Put YouTube Videos on Your Blogger Blog

New feature in Blogger -- the ability to add YouTube videos as a sidebar element to your blog. Use the Blogger Dashboard to go to the Template tab, click Add a Page Element, and then select Video Bar. This lets you add a vertical bar of YouTube video clips, based on defined search elements.

Claim Your Content Coming -- and More on Viacom

YouTube is almost ready to launch a new software tool that will enable copyright holders to find and report infringing content on the YouTube site. The tool is dubbed Claim Your Content, and it will be available to any content provider -- not just official YouTube partners.

BTW, Google CEO Eric Schmidt commented at the Web 2.0 conference that he thought Viacom's lawsuit against the YouTube division was essentially a negotiating tactic in the ongoing discussions between the two firms. Of Viacom, Schmidt said "[y]ou're either doing business with them or being sued by them ... we chose the former, but ended up the latter."

Copyrighted Videos No Big Thing on YouTube

According to a study by tracking firm Vidmeter.com, less than 10% of videos on YouTube were uploaded without the permission of copyright holders. This means that the bulk of YouTube videos are homegrown. It doesn't mean, however, that those homegrown videos are the most popular videos. Nor do the numbers totally reflect reality, as that 10% number reflects only those videos that have been identified by copyright holders; there may be more infringing videos on YouTube that haven't yet been identified, or that copyright holders haven't complained about. Still, it's an interesting bit of data.