YouTube To Pay For User-Generated Content

An anonymous reader writes "Speaking at the World Economic Forum, YouTube CEO Chad Hurley has revealed that the company plans to financially compensate users who produce and upload their content. With Google's purchase of YouTube last year, followed by more aggressive attempts to monetize the site (such as the deal struck with Verizon Wireless), it was inevitable that YouTube would come under pressure to share some of those fruits with ordinary users. But why didn't YouTube pay its users from the start? Hurley said: 'We didn't want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward. We wanted to really build a true community around video. When you start out with giving money to people from day one, the people you do attract will just switch to the next provider who's paying more. We're at a scale now that we feel we can do that and still have a true community around video.'"

So...

[cp.tar]

What is to stop the other "communities built around video" from doing the same and turning the thing into the "who'll pay more" type war they say they wanted to avoid?

It's an interesting move (I can't wait for the first "so now they'll pay me for my home pr0n" posts and the "this is /. therefore you are a virgin" replies), but if anyone else decides to pay their uploaders, how different is it going to be?

View fraud

[TodMinuit]

Step 1: Upload bad/stupid/dumb/etc video
Step 2: Con people into viewing it
Step 3: Profit!

This is just asking for trouble.

Let the lawsuits begin

[G4from128k]

Back when YouTube provided no profits to submitters, the original creators/sources/subjects of a video probably did not care if some fan/bystander copied and posted a video. As long as credit was given where credit was due, the original creator didn't care how it got posted. With pay-for-submissions, the original creator will care very much and object if someone posts their stuff and make money of their images. (We'll also see lawsuits over model releases -- selling a person's image for profit has its own legal complications)

And I'm sure there will be people of both malign and innocent intentions that will mine the web for videos, do some minimal mashup, intro, or clever titling and then submit them for fun-and-profit. In the time it takes one person to create, from scratch, a "good" video, someone else can copy, tweak, and flood YouTube with dozens or hundreds of copies of other peoples' videos.

I think its great and proper that YouTube should share the wealth with the creators of quality content. But I expect more than a few disputes over who created what.

Hello Spam

[timeOday]

Money changes everything. When you bring in money, you bring in the motivation to subvert the system by whatever means necessary to turn a buck.

Get ready to see your own videos reposted by others in their name. Of course, that's what "piracy" essentially is, so get ready to see the contenet industry filing a lot of lawsuits. Get ready to see the video recommendation system skewed to big-name media-backed "artists." Get ready to see annoying youtube links posted everywhere on the web.

Of course, there will probably be a lot more skillfully-produced and well thought-out material on youtube, too. But will it drown out the cool crazy stuff that's there now?

Sell outs!

[nilbog]

I really liked the aspect of youtube that it was a level playing field for everyone - big and small. People generated content for the sake of generating content, or viral marketing campaigns (which I'm SOMETIMES okay with but are usually annoying). Now youtube is going to be a competition with people trying to generate crap that will get a lot of hits rather than good "for the sake of it" art.

Just like what happens to a lot of bands when they sell out and stop caring about the music...

Re:View fraud

[nolife]

I see the start of another round of self promotion for personal gain at the expense of everyone else.

MLM on Usenet, the "free not a scam" iPod deals, and now "pleZ view my video".

Effects on slashdot? We will all have to suffer through the almost on topic, almost related to the forum and some what mediocre comments that might add to the experience to the topic at hand from people would not normally post that low level of material but will now do it for the extra link exposure to their video.
This extra motivation to post dribble is just like the users that are trying to up their post count on blogs that prominently show your "member since date" and your "total post count" next to every post you make. Nothing like a person with 12864 posts in 6 months to a bargain deal blog or a fan site and 99% of them are 3 words or less.

The real plan

[luminate]

1. Offer users a relatively tiny cut to boost traffic, hurt the competition and look generous/progressive at the same time.

2. Increase advertising to far more than make up for #1 ("The system would be rolled out in a couple of months, he said, and use a mixture of adverts, including short clips shown ahead of the actual film").

3. Profit!

Hmm. It actually looks like a pretty good plan...

Re:So...

[The Clockwork Troll]

What is to stop the other "communities built around video" from doing the same and turning the thing into the "who'll pay more" type war they say they wanted to avoid?

It's a matter of inertia and first-mover advantage. YouTube will have run away with the online video audience, much as eBay ran away with the auction marketplace more than 7 years ago.

Others might pay more for content but it won't change the fact that YouTube is where everyone visits.

By way of example, Yahoo! Auctions finally did away with fees a couple years ago. It did not suddenly catapult them to parity with eBay.

So long as YouTube doesn't do anything to endanger their organic draw (e.g. FaceBook's privacy gaffes, Friendster's performance issues), they are poised to hold onto their user base indefinitely.

Re:Sell outs!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Just like what happens to a lot of bands when they sell out and stop caring about the music..."

Or, you know... try to expand their musical or artistic talent...

True, there is some "selling out" that is bad (especially when it's blatantly commercially influenced, and the end result just sucks), but face it: an occasional change every once in a while can be a good thing. I'm not talking about complete overhauls (ie. death metal to pop trash), but a mix-up every once in a while. In fact, some bands change so little over the years, I just can't stand to listen to their new stuff any more.

But then again, I've heard some radical departures from bands considered "sellouts" that sounded quite good. It all comes down to personal preference.

Lookout for cheaters

[geekd]

We did this at MP3.com back when it was the "real" MP3.com.

Lemme see if I remember correctly... We had a set amount of money to pay out each month. and we divided it based on some formula based on number of plays. Some of our top artists actually made a decent amount of money.

BUT.

We then had to have several people who's full time job was to catch cheaters. They used to tell me about all the various ways people would cheat. As you might imagine, people can get very ingenious when money is involved.

I'm sure a company like YouTube (google) has the staff to handle it, but my question is: is it worth the headaches? The points other posters brought up about copyright infringement and posting other people's videos are already a problem at YouTube. These are problems we didn't really have at MP3.com (our copyright infringement problems were us being stupid, not our users :) Paying users for plays is going to make these problems much worse.

--geekd

Re:18/20

[Kesh]

Actually, there's a real easy way around this: if the profits don't go to the uploader, but to the copyright holder, then all those Simpsons clips won't earn Johnny Basement one penny, but Fox would be pretty happy.