It seems YouTube is taking steps to ensure that those random fan-uploaded movie clips are directing viewers to the source of the original content in the form of a buy link. YouTube, courtesy their program to buy and rent movies directly on YouTube, are now adding links to download the movie the clip is taken from, right on the YouTube page of the clips themselves.
Clicking on the link takes you to a screen that lets you know you can purchase or rent the movie.
What really stands out is that this seems to be added for various movie clips posted, regardless of whether it is uploaded by an official source, such as a performer or movie studio, or by a random YouTube user, which many movie clips are. We have seen purchase links from official sources before, but added to random clips seems to be a recent change.
They aren’t added for every movie, but seem to be added to a significant number of them.
They have also been added even when the title of the movie isn’t in the title of the clip, such as the famous “Houston, we have a problem” scene (uploaded many years ago) and the Zoolander scene above.
As a bonus, some videos will launch a preview for the movie, when they click the “Watch <title>” link, such as with Apollo 13.
While YouTube users can link to Google Play content from videos, this seems to be limited only to those YouTube users with the YouTube Partner program, which many of these uploads clearly are not.
It does raise the question about whether this change is driven by movie studios where they can allow the content to remain on YouTube and simply add the purchase/rent link rather than having the video completely removed.
Google doesn’t seem to have added a similar link for songs that are uploaded by non-official sources, such as the ever popular “lyric videos” many create for popular songs. Instead, those link to the official artist’s YouTube channel instead.
It is a nice way to appease movie studios who are concerned about their copyrighted content being uploaded to YouTube by fans, since Google is offering a link so users can directly buy and watch the movie if they wish.
Jennifer Slegg
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