D5: YouTubers and Viacom CEO weigh in on copyrights
Before coming on stage at the D conference, a cute video about the making of YouTube was shown, where co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are talking about coming up with a business idea while they are eating huge burritos, and how they wish their friends could watch them eat.
Context & Ripple Effects
The D5 session lands mid-escalation. Two months earlier, a Viacom lawyer argued YouTube knows it violates copyrights; in January, YouTube had begun sharing ad revenue with its creators — the first sign the site would pay users rather than merely police them. With PC World also covering the appearance, putting both sides' principals on one conference stage turns an ongoing legal fight into public theater.
For YouTubers, the stakes are practical: the revenue-share program they benefit from is the same argument YouTube uses against rights holders, and the founders now have to defend it standing next to the executive whose company is pressing the infringement case hardest.
First-order effects
- Chad Hurley and Steve Chen are forced into a live, on-stage defense of their copyright position while a Viacom lawyer is publicly accusing the company of knowing infringement — no time for a drafted rebuttal.
- Viacom's CEO gets a public forum to press the case at the same event where YouTube's founders frame themselves as scrappy founders sharing burritos, setting up a direct contrast between the two narratives.
Second-order effects
- Other media companies get a live read on which tactic moves YouTube faster — Viacom-style public pressure or negotiated licensing — before deciding how hard to push their own claims.
- The creator revenue-share program becomes negotiating currency: YouTube can argue its payouts already route value to content producers, complicating the framing of the site as pure infringer.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, user-generated video platforms get pushed toward formal licensing and filtering arrangements, with creator compensation serving as the public justification that makes such compromises sellable to their communities.
The trend: Online video is moving from open copyright confrontation toward negotiated licensing, with creator revenue shares becoming the platforms' core argument for legitimacy.