Cost To Pre-Screen YouTube Videos Estimated At $37 Billion Yearly

I think it would be pretty safe to say that most in Hollywood don't like YouTube. Hollywood movie studios have long scorned YouTube as a place where studio content is pirated and copyrights are broken. The system in place today allows copyright holders to file complaints with YouTube, and YouTube will pull the videos down (often with little or no investigation).

Recently, it was reported that YouTube users were uploading about 72 hours of video each minute. One of the methods some in Hollywood would undoubtedly like to see YouTube employ to prevent copyright infringement is pre-screening video as it is uploaded. The problem with pre-screening the massive amount of video uploaded to YouTube is that it's insanely expensive. TechDirt reports that would cost about $37 billion per year pre-screen all the video uploaded to YouTube.

Considering YouTube hasn't yet figured out how to make money off the huge number of viewers the website gets, pre-screening is simply not going to happen. Granted, that $37 billion figure is far from what many would consider accurate. The figure takes into account using real people, specifically judges, rather than software or any old YouTube user. The cost number comes from the average pay of a judge in Silicon Valley pegged at $177,454. TechDirt figures it would require 199,584 judges to screen video based on the number of uploads and hours in a single working day. It works out to slightly under $37 billion yearly.

[via TechDirt]