The co-founder of YouTube, Chad Hurley, has said legal cases launched against the video-sharing website have been “unfair” and blamed traditional television broadcasters who are scared of losing their influence in the distribution of content.
Multiple copyright cases have been launched against YouTube in recent years, but none have been successful.
In an exclusive interview with Arabian Business, Hurley said the site was targeted because its phenomenal popularity had made it a threat to traditional video content owners and distributors.
“Of course I think it’s been unfair; when you’re in the spotlight you’re kind of blamed for all the problems,” Hurley said.
“I feel the [broadcasting] industry was making a lot of noise because they’re more scared about losing control, not necessarily just of creation of content, because everyone has a camera in their hand, but also the distribution of that content.”
About 100 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute – a rate that means more content is uploaded in a month than the three main US TV networks created in their first 60 years, the website claims.
Hurley said YouTube, which was sold to Google in 2007, had fortunately put in place policies early enough that had prevented any legal action against it from being successful.
“It’s all about developing the right tools and policies, which I feel we were able to do from day one at YouTube and it’s proved itself in any case that’s been brought against us,” he said.
“Even though we were the largest [online content distributor], I think we were the ones doing the most. There were a lot of competitors that weren’t nearly as pro-active as YouTube, [but] because we’re the most visible … people associate [copyright issues] with us.”
Hurley, who was speaking after presenting the keynote address at a recent science and technology park conference in Qatar, declined to comment on the censorship of citizens’ online comments and videos by some governments, including those in the Gulf.
“Every country is going to have their own set of laws and every culture is going to have their own set of norms. It’s a hard thing to figure out – we’re talking about global platforms,” he said.
“We were lucky enough to be part of Google that had to some extent figured some of that stuff out or had the resources for us to do that appropriately, but it’s always a give and take and you have to have the appropriate people in place to respond to things as necessary.
“Usually it’s helpful to have people on the ground, again with Google being a global company, having offices around the world helped tremendously with that.”
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