• The New York Times, Monday, January 15, 2007 10:30 AM

Media companies are frustrated with Google's YouTube. NBC Universal, for example, says it sends out more than 1,000 requests per month to have copyrighted content taken down. At this point, the media giant has three full-time staff members troll the site each day looking for studio-owned material. Execs estimate that nearly half of the NBC-U content on the site is unauthorized. As in the case of the Brazilian supermodel's indiscretions on a public beach, as fast as YouTube can take the videos down, its users can upload them again.

But here's the YouTube conundrum: While copyright owners worry that YouTubers can easily upload one of their films in 12-minute segments, the viral video site, with its massive user base, can also help them build tremendous buzz for forthcoming productions.

As such, the world's big media firms, Viacom, CBS, NBC, Disney and News Corp., are all negotiating licensing deals with YouTube, so they can make money from the constant use (and abuse)of their copyrights. They're also pressing the online video company to implement a tracking mechanism that can detect copyrighted material and keep it from being uploaded.

Meanwhile, reports suggest that the big three broadcast networks have had enough, and are now looking to build an online video site they can control. As much as Google and YouTube won't like that--there's obviously a lot resting on how the copyright issues are resolved--YouTube users won't either. They've gotten used to controlling how, when and where they can view video content.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »