Having been involved with flurries of negotiations with media companies concerning their copyrighted content, the pressure is on YouTube (GOOG) to produce its promised "Content Identification System" to root out and removed copyrighted material from its site.
A comment reported by the Financial Times from a YouTube spokeswomen doesn't sound too good for the prospects of it being introduced in a timely manner promised by the company.
I
n September YouTube promised that they would include software upgrades to its site that would empower the company to readily identify copyrighted material and remove it. With the spokeswomen saying that the company never promised for there to be a "general availability by the end of the year," it doesn't sound too promising for all those involved.
In other words the company is reduced to semantics to say that it isn't going to have the product available within the time they said. For example, if they didn't promise "general availability" what is it they promised: limited availability? What does that mean?
While I don't think that there will be any sudden moves by the media industry against the company, I do think that the waiting period won't be allowed to be prolonged.
With the music industry beginning to loosen up and understand the potential to monetize their products online, it would be a disaster for YouTube if they can't deliver an anti-piracy system to accomodate the partners they've promised it to.
While I don't believe that this is necessarily the answer, it is what the media companies are demanding. By promising them it within a certain time period, it has put the company in a place where it must deliver. I'm not sure they can.
Remember to Sign up for my feed, bizzbite and digg this!
Comment Preview