YouTube User Sues For Royalties

Who would've thought that a few thousand daily views of online sketch videos could translate into fame and the web-based financial success that comes with it?

Benjamin Legeri, a disgruntled YouTube user, apparently did, because he's suing Google and various employees for not letting him into YouTube's revenue-sharing program.

Starring in, writing, and directing his own sketch and parody videos as BennyBaby, Legeri's most widely watched video claims over 400,000 viewers, though most of his videos rest in the low 5-digit range, with ratings of two to three-and-a-half (out of five) stars.

Legeri applied to YouTube's Partner Program, through which the company shares portions of ad revenue with well-trafficked publishers—but was denied. Citing the fact that Google purchased YouTube for $1.5 billion in 2006, Legeri filed a lawsuit against the search giant, YouTube, YouTube's Partner Support Team, and all other employees, seeking $1 million in damages.

"The main reason that serious content providers or Laborers, such as Plaintiff, provide content to YouTube.com at all," Legeri alleges in the suit, "is to make a profit off of their creative work."

Legeri quickly balances his dreams of YouTube dollar signs in the next paragraph: "This isn't to say that the chief goal or original draw to the entertainment business or the content-creating business is to make money; however, it is an absolute necessary [sic] to sustain the work of content creating, especially when content creating is your full-time job. Notoriety, in itself, is of little consequence and is more of a myth of success than an actual reality."

YouTube User BennyBaby
Likening his situation to Viacom's, with its ongoing lawsuit over YouTube content for which it wasn't compensated, Legeri claims that since his videos garner about 11,200 views per day, he is responsible for an "unquestionable" 1/9000th of YouTube's daily traffic. That estimate rises to 1/500th if you disregard all the porn and spam videos the lawsuit claims YouTube receives.

Based on that 1/500th traffic estimate and YouTube's aforementioned purchase price, Legeri concludes that the traffic created by his videos is worth $3.6 million, so the $1 million he's seeking must be a bargain offer.

Unfortunately, Legeri isn't likely to see much of the revenue he's suing for. YouTube launched its Partner Program just over a year ago as an incentive for top publishers, but even with his arguably inflated traffic numbers mentioned in the suit, Legeri's account doesn't appear to hold a candle to the numbers enjoyed by most of YouTube's current Partners.

While a handful of Partners have only a couple hundred, or, in rare cases, only double-digit subscribers, most Partners are at least in the thousands, with some approaching half a million subscribers.

Further, the criteria to join YouTube's Partner Program is drawn more in sand than concrete. There isn't some magical or hard number of views, videos, or subscribers that automatically graduates a YouTube publisher into the program.