YouTube have announced, via a new blog post, that the look of the massively popular video sharing website will be undergoing some major changes in the upcoming months.

In an effort to obtain some critical feedback from users, YouTube has also elected to provide a sneak preview of what the ‘Videos’ page will soon look like.

When compared to the current video browsing page, the changes seem to be very subtle, but the folks at the most popular online video community are hoping that it is enough to get people started talking, which many have begun doing.

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YouTube yesterday launched a localised Australian version of the site to better cater for their 3 million odd Australian users.

Even before the site gets up and running, the Australian government is already threatening to look in to the kind of material which is posted on it.

The Federal government is promising to look at the legislation in place and see if the content put online can be controlled in any way.

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A host of media companies have launched a new push to force user generated content sites such as YouTube to tighten up their copyright controls.

Disney, CBS, NBC, and Fox, along with Microsoft, Veoh, and Dailymotion, have jointly issued a document they call “User Generated Content Principles.” 

In a nutshell, the guidelines call for sites hosting UGC to automatically block content that matches copyrighted material submitted by copyright owners to a back-end database.

Nothing New

These aren’t new proposals—the studios have been pressing for automated filtering on YouTube and the like for quote some time now. But the presentation of these proposals as a set of “principles” is new, and somewhat misleading.

Typically, we see voluntary guidelines issued by industry groups as a self-regulatory measure, to ensure best practices are followed in the absence of regulation. But here, it’s not self-regulation—the biggest names in the UGC business aren’t there. 

Google/YouTube, Facebook, and Yahoo are all noticeably absent from the video sharing services, as are a number of other channels for UGC, like blogs and other forums that allow the posting of media. Those who are present are those who would seek to regulate the business of others.

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Under pressure from movie studios, record labels and their friends on Capitol Hill to filter out copyrighted material, YouTube’s parent company Google has developed a tool that will likely restrict the flow of legal content over the Internet.

YouTube introduced the beta version of its ‘video identification’ system a few days ago, the purpose of which is to control the amount of infringing material that appears on the site. 

This raises the bar for each and every entity that serves as a conduit for copyrighted works online, and was most liekly prompted by the $1 billion lawsuit from Viacom.

How It Works

A copyright holder uploads its works into a reference database, which then generates identification files by which uploaded videos are matched. When a user uploads a video onto YouTube, that video is matched with the identification file. 

If there is a “match” (more on that later), then the video is subject to whatever action the rights holder has decided to apply to it; for example, it could be blocked, “tracked” or “monetized.” If the video is blocked, the user will be notified, and can immediately contest the claim by clicking onto a link. 

Once YouTube receives the user contest, it will put the video back on the site. At that point, notice and takedown provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) would kick in. 

If the copyright holder continues to want the video removed, it would have to send a takedown notice required by the DMCA. The user can send a counter-notice, whereupon the video would be reinstated, etc.

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Viacom has been feuding with YouTube for almost a year now over various copyrighted clips of John Stewart that keep popping up on the video sharing site.

It even prompted the network to sue YouTube for $1 billion.

Now it is launching a site dedicated to the show, which will offer more than 13,000 clips dating back to the very beginning.

I have to be honest: I’m not sure whether Viacom’s new plan for The Daily Show is a great idea or a really dumb idea (I’m also leaving open the possibility that it’s somewhere in between those two).

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Originally planned for a September release, the fabled YouTube antipiracy tool has finally appeared, according to Webware.

Due to the controversy and bad press being created by a swathe of copyright lawsuits, Google hinted at the development of a new breed of video recognition technology for YouTube back in June.

This new technology was meant to help the curb the posting of copyrighted material onto the video community.

This new tool, however, is not a completely automated process and, without the help of content owners, may not be able to catch 100% of the copyright videos that are constantly making their way to YouTube viewers.

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After months of speculation and testing, Google have finally made it official and recently announced the launch of “Video Units”.

This is a new video-based advertising format that matches the breadth of consumable video content of YouTube with the huge Google AdWords advertising inventory.

Online publishers and independent video producers can rejoice as they gain another method of making money online, and it’s easy to use too.

The new Google Video Units are a new monetization option immediately available to AdSense publishers located in North America and with a web site in English. The Video Units configuration and activation can be accessed inside the AdSense Setup tab within your AdSense account.

As an online publisher you can customize the look and feel of the “video units” and select specific video content by letting Google match your page content, by keywords and categories you can select or even by specific YouTube authors.

The new “video units” ad player features the ability for the viewer to scroll and browse through several video clips as well as to move through different ads just like Google allows you to do inside your Gmail inbox.

The ads can be displayed both above and below the video and their format includes both text as well as full graphic banners.

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