What prompted the change? Here’s the site’s explanation, via product manager Joshua Siegel:

Well, we’ve spent significant resources on creating and improving our state-of-the-art Content ID system and many other powerful tools for copyright owners. Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube. Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today.

I’m not sure I understand that. And perhaps someone from YouTube will take another crack at it down the line. But here’s my best guess at translating: We used to cap videos at 10 minutes in part because it made it harder for people to upload entire movies or TV shows to the site, and that made copyright owners less mad at us. Now they like us a lot more, so we’re bumping up the limit by 50 percent.

Bumping up that limit also increases bandwidth and storage costs; theoretically the longer clips will also give the site more chances to sell more ads. Wonder how this impacts Google sales chief Nikesh Arora’s recent pronouncement that YouTube “is on the verge of imminent profitability.”

Meanwhile, I don’t think I watch many clips on YouTube that approach the 10-minute limit, anyway. But I do like this long clip (so much that I think I’ve embedded it twice before): Six minutes and 27 seconds of Stevie Wonder jamming on “Sesame Street”:

And Google (GOOG) appears to have lost a tussle in Italian court today.

Mediaset, a commercial broadcaster controlled by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has won a copyright-infringement ruling, and a Rome court has ordered YouTube to remove all of Mediaset’s content from the site.

Variety:

The broadcaster began legal action in July 2008 following a trawl through the YouTube site revealed 4,643 clips and 325 hours of unauthorized Mediaset material, the company claimed.

In his written report, judge Tommaso Marvasi referred in particular to the prevalence on YouTube of Mediaset’s Italo version of “Big Brother,” which he described as the most important reality show on Italian television. It is also the Mediaset program most viewed on the Internet.

In a statement, Mediaset said that the ruling was historic because for the first time the rights of the broadcasters and program editors to their exclusive products had been fully recognized.

Mediaset is reportedly looking for more than $730 million in damages, but no word on how that phase of the trial will proceed.

YouTube’s response, via a spokesman:

We are considering our next steps, including a possible appeal. Under European and Italian law, service providers such as YouTube are not responsible for screening the content people upload. But we actually go beyond the law by offering copyright holders effective tools which allow them to manage how and whether their content is made available. It’s a programme called Content ID. More than 1,000 broadcast partners including Rai and Fox Channels Italy have chosen to use it. Mediaset could simply join these other partners and use the tools as well. Alternatively, it would be enough for them to provide us the URLs of the videos and we would remove them.

Win some, lose some. Earlier this year, YouTube–along with most other Web companies that rely on user-generated and/or uploaded content–was celebrating Veoh’s U.S. court victory against Universal Music.

If that ruling stands, it appears to put almost all of the onus on content owners to keep their stuff off of video sites. Which could pose a problem for Viacom (VIA) and its billion-dollar lawsuit against Google.

Under terms of the deal, a mix of new and library content from Univision, TeleFutura and Galavision TV programs will be featured and promoted throughout YouTube.

The deal, which marks the first time any Univision programming is available on the Web outside of its own properties, is part of YouTube’s effort to cater to one of the fastest growing segments of online users: The Hispanic community.

“We’ve seen 6.5 million Hispanic adults visit YouTube in the last year,” Chris Maxcy, head of content partnerships at YouTube, said during a call discussing the announcement. “That’s up 80 percent….To date our focus has mostly been on English language space….The Hispanic audience has been overlooked, yet it’s one of the fastest growing communities online.”

The official release:

UNIVISION BECOMES A PREMIER SPANISH-LANGUAGE CONTENT PARTNER WITH YOUTUBE

Partnership Marks One of the Most Comprehensive Deals of Full-Length Programming for YouTube and Brings YouTube’s Hispanic Community in the U.S. Top Programming from Univision’s Three Major Networks
NEW YORK, NY, November 16, 2009 — Univision Interactive Media, Inc., the digital division of Univision Communications Inc., the leading Spanish-language media company in the United States, today announced that it is partnering with YouTube to make short-length and long-form Univision videos available on the YouTube.com website.

“This is a very exciting milestone, as it represents the first time that any Univision programming is available on the Web outside our own properties in both a long and short form format,” said Kevin Conroy, president of Univision Interactive Media, Inc. “This partnership uniquely extends our reach to our audience and solidifies our position as the leading Spanish-language video provider for U.S. Hispanics with unparalleled programming in all respects.”

“Clearly, Univision has established itself as a premier provider of Spanish-language television content here in the U.S.,” said Chris Maxcy Head of Content Partnerships at YouTube. “This deal is a big win for us and marks one of the most comprehensive partnerships for full-length programming signed to date. There is a huge demand to watch Spanish-language content on YouTube. With this new partnership, our community here in the U.S. can watch and enjoy both short-length and long-form programming from Univision’s three major networks on our platform.”

Univision, TeleFutura and Galavisión television programs will be featured and promoted throughout the YouTube.com website. Content will be updated to include relevant offerings as well as an extensive archive of library programs. In addition to top Univision shows, users will have access to Univision.com videos across key content categories, as well as unique footage from Univision celebrity interviews and special events such as next year’s “Premio Lo Nuestro a la Música Latina” (Lo Nuestro Latin Music Awards). Univision will also be using YouTube’s leading Content ID technology to more effectively track user engagement and monetize Univision content uploaded by YouTube users.

This partnership solidifies Univision Interactive Media’s leadership position as it provides premier advertisers with unique sponsorship opportunities, including new inventory for display ads. This further establishes Univision Interactive Media as the ideal vehicle for advertisers to connect with U.S. Hispanics anytime, anywhere.

