There's a delightfully conspiratorial theory floating round that $500m of Google's $1.65b YouTube purchase price was earmarked for paying off rights holders. As well as that, it is speculated that part of the deal is that potential law suits are directed against YouTube's rivals and that content companies - namely music and movie firms - are actively working to stop that rights money getting to artists. That's quite a rumour.
This comes from a detailed posting to the well-regarded Pho mail list, supposedly written by someone not directly involved with the deal. That said, they must have had either considerable industry insight or a rather fiscally-orientated imagination. Serial entrepreneur Mark Cuban posted the full entry on this blog.
It just so happens that Patrick Walker was speaking today, and he's head of content partnerships at Google Video. I asked him to comment on the post. He wouldn't comment directly on internet rumours.
"What's important is that people remember that before and during the acquisition both YouTube and Google have always clearly respected digital copyright. We have a clear policy if anyone objects to content, whether because of violence of if they feel they own the copyright. Our reaction time is very rapid.
He picked on file sharing services as a bigger problem: "You can't just pick up the phone, and you don't enter into a commercial relationship. Legitimate services take copyright very seriously and it's a commercial priority."
Putting aside $500m certainly would back up that commercial priority, of course.
