This NBC News piece reports that since 2007, YouTube’s ContentID program has enabled copyright holders to monetize content posted to the service and get paid a billion dollars in the process. (Also included in the report is the staggering statistic that ContentID scans 400 years of content every day — we live in content-producing world of crazy proportions!)
So we see that with this kind of cash rolling in, it’s no wonder that Viacom finally came to its senses earlier this year when it decided to discontinue its litigation against YouTube. The billion dollar notion is also interesting — that’s the very amount Viacom sought when it filed suit in March 2007.