MySpace Announces Partnership to Support Audience-Uploads of Copyrighted Content

Last night MySpace announced a new video partnership with Auditude, to “enable advertising opportunities within audience-uploaded videos across MySpace.” One of the key technologies being leveraged is one that enables MySpace and Auditude to fingerprint copyrighted material and attribute owners of that content.

That means that even if individuals attempt to post copyrighted material from Saturday Night Live, NBC will receive an attribution ad which helps to promote the show. Additionally all revenue from advertisements on that video will flow to NBC and not the user who uploaded the video. This also means that users that take the time to create quality video content can be rewarded as well.

This technology sounds pretty significant in that rather than trying to chase after those that are infringing on copyrights by uploading certain videos, content owners can now benefit from the viral distribution of their content by other individuals. Whether you want to watch your content on Hulu, MySpace, or YouTube, it really doesn’t matter.

You can watch that video and the creators of that content will be rewarded. MTV Networks was also included on this announcement. This is a pretty big announcement considering that Viacom, parent company of MTV Networks, was previously one of the most aggressive pursuers of web-based copyright infringers. This new model is a huge shift from the previous model which reprimanded audiences from sharing favorite content.

Soon enough we will once again see the likes of Family Guy and other copyrighted viral video content, distributed by audiences while the owners of that content receive attribution for that content. I have a feeling that we are going to see many other video platforms follow a similar model when it comes to audience-uploaded content.