Los Angeles — Moving closer to the world of Hulu and other premium TV sites, and as the copyright concerns fading thanks to Content ID advances, Google owned video-sharing site, YouTube on Thursday said that it was discarding the 15-minute limit on uploaded videos, beginning with a subset of users.
The change appears as more companies, like Hulu and Netflix, are offering people full-length television shows and movies over the Web, and as YouTube attempts to get people to watch its videos on bigger screens via Google TV.
“Your creativity is not clamped by a time limit, so why should your video uploads be?” says a YouTube blog released Thursday. The blog did not offer up what — if any — new limits there could be. But it suggested that much longer videos — seemingly one to two hours or more in length — could be uploaded by users.
The offer will will be available to “selected users with a history of complying with the YouTube Community Guidelines and our copyright rules,” YouTube said in a blog post. To find out if your account qualifies, click the “Upload” button at the top of the site.
“So move on and find that movie you penned and filmed last year and share it with the world! Or upload your son’s championship high school basketball game or the insightful lecture you just gave on the emerging economics of green tech. As long as it is your original content, it is fair game regardless of length,” stated the blog.
YouTube is a pop-culture forum open to all. But there are some limitations, says YouTube. Longer videos will only be available to those users who have never transgressed copyright rules and who have followed YouTube’s community guidelines. YouTube says it is changing its limit now because it has copyright violations under control.
This is the second time this year that YouTube changed its length requirements. In July, the site empowered users an extra five minutes, allowing videos that were a maximum of 15 minutes long. However, the previous limit of 15 minutes, which will still apply in many cases, represents a big adjustment.
YouTube said that one of the things that enabled it to take away length limits is its Content ID system, since it now has to worry less about people uploading entire movies divided into multiple clips. This is a tool that allows YouTube to identify and remove copyrighted footage from the site.
“Over 1,000 global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube, including every major U.S. movie studio and music label,” the blog post said. “We remain as dedicated as ever to building and improving the most sophisticated technology in the world to help copyright owners protect their rights.”
The launch of Google TV is probably coveted reason for the adjustment, since a few more YouTube users will now be watching content in the comfort of their dens rather than from an office chair. Anyway, the change will allow YouTube to host longer videos, like lectures by college professors, talks at conferences and films by independent filmmakers, said Joshua Siegel, a product manager at YouTube.
Although YouTube did not mentioned premium TV content, analysts note that the company appears to be looking to even the playing field with sites such as Hulu, which allow viewers to typically watch regular half-hour and hour-long TV shows.
Some premium TV content owners that have endorsed deals with YouTube, such as National Geographic, are already able to upload longer videos. It should be interesting to see what (if any) changes in YouTube’s culture occur as a result.