How things work

I'm late on this. So sue me. It takes time to readjust from Sundance. The altitude, the watery alcohol, the late-late nights and early mornings, trophy wives in fur outfits, A, B, C and Z list celebrities, and desperate hangers-on looking to get noticed for something can make one weary.

Last week YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley announced that the site will start sharing the spoils of ad revenue with some of its producers and posters of user-generated content. Hurley didn't give specific reasons for YouTube's new desire to pay for what it's been given freely, thus joining the ranks of similar sites like Revver.com and Break.com. It's worth noting that Hurley's announcement came hot on the heels of a subpoena from FOX demanding the identity of a person who uploaded pirated episodes of the Fox television network shows "24" and "The Simpsons." Of course it's easy to post anonymously on YouTube, and even if subpoenas urge the site to use server tracking on posters of copyright protected videos, anonymizer programs can make finding them difficult or impossible.

However, a more reliable way to track someone is to give them money and see where it ends up.

Hurley didn't give a model or timeline for introducing payment. One would assume it's made per download, or per ad click, like Revver.com. On the bright side, this could be a incentive for producers of popular videos to improve YouTube's signal to noise ratio.