At long last YouTube has launched "Video Identification" in beta, its answer to copyright owners who feel YouTube has built its business on the back of their copyrighted content.

Having not seen the system in actual use, it's impossible for me to judge how well it works. But having read how YouTube describes its approach in developing the system, considering how it allocates responsibilities for copyright protection with the rights-holders themselves and thinking about the bigger picture challenges all media companies face in the broadband era, my initial reaction is that Video ID is a pretty good first step.

YouTube's approach - As the Video ID page says, YouTube was guided by 3 motivations in creating the system: accurate identification, choice for copyright holders and a great user experience. While there will be plenty of debate about how much emphasis each of these should have received relative to the others, my guess is that the DMCA's requirements and the health of YouTube's business drove the final balance. While YouTube has an image problem with major media which it would like to improve, nobody can expect that the company's SOLE motivation in developing a copyright protection scheme should be the concerns of copyright holders. Whenever I read a copyright holder complaining about YouTube or other piracy issues, I wonder, would these people only be happy if we returned to the pre-Internet age? Since that's not going to happen, less complaining and more adjusting is what's required of media companies now.

Allocating responsibilities - The most controversial part of Video ID will likely be the requirement that copyright holders provide their videos so YouTube can build its database against which to judge alleged pirated copies. The predictable reactions will be "it's too much work", "we don't trust that YouTube won't misuse it and "why should we?". There will be much second guessing whether other technical approaches not requiring submitting full video files would have been as effective. Of course nobody knows for certain, so at the end of the day either you trust that Google, with its pantheon of computer science experts, vetted the options well and selected the best choice, or you don't. It's ludicrous for lawyers and media executives who have never written a line of code in their life to suggest that Alternative A or Alternative B would have been better. I suggest that for now media companies give YouTube the benefit of the doubt. It is incumbent on YouTube to show it will be responsible with these video files and that having them really does make the Video ID system work well.

Bigger picture challenges - YouTube isn't going away, nor are the other video sharing sites. Broadband isn't going away either. And lastly, consumer behavior isn't going to change back what it was in the pre-Internet era. Media companies need to accept that the world is what it is, and learn to adapt themselves to it to succeed. My sense is that Video ID gives media companies all the options they should desire or expect: having the offending content removed, having it continue to run as promotional fodder, or making money off it through a revenue split (though these percentages are TBD). These tools, if they actually work, will give media companies lots of new flexibility to exploit their content with by far the largest audience of broadband video users. If media companies choose not to participate, shame on them for sticking their heads in the sand and wishing the world would return to a simpler time. YouTube has demonstrated for all of us what I believe and have said many times: that broadband is the single most disruptive influence on the traditional video industry. Companies that don't recognize this and don't work with the YouTubes of the world to adapt themselves will ultimately be rendered irrelevant or worse.