YouTube is positioning itself as a provider not only of user-generated content but of professionally-produced material.
The company says it has more than 1,000 global partners, with more than 150 deals signed in Europe since March.
Mr Hurley [YouTube co-founder] said: "We respect copyright and we want to create new revenue streams to create opportunities.
"We have been working with rights holders to help them leverage new audiences."
Despite the assurances, YouTube is facing widespread legal action from copyright holders over the use of material that is being uploaded by the site's users without permission.
The Telegraph has an interesting article about how new forms of distribution are being used by filmmakers to get attention for their low-budget endeavours.
Susan Buice and Arin Crumley are the writers and directors of a low-budget film, Four-Eyed Monsters, which they financed through the popular American method of racking up tremendous amounts of debt on credit cards. After releasing their film via their own web site, they have recently uploaded the entire film to YouTube for a limited period to garner interest in the film. As the Telegraph comments:
The results of this internet-only exposure have been astonishing. In the first four days on YouTube, more than half a million people watched it - far more than the average blockbuster would attract if shown in every multiplex in Britain simultaneously.The problem is to translate this exposure into money that will repay their debt. To facilitate this they've filmed a short introduction to the movie that asks viewers to join a web site that will then give the pair a dollar for every new member. It's a simple advertising ploy that seems to be working to eat into the debt the couple has amassed.
The Hollywood Reporter notes that YouTube has struck a deal with Hearst-Argyle Television Inc, which own 26 television stations in Boston, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Sacramento, Calif., and Manchester, N.H. YouTube will distribute local television programmes from the Hearst-Argyle network in a new revenue-sharing agreement.
"This deal fits perfectly within our overall digital strategy," said Terry Mackin, executive vp at Hearst-Argyle Television. "We have invested significant resources in our growing digital media efforts."Also, Russian online news source, Kommersant, reported that English-language TV channel Russia Today has launched it own section on YouTube.
Hearst-Argyle is an investor in Internet Broadcasting Systems Inc., which publishes local TV news Web sites, including Hearst-Argyle stations. Last month, Internet Broadcasting signed a deal with Turner Broadcasting's CNN, which will bring CNN content to its sites and vice versa.
"For us, the agreement with YouTube is the chance to widen audience of our channel by hundreds of thousand users of Internet, for whom, watching TV on the computer monitor is more habitual and comfortable," said Russia Today Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.
Full information about the Darklight Festival (21-24 June) has been released. The three days will be crammed with forums, workshops, a YouTube video lounge, screenings, and masterclasses featuring film/television industry professionals and experts. It costs €50 to attend all the events, and a mere €20 for the unwaged/students.
It's a tough job pitching for work as a television screenwriter in L.A., and last week writer David McMillan decided to try a new approach. According to the L.A. Times McMillan created a video pitch and placed it on YouTube. He sent the link to 100 industry contacts he'd amassed during his career in L.A., and although he hasn't landed a job yet, he's garnered positive feedback and an article about his ploy in the newspaper.
"I love the bold move," said Carol Barbee, executive producer of "Jericho" and the former show runner of "Judging Amy" who assigned McMillan his first script. "I think any way you can get people's attention -- as long as you come off as competent and professional -- can't hurt."
"When assembling a TV staff, you're also assembling a group of personalities to share a writers room," David Rambo, a writer-producer for "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," said via e-mail. "The video conveys a personality, and that may help David in his job search."
Landing a job isn't easy. This year alone, said Glenn Geller, senior vice president of current programming at CBS Paramount, his studio expects to hire a mere seven writers out of the hundreds who apply for its 21 shows.
It's a sign of the times when YouTube creates its own Video Awards, which are voted upon by the public. The winners in the various categories of the 2006 awards have been announced.
I expect this will become a bigger event in years to come, with a live online ceremony and celebrities behaving badly.
The LA Times has an interesting article about the rise of new online content from sources like YouTube, and how this may affect traditional studios and how films are made in the future.
