Perhaps it will later be known as "Google Day," as interviews with CEO Schmidt and YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen dominated the D5 conference in California. On Thursday, the video-sharing
site, which is being sued for $1 billion by Viacom for copyright infringement, received the blessing of EMI Group, the latest major record company to let users watch and play with their music content.
Like the other music deals, users can create their own music videos or dub uploaded video clips with songs from the record label. Ad revenues will be split between YouTube and EMI.
As
far as copyright issues go, Hurley said ridiculous things like, "We've done a good job of educating people on copyright law," and "It's hard for us. Media companies upload content one day, and then
the next, their lawyers make us take it down." This guy has definitely graduated from the Google school of evasiveness. His replies jive seamlessly with the company's stance that it's done nothing
wrong per the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Hurley and Chen said the long-awaited audio and visual fingerprinting tools (that would identify copyrighted content) would soon be
available; so, too, will the "variety of [ad] options" the company is preparing for producers. Chen added that the "optimal" time for video ads would be between 5 seconds and 10 seconds, and that a
wider rollout could be expected in the next few months.
Read the whole story at CNET News.com »