If I create a video site and voluntarily people upload video, and I offer to share revenue from viewing videos on my site with the uploaders, who owns the video?
Unless the creator of the video has expressly granted ownership to you, the creator owns the copyright. Remember, the owner (copyright holder) and the uploader are not always the same and offering to share revenue to with the uploader is probably asking for an array of legal issues stemming from unauthorized use.
mjewel's second sentence above, "Remember, the owner (copyright holder) and the uploader are not always the same and offering to share revenue to with the uploader is probably asking for an array of legal issues stemming from unauthorized use." is why I consider him to be a great resource to this forum. I would not have thought of this wrinkle, and yet it is the best reason not to share revenue with uploaders. Good Answer mjewel!
I agree that the uploader and copyright owner may not be the same entity however do not see how revenue sharing with the uploader will create any additional complexities from a purely legal stand point. Certainly you are more likely to get copyrighted content but I think it would be hard to prove that simply by paying you are encouraging it. Would need to ensure your T&Cs were prominent and clearly state that those uploading the files have permission to do so etc etc
Well google has already spent $100 million dollars in legal fees with their Viacom case regarding unauthorized uploading of copyrighted content - and the case has been appealed so they will be spending a lot more than that before it is over. Additionally, sharing revenue is bound to encourage fraudulent clicks to the ads or views on the videos they uploaded. All it takes is a single copyright lawsuit against you, and win or lose, you could spend tens of thousands in legal fees or more. Sites like youtube already have revenue sharing, so unless the OP is talking about a highly specialized niche, I fail to see how they are going to get a lot of legitimate uploads of content from a copyright holder. If the OP is thinking of sharing their adsense revenue, all it is going to take is one complaint of infringement or case of click fraud to risk a lifetime ban of their account. The OP may be willing to take the risk, but I wouldn't.
But "click fraud" is an unrelated issue to the copyright ownership concern. Likewise the Viacom case is unrelated to revenue sharing but basic copyright and what Google does to prevent it/ how they handle it when they become aware of it. The viability of the business model is one outside of the legal considerations. Agree it wouldn't be a business I'd be looking to invest in but I imagine many said the same about Google when it first started up and was going against the giants like Yahoo. Its still not getting my money though
If you're talking about viability, I think the cost of possible legal litigation certainly factors in. Ignoring the legal costs, Google also paid $1.65 billion for youtube and had an estimated youtube loss of $470 million in 2009 - and while those losses have since narrowed and they could even make a profit this year, they have a long way to go before they break even or recoup their initial investment. One of the points brought up in the Viacom case is that Google internal documents (google claims most of them are missing, lol) estimated that they would lose 80% of their traffic if there were no copyright infringing uploads.
Like most organisations, sail as close to the edge as you can without actually cross the line into illegality. When I was working for an insurer who wanted to buy out one of their competitors I had to write 2 papers; one for the Competitions Committee (government organisation) to explain why it would not be detrimental to the market or unfair to consumers for the two organisations to merge. The other for the board of directors on how the combined organisation could use its increased market dominance to control the market.
In your terms and conditions you should consider having a provision that if the material that is uploaded is not the property of the uploader or if the uploader does not have the right to upload the content then they agree (by upoloading) to indemnify you for any damages and attorney's fees that you incur as a result of the upload. You should further remove copyrighted material as soon as you realize it there. You should have mechanisms in place to have people report it to you so you can remove it as soon as you know it is there. You should have the appearance that you are not attempting to illegally dissemmenate material that is copyrighted.