Dear YouTube: When do Jill and Kevin get paid?

July 31, 2009 | Paul Boutin | Comments | |

jkIf you haven’t seen the viral video that sent Chris Brown’s year-old track “Forever” to the top of Amazon and iTunes sales charts, here’s your chance to catch up with the rest of the Internet. A gushing blog post on the Official Google Blog yesterday enthused about how the copyright holders for the song used in this video were able to monetize its breakout popularity. Today, though, online trash talk centers around the hole in Google’s worldview: Why don’t the people who made the video get an automatic cut of the action?

Next Story: Apple fixes security hole in iPhone
Previous Story: Please, please don’t personalize Twitter for me

Bookmark and Share

Tags:

Photo of Paul Boutin

About the Author, Paul Boutin

Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

  • Give me a break
    Short answer is no. They should be glad it wasn't removed for music copyright infringement.
  • Marcus
    They don't deserve a penny, how about they instead take the costs of hosting said video for 12 million people, then subtract that from what it made.. then JK sends a check to Youtube.

    Rediculous to think they'd deserve anything. If they were a partner and continously made videos like such and were accepted in, they would have made a cut. But they're not.
  • Haggie
    If they were smart, there are dozens of ways they could have (and still can) profit from the viral popularity of their video.

    But the question is: Why do they have to profit? If was obviously fun for them to do and it is ridiculously popular. Can't that be suitable reward unto itself?
  • Name
    Great point. In fact, rather than attempt to profit themselves, they're actually leveraging their popularity to raise money for a charitable organization devoted to fighting domestic violence: http://jezebel.com/5327429/wedding-dance-newlyw....
  • Why would they get paid for that? Does the Office get paid for making even more popular?