Is YouTube Heading for the Disaster That Are Microsoft's Piracy-Free Video Services?

In the past, the Broadcast Yourself slogan, which is intimately connected with the online video service YouTube, has been consistently abused by users uploading content indiscriminately and with no concerns as to the owners of the video materials. This trend was, of course, an illustration of the overall relaxed copyright enforcement synonymous with the various practices that connect Google services and products with content management, but only to a smaller degree. The fact of the matter is that Google inherited a lawsuit waiting to happen because of pirated content, when it acquired YouTube for $1.5 billion in 2006.

But the Mountain View company, stimulated by pressure to clean up the YouTube act, and with such catalysts as the Viacom lawsuit for $1 billion over in excess of 100,000 clips, has now introduced a content ID tool for the online video service. "A few months ago, we announced the initial development of a highly complicated technology platform -- content identification tools for YouTube. Today, we are pleased to launch, in beta form, YouTube Video Identification. Video Identification is the next step in a long list of content policies and tools that we have provided copyright owners so that they can more easily identify their content and manage how it is made available on YouTube", revealed David King, YouTube Product Manager.

Microsoft performed a similar move with its YouTube clone. Earlier this year, the Redmond company took Soapbox on MSN Video out of public beta, limiting access to the service in order to introduce copyright protection technology designed to perform proactive filtering to all uploaded content. Microsoft always stated that it was in the online viral video market for the long run, and it is going to be quite a haul judging by the fact that Soapbox and MSN Video - even before they were melted into a single service - were outpaced by the vast majority of their competitors. The introduction of anti-piracy measures failed to impact Microsoft's online video services.

As of mid 2007, the Redmond company served an insignificant 1.6% of all videos, with 149 million clips, and had an Internet reach in the U.S. of 10.5% with just 19 million unique viewers, according to statistics provided by comScore. At the same time, Google captured an audience of 67 million with a web reach of 74%, delivering approximately 2.5 billion videos, no less than 27% of all the clips. It remains to be seen in what manner will the YouTube Video Identification impact the volume of eyeballs coming to Google. In the vision of the Mountain View Internet giant, users are in for an "enhanced experience".

"As our "Broadcast Yourself" slogan captures, YouTube's mission is to help the widest variety of people express themselves online. So we'll continue to focus on delivering the best user experience online today. We're carefully designing our new identification technologies so they do not impede the free and fast communication YouTube has enabled. Building on our Copyright Tips and Audioswap program, and reflecting the balance built into the notice-and-takedown procedures provided by law, we hope that Video Identification will create even more clarity about users' rights and responsibilities-as well as provide brand new opportunities for fans to interact creatively with their favorite media", reads an excerpt of the description of YouTube Video Identification Beta.