A court has ruled that Google must turn over logs containing the “log-in ID of users, the computer IP address (online identifier) and video clip details” of every single video watched by every user on YouTube. This is the result of a class action copyright infringement lawsuit, brought against the video sharing site by Viacom (parent company of MTV, VH1, CBS and Paramount) and the Premier League football association. Google will also be required to “disclose to Viacom the details of all videos that have been removed from the site for any reason.”

So what does this mean, beyond the fact that multi-national corporations will now have evidence every time you watch semi-dirty Duran Duran videos or footage of Margaret Thatcher asking the media to “rejoice” that British troops have taken back the Falklands (yes, these are my two most recent YouTube searches)? The BBC has posted a good decoding of the ruling. Takeaways after the jump.

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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Google/YouTube are launching a short film contest called Project Direct. Entries, which will be accepted from October 7-November 9, must be between two and seven minutes in length and must feature a character dealing with a “situation above his or her maturity level.” Twenty finalists will be chosen by Juno director Jason Reitman, from which YouTube users will pick a winner. In addition to placement on YouTube’s homepage, the lucky first-place filmmaker will win a “$5,000 debit card” and nine-day trip to a “top international film festival” (based on the contest end date, I’m guessing it’s Sundance), where they’ll take a meeting with Fox Searchlight execs.

It’s interesting that they––and really, I’m not sure if “they” is Google/YouTube, Fox Searchlight, contest sponsor Hewlett-Packard, or some combination of the three––assume that what someone posting their work on YouTube really wants is to hang out at a traditional film festival and schmooze with Fox Searchlight executives. It seems bold, or really foolhardy, to assume that web filmmakers are doing what they do as a stepping stone to old-school Indiewood success, and not for success within the online video community, that just being at a film festival like Sundance is preferable to showing one’s work at an event produced by and for web filmmakers, like Pixelodeon