Anyone interested in video on the web – and particularly making money from video on the web – should pay close attention to the partnership between MTV and MySpace, which uses fingerprinting technology to allow the broadcaster to identify video being ‘pirated’ and shared on the web.
So far, so old news. The significance is this: the technology is being discussed not as a way to stop people ‘ripping’ and embedding video material, but to actually encourage them. Why?
The money.
“Once identified, the MySpace-hosted MTV content becomes an advertising platform for MTV. Auditude allows them to add a video overlay to the clip, advertising the content source, the original broadcast date, and links to purchase the entire episode or other related content.”
Auditude, the company behind the technology (note their slogan: “Audience-powered media”), say more:
“So every time you post a clip of Jon Stewart ripping on the presidential candidates, someone is going to get paid, and users won’t have to deal with the often-clunky proprietary video players offered by each network. And instead of trying to prevent these clips from making it onto MySpace in the first place, content owners will want users to upload as many as possible.”
Similar technology was introduced by YouTube last year – but the ability to monetise clips was only mentioned as an aside, and while it has seen some increasing success, the noises coming from MTV, Auditude and MySpace are different, and suggest they might finally be understanding that users are their biggest distributors.
Other networks are expected to follow in signing up. Broadcast news and newspaper video are obvious candidates to benefit – how long before we see a ‘Rip this’ button?
Online Journalism Blog 
Well this is really interesting. Instead of punishing people for uploading, they're encouraging. Fantastic. If only I could get over my dislike of video on the computer. Just hate it. Something to do with the specific time required. Love stills online, which have no maximum or minimum time, but something about knowing I have to sit there for 2 minutes really turns me off.
Me too, but I think we're in the minority judging by video usage figures.
Apparently so. Perhaps it's the 150 wedding videos I shot and edited on vhs as a youth, or the woeful Australian broadband speeds now, but I often catch myself making a frowning face if there's just video and almost no text on a post.
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