This is probably not new, but I recently noticed that on the bottom of this YouTube video showing how a 80×80x80 Rubik’s cube is solved, there’s a strong copyright notice. It reads: “Notice … This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by WMG [Warner Music Group]. The audio has been disabled. … More about copyrightâ€. The link then points to YouTube’s copyright tips.
I really wonder, how many videos have been muted like this? Well Its pretty hard to tell exactly, but I tried doing a search in Google with search query ["This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by†site:youtube.com] returns around 342,000 hits (including some help pages from youtube, and perhaps some regional YouTube content too).
On a separate report, there was a rumor that YouTube is to run a trial of ’pre-roll’ video ads on selected content from several broadcasters starting from today. The pre-roll ads are short video ads shown before the video you requested and could be up to 30 seconds long. Advertisements will start appearing around videos from BBC Worldwide, ITN, Discovery, National Geographic and – from today – Channel 4.