Search Engine Optimization News Blog

YouTube is making some decent money from monetizing pirated content. They offer choices, now, for large media companies whose copyrighted content is being shown on the video site; remove it, leave it, or leave it and monetize it.

90 % are going for door number three, and YouTube is splitting the take with them (the uploaders, of course, get zilch.) This is a huge step forward for YouTube, whose monetization strategy to date is to charge $175,000 per day for a homepage video ad.

The battle to monetize YouTube has been made glaringly apparent as other video sites appear to have no such woes. YouTube continues to be a drain on Google, but with the new revenue sharing strategy perhaps there is hope in sight at last.

Speaking of copyrighted content, a federal judge has thrown out the suit against Yeoh by IO. The online video site was accused of copyright infringement and sued by the adult entertainment company.

The judge ruled that Veoh was diligent in attempting to keep their website clear of pirates, and that they were protected by law under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) safe harbor provisions.

Googel is excited, hoping it will have some influence when their legal battle with Viacom over content on YouTube finally reaches a courtroom. The prior ruling won’t set precedent in New York, unfortunately, but it gives some measure of relief knowing that at least the case in California is moving forward.

YouTube is a scene of fierce controversy on so many things – of course the Viacom suit is just the tip of the iceberg, Google is always getting sued for something or another. The interest in the video remains.

Yahoo isn’t the only fish in the sea, however – and it remains to be seen how many will be looking for an alternate place to post their videos as more and more options become available.

YouTube still leads the pack, however, with a staggering number of visitors per year (ranging in the stratosphere), and the new feature of captioning is proving intriguing. Being able to add captions and subtitles begs the question of whether or not this is crawlable text, and if so, how to make it work to user’s advantage.

The one flaw so far in YouTube’s new feature is that captions don’t seem to work after embedding… and there is no web based editor supplied, though YouTube does offer several suggestions on their help page.

YouTube is kicking into high gear to stay competitive!