From Mipcom: Interview: Mark Selby, VP-Multimedia, Nokia

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I had a quick chat with Mark Selby outside the conference and asked him about the infamous GooTube deal, or whatever we’re calling it now. Selby is VP of multimedia at Nokia but has a personal interest in user-generated content and says he now watches more YouTube than live broadcasts. He said the deal with Google is fascinating and like many others around Mipcom, he wants to see how the lawyers treat YouTube now it has real money behind it. As Google introduces advertising to YouTube and starts to monetize the site, anyone with a case for copyright infringement is likely to step up.
But Selby also says the next essential step for UGC is to pay users for contributions: “We have got to see those individuals that are creating being able to generate income from it. If we have citizens who understand the true value of content and understand how to make money, they’re far more likely to respect professional content. Here we have individuals, many who believe that if it’s on the internet, it’s a public domain and therefore it’s free. Many of them do not grasp the complex world of copyright and rights.” He said some of the UGC platforms at the moment have draconian terms and conditions. “Basically you put your video up and you’ve lost all rights to that and anyone else can sell it to whoever they like.”
Rights holders and rights owners are fiercely protective of their copyright and fear they are being ripped off by the public: “Yet some of those organisations - and I stress ’some’ - are doing exactly the same to citizens that are submitting photographs they’ve taken of a fire or a crash through a sense of social responsibility. The moment it’s gone in, that media company is ripping off to an even greater extent, and rather than enjoying it just for their own purpose as many citizens are, they’re actually going out and syndicating and selling it to other parties.”
He said there was none of the predicted backlash against MySpace after the News Corp acquisition, and that the GooTube deal isn’t likely to trigger any migration to other video-sharing sites - mostly because people would have to rebuild their profile, content and network from scratch on a rival site. There’s also a great deal of trust on user-gen platforms, and he referred to the rambling video diaries of UK pensioner Geriatric1927: “YouTube has absolutely demonstrated the value of UGC. For people to share such raw emotion in that manner demonstrates the trust and the value placed on it.”
– He agrees that there’s a big opportunity for content producers right now to fulfill the demand for made-for-mobile, exciting, creative TV and video content. There’s more of an opportunity - and a challenge - for translating advertising to that space as well: “If you’ve been working for the last however many years with a 30-second mindset, and now you’ve got to transfer to a 5 second, how do you do it? For us it’s the fact that you’ve got this ability to create, you’ve got this amazing method of distribution and on the back of that the potential is phenomenal.” Nokia has been working with a number of directors to experiment with filming and showing films on mobiles. Selby: “The most important thing for us is putting capability into the devices that will enable people to contribute. If you look at the number of videos on YouTube that have actually been generated from mobile phones and cameras because people were in that place at that moment and they could record it ‐ now they can edit that film with tools we provide and upload them.”