YouTube founder Chad Hurley has confirmed that his team was working on a revenue-sharing mechanism that would "reward creativity". The system should be available in a matter of months and is to be supported on various forms of advertising, including short clips (up to 3 seconds) shown ahead of the actual film. The offer is not, however, for all of YouTube"s 70m users: it applies only to people who own the full copyright of the videos that they are uploading to the YouTube website.
YouTube is currently working on "audio fingerprinting" technologies to identify copyrighted material, Mr Hurley said in a session on social networking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Hurley emphasized that YouTube was still working out the technology and processes involved - both for the rewards system and the video clip advertising system. The features will be rolled out one by one: "There won"t be one big release," he said. Other video sharing sites such as Revver already split advertising revenues with users uploading original content.