MySpace, MTV Networks team with Auditude to profit from online video
It just goes to show that you can teach old media new tricks. — Television networks and Hollywood studios used to try to prevent people from uploading copyrighted content on the Internet. Now they are looking to profit from the practice.
Context & Ripple Effects
By late 2008, MySpace had spent over a year rebuilding its video offerings to chase YouTube, while its parent Viacom was simultaneously fighting user-uploaded content in court — Viacom and NBC had even intervened directly in online video litigation months earlier. The Auditude partnership marks the pivot point: instead of takedowns, MTV Networks and MySpace would identify copyrighted clips in user uploads and sell ads against them. It extends an existing MySpace–MTV relationship that already spanned politics and licensed music performance videos.
First-order effects
- MySpace and MTV Networks gain a revenue stream from user-uploaded clips they previously had to remove, with Auditude's fingerprinting matching content to ad inventory automatically.
- Rights holders whose catalog is recognized by Auditude shift from enforcement costs to licensing income on UGC platforms.
Second-order effects
- YouTube and other video hosts face pressure to adopt comparable identification-and-monetization systems or lose studio goodwill — turning content ID from a legal shield into a competitive feature.
- Ad buyers gain premium, brand-safe inventory inside viral user uploads, redirecting some video ad spend away from professionally produced web originals.
Third-order effects
- The enforce-then-monetize arc suggests copyright strategy converges on automated licensing: detection infrastructure becomes the deal-making layer between media owners and distribution platforms, a pattern later visible across music and video rights.
- If recognition-based revenue proves reliable, the distinction between 'piracy' and 'promotion' blurs structurally, weakening the legal rationale for aggressive takedown regimes.
The trend: Media companies are moving from litigating user-uploaded video to monetizing it through automated content identification — an early data point in the shift toward rights-holder/platform revenue sharing.