YouTube is changing their tagline from "Broadcast Yourself" to "Watch MTV". They were weighing changing it to, "Broadcast Other People's Copyrighted Video". Alright. Sorry. No they aren't. And no they weren't. But they are now distributing content from MTV2:

MTV2 is seeding YouTube with multiminute clips from a pair of series promoting new seasons and DVD releases this month: "The Andy Milonakis Show" and "Wonder Showzen." The Web site already is home to dozens of other clips drawn from the network but uploaded to YouTube without the network's consent.

MTV2 is listed atop the rankings of "today's featured videos" on the YouTube home page, along with a network logo identifying MTV2 as an "official partner."

They are also making it "harder" for people to upload pirated content:

YouTube instituted a few changes to its site this week to make it a more corporate-friendly environment. Users seeking to upload material are now instructed to agree that they in fact own the content that they intend to distribute via YouTube, which the company hopes serves as a deterrent to copyright violators.

That's quite laughable. But, certainly understandable. People go to YouTube because they can see the pirated videos. They certainly aren't going to start policing this seriously, as it'll force users to go to video hosting sites with less lenient policies. I think that YouTube is on the right track by working with the big content creators. The question becomes will the big content creators really let YouTube be their distribution arm?

The deal that has been struck with MTV2 (Viacom) is a just a promotional vehicle for MTV2. They are simply distributing some clips from some upcoming new unproven shows. They hope to gain some "viral" action from this experiment. These kind of deals aren't going to sustain YouTube as the pre-eminent video sharing site.

YouTube has to start doing revenue share deals with these content creators where MTV2 gets a cut of the ad revenue generated when their content is viewed. That's the only way that YouTube will get to distribute the good stuff at the top of the long tail of [pseudo] quality video.

(Via Journerdism)