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YouTube API Shifts Copyright Burden To Publishers

Media mogul Mark Cuban has been calling YouTube "a costly mistake" ever since Google forked over $1.65 billion for the video-sharing site in November 2006. Cuban has said that considerable (and growing) bandwidth costs, uncontrollable copyright violation, and inability to monetize the content add up to a net negative for the search king.

But YouTube's API enhancement may have changed all that, he says. The move, which allows Web developers to set up and customize YouTube on their own Web site, lifts the copyright responsibility off YouTube's shoulders by effectively turning the video sharing site into a service provider that knows nothing about the content it's hosting.



This, of course, puts Google in control of that site's video inventory, as the Terms of Service precludes "the sale of advertising, sponsorships, or promotions targeted to, within, or on the API Client or YouTube video content." In other words: it's our ad programs or no ad programs at all. And since site owners won't bother deploying YouTube on their site unless they can monetize it, Cuban says, Google suddenly "goes from not being able to generate more than trivial revenue on YouTube to being able to generate limitless revenue on third party sites."

Read the whole story at Blog Maverick »

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