YouTube's New Ad Revenue Restrictions Target Video Thieves

Back in 2007, YouTube launched its YouTube Partner Program, a way for its creators to monetize their videos. In the years since, many scammers and opportunistic intellectual thieves have swiped creators' videos and re-uploaded them under their own accounts to try and make some ad revenue money. This has been a persistent complaint among creators, and so YouTube is taking a step to prevent this kind of IP theft: minimum lifetime view thresholds for earning ad revenue.

YouTube announced the news today, saying it wants to stop these scammers from re-uploading creators' content to make money off it. In addition to the ability to report such accounts, which has been in place for a while, accounts must have a minimum of 10,000 lifetime views in order to sign up for YouTube Partner Program ads.

While this will automatically exclude many fly-by scammers who hope to make some quick cash, there are some additional measures being rolled out that will further hinder their efforts. YouTube says it will be introducing a new review process soon that will review the channel's activity when they attempt to sign up for the YPP. The ads will only be made available to that channel if it passes the review process.

This means channels that manage to get the minimum lifetime views may still be hindered in their effort to get ads by the review process, which will hopefully catch most or all of these scammers. YouTube users who apply for Partner Program access can check the status of their application in the Creator Studio's 'Channel' tab.

SOURCE: YouTube Blog