Archive notice: This article was originally published on February 27, 2009. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The decision by British cult comedy troupe Monty Python http://pythonline.com to give fans free access to its work via the YouTube video platform has paid off. As The Guardian reports, sales of DVD box sets by the five comedians have soared since the Monty Python channel launched on the online portal in November last year. Sales at online retailer Amazon alone rose by an incredible 16,000 percent. For Google, the site’s operator, this is an impressive example of how rights holders can use the new realities of the internet age to their own advantage. “The Monty Python case shows how copyright owners can benefit from YouTube,” Matt Brittin, Google’s country director in the United Kingdom, said yesterday, Thursday, at the London Media Summit.
“With the Content ID filtering system, we offer rights holders the opportunity to identify their copyrighted material on YouTube and then decide what should happen to it,” Brittin explained. When illegally uploaded content appears on the video portal, the copyright holder has two different options. They can either choose to have the item removed completely from the site, or take a more liberal rights-management approach and leave the video online. In the case of Monty Python, the latter option was chosen, while at the same time fans were told that something was expected in return for free access. “Click on the displayed advertisements a lot and buy our DVDs,” the comedians demanded when the YouTube channel launched. Only in this way, they said, could “the pain and disgust” be eased that the quintet had suffered for years through piracy rip-offs.
“There has certainly been a change in thinking about how rights holders deal with copyrighted content on YouTube,” Google spokesperson Stefan Keuchel told pressetext. Moving images on the internet are one of the biggest trends. “Many companies have already recognized YouTube’s potential for advertising. The portal gives them access to target groups that would otherwise be very difficult to reach,” Keuchel emphasized. According to the Google spokesperson, around 60 partner companies already had their own channels on YouTube when the video site launched in Germany, including media groups such as ZDF.
