In order to make money on YouTube, the solution is very simple: advertising. But for professional content creators, this doesn’t just mean advertising on your own uploaded clips but also on the clips using your copyright-protected videos.
Everyone knows that a lot of the videos on YouTube contain copyrighted clips which the uploader hasn’t asked for permission to use. Music videos, clips of TV shows and movies, and the like are a big part of YouTube’s content, and many of them are breaking copyright laws.
Video ID System
In late 2007, YouTube introduced its Video ID system, enabling copyright holders to easily identify clips infringing on its rights. They then have three options: blocking, tracking, and monetizing, all of which are pretty self-explanatory.
When the system was first unveiled, most short-term thinking copyright holders immediately issued DMCA takedown notices to have the infringing content removed from the site. Which is clearly the obvious thing to do when trying to protect your intellectual property rights on the Wild West that is the Internet.
But the third option, that to monetize the infringing clip, is gaining support from some more forward-thinking companies. And they’re making a tidy sum of money as a result of their more open-minded approach.
Monetizing Rather Than Punishing
We heard back in August how companies such as CBS, Universal Music, Lionsgate, and Electronic Arts were all making money from engaging with the uploaders of infringing clips. Rather than treating them as evil pirates, these companies are regarding them more as overeager fans.
This trend for making money from copyright-breaking video clips prompted MySpace to introduce a similar system to the YouTube one. And MTV became the first company to use the Auditude video identifying system to its advantage.
Kadokawa Group Holdings
The latest company claiming to be doing really rather well from the deal is Kadokawa Group Holdings, a Japanese company responsible for some of the most popular anime cartoons out there.
According to Anime News Network, Kadokawa started its own channel on YouTube at the beginning of 2008. A year later, and the company is claiming to be making approximately $110 million a month from the Google-owned video sharing site.
But the majority of the revenue isn’t coming from traffic to the clips uploaded by the company itself, but rather the fan-made remixes, mash-ups, and AMV (Anime Music Videos).
The company checks each video containing its content and then makes a judgment call on whether to have it removed or to welcome it into the fold. Over 2,000 clips have so far made the grade, and between them are generating huge advertising profits for the company.
Conclusions
Once again, this shows that if copyright holders were to embrace new technologies rather than fighting against them, they could benefit greatly from them. Unfortunately most companies are still too short-sighted to see the upsides of being open minded.
