Loyal YouTube users get to upload longer videos

Filmmakers who have played by the rules on YouTube can now post works longer than 15 minutes at the world's leading video-sharing website.

Google-owned YouTube in July raised the video-length limit to 15 minutes for all users but has sent out word that filmmakers who haven't abused copyright and other rules will be exempted from that time cap.

"Our creativity isn't bound by a time limit, so why should our video uploads be?" Google product manager Joshua Siegel and company software engineer Doug Mayle asked rhetorically in a blog post Friday.

"As long as it's your original content, it's fair game regardless of length."

The move was made possible in part by better tools for identifying copyrighted material posted on YouTube without permission from content owners, according to Siegel and Mayle.

Major US movie and music studios are among the more than 1,000 "global partners" that use a Content ID system to manage their digitized material on YouTube.

Videomakers can click an "upload" icon on YouTube to learn whether their accounts qualify to post longer works.

(c) 2010 AFP