James Delahunty
3 Nov 2008 19:39
MySpace.com and Viacom's MTV have hooked up with Auditude as part of its quest to create revenue streams from online video piracy. Nowadays, Internet video piracy doesn't just exist on BitTorrent sites or P2P networks. User-driven sites like YouTube and MySpace are packed full of videos published without authorization, providing easy access to the content and little or no control to owner of the content.
That's where Auditude comes in. Auditude, theoretically, through partnerships with online social networking sites and content providers, gives another option besides removal; gaining advertising revenue. On the surface this sounds like a logical and professional move for content distributors to take. It can provide revenue with little or no extra work put in by the content companies. The work to get the content online is taken care of by the user and the bandwidth costs are covered by the service involved.
However, what it does take away from the content companies is a level of control. One thing that most content providers always want control of, is the distribution of its copyrighted works. Apple's iTunes service sold billions of legal downloads after launching in an era of rampant music piracy, yet the control it demands over aspects of distribution has caused serious tension between the company and record labels.
Gaining partnerships like MySpace and MTV shows some confidence in the idea however, but whether or not Hollywood studios would embrace the service with open arms is not a question easily answered. Auditude's technology is now being used by MySpace and will give Viacom the opportunity to place advertisements beside content from MTV published by users of MySpace.