How YouTube thinks about copyright: Margaret Gould Stewart talks digital rights management

YouTube’s head of user experience, Margaret Gould Stewart, talks about how the site manages copyright and contributes to an “ecosystem of culture.” Stewart notes that content owners deliver “assets” into a database. Uploads are compared to reference files in the YouTube database.

Interestingly, content owners provide a usage policy on how to handle matches. “Most rights owners,” she says, “instead of blocking, will allow the copy to be published, and then they benefit through he exposure, advertising and linked sales.”

For example, Sony allowed the infamous JK Wedding Entrance Dance to use Chris Brown’s Forever. With over 50 million views to date, the video catapulted the single back to #4 on iTunes.