YouTube Wants to Pay Its Uploaders

Although Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, sustained that the online video sharing service will soon get a new update, meant to make YouTube avoid copyright problems, it seems like the parent company is preparing a more powerful move that will improve the functionality of the service. According to Variety.com, YouTube aims to develop a new ability of the video service: to offer a 50-50 split to the uploader of a certain clip. I admit the function sound really attractive for all the users of the service because a huge amount of content will be provided by the users' intentions to earn money, but it really represents a copyright tool. Because the uploader of the clips intends to receive profits with his material, the copyright infringement will be avoided as the user will take all the rights of the movie.

"Content creators who upload their videos to the site will be offered the option of having short ads shown at the beginning or end, with the resulting revenues split 50-50, according to Howard Lindzon, founder of Wallstrip, a finance-oriented site that distributes videos through YouTube. Key to the new venture will be making sure that those who upload video actually own the rights to it -- which has been a vexing issue in the past for YouTube, now part of Google's Silicon Valley empire," the same publication reported.

As you know, Google's officials recently announced Claim Your Content, a special designed function that will require the uploaders to mention the source of the clips. The new ability was prepared since the end of the last year but it was delayed several times, a move that brought numerous problems for the parent company. Think at the Viacom lawsuit, the owner of MTV suing Google for copyright infringement after more than 100.000 clips were published on the page. Viacom demanded the search giant to remove all the video and required $1 billion in damages, claiming the Mountain View based firm uploaded movies without authorization.