Today’s example: David Letterman’s startling admission, broadcast on his CBS show last night, that a network employee had tried to extort him, using evidence that Letterman had sex with women who worked on his show.

That’s something you’re going to want to watch, right? And sure enough, the world’s largest video site obliges. Google’s (GOOG) YouTube is packed with clips of Letterman’s statement, which runs about 10 minutes.

None of them are supposed to be there, of course. And since CBS (CBS) has a partnership with YouTube (which it doesn’t like to talk about, but that is apparently a success for the network), YouTube will be playing whack-a-mole with uploaders for the rest of the day. They’ll throw the clips up, and the site, using its Content ID program, will hunt for them and take them down.

At some point it’s possible that CBS itself will put up an authorized clip on YouTube. But given that it hasn’t done so on its own “Late Show” site already and that the network tends to be reluctant to put its best stuff on the Web under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

Anyway, here’s one of the many clips, which tend to feature crummy video but acceptable audio. If it goes away, you’ll be able to find more here.

It will be interesting to see how this plays on the site. My hunch: Given that Letterman is 63 years old and that the clip only involves him talking about the extortion attempt (as opposed to, say, jumping up on stage in the middle of an awards show), this may not be one of YouTube’s biggest hits. But we’ll see.

Want to see this in action? Go to YouTube and try to find a clip of the Kanye West/Taylor Swift/Beyoncé incident from Sunday night’s Video Music Awards. Everyone’s still talking about it (I don’t know why, really, but I guess I’m out of the demo), but if you want to watch it on YouTube, you’re stuck watching shaky, grainy footage created when people film their TV sets with a camcorder.

That’s the result of Viacom (VIA) and YouTube using the site’s Content ID system–which YouTube installed after Viacom filed suit more than two years ago. Content ID allows YouTube to track copyrighted material on the site as long as the copyright owner tells it what to look for.

It’s not a plug-and-play solution: On Sunday, Viacom had to have staff work through the night to provide YouTube with “reference files” from the live show so that the Google’s video service could find the offending clips and take them down.

But it worked pretty well. Decent-quality clips of the Kanye incident were taken down fairly quickly, and the grainy shots had only generated some 700,000 views by Monday afternoon, according to video-tracker TubeMogul. Meanwhile, MTV’s official version was approaching two million views (it’s now above three million).

You could argue that both Google and MTV would be better served if the official clip was on YouTube. And one day, that might happen. But first, they have to settle their court case.

That looks less likely today than it did a week ago, by the way, because of the recent ruling in the Universal Music/Veoh case. Team Viacom says the case, which appears to be quite similar to its own, won’t have any bearing on the how the company proceeds, while the YouTube guys see it as an affirmation of their position. Translation: More legal back and forth and fewer Viacom clips on the world’s biggest video site.

Here’s one of the low-fi versions, by the way. Not recommended if you’re prone to motion sickness:

Eventually we’d like to make money out of it.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on YouTube

It’s been two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google (GOOG) has yet to truly monetize YouTube. And while Google CEO Eric Schmidt insists the company has the “luxury of time” as it searches for ways to recoup its investment in the popular video site, it’s clear the issue is gradually becoming more pressing. “We’re waiting for the innovations,” Schmidt said recently. “The innovation will come. We know it will come. We know it’s there.”

Could the “it” to which Schmidt refers be the new e-commerce platform YouTube is launching? Perhaps. Beginning this week, YouTube is embedding “click-to-buy” links in certain videos on its site, which refer users to affiliate services selling the music featured in them. “Click-to-buy links are non-obtrusive retail links, placed on the watch page beneath the video with the other community features,” YouTube explained in a post to the Official Google Blog. “Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily, now users can click-to-buy products–like songs and video games–related to the content they’re watching on the site.”

An interesting idea. And should it prove successful, it could begin to justify YouTube’s jaw-dropping $1.65 billion purchase price. “This is just the beginning of building a broad, viable e-commerce platform for users and partners on YouTube,” the company explained. “Our vision is to help partners across all industries–from music, to film, to print, to TV–offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted, audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos. And those partners who use our content identification and management system can also enable these links on user-generated content, by using Content ID to claim videos and choose to leave them up on the site.”

Eventually we’d like to make money out of it.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt on YouTube

It’s been two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google (GOOG) has yet to truly monetize YouTube. And while Google CEO Eric Schmidt insists the company has the “luxury of time” as it searches for ways to recoup its investment in the popular video site, it’s clear the issue is gradually becoming more pressing. “We’re waiting for the innovations,” Schmidt said recently. “The innovation will come. We know it will come. We know it’s there.”

Could the “it” to which Schmidt refers be the new e-commerce platform YouTube is launching? Perhaps. Beginning this week, YouTube is embedding “click-to-buy” links in certain videos on its site, which refer users to affiliate services selling the music featured in them. “Click-to-buy links are non-obtrusive retail links, placed on the watch page beneath the video with the other community features,” YouTube explained in a post to the Official Google Blog. “Just as YouTube users can share, favorite, comment on, and respond to videos quickly and easily, now users can click-to-buy products–like songs and video games–related to the content they’re watching on the site.”

An interesting idea. And should it prove successful, it could begin to justify YouTube’s jaw-dropping $1.65 billion purchase price. “This is just the beginning of building a broad, viable e-commerce platform for users and partners on YouTube,” the company explained. “Our vision is to help partners across all industries–from music, to film, to print, to TV–offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted, audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos. And those partners who use our content identification and management system can also enable these links on user-generated content, by using Content ID to claim videos and choose to leave them up on the site.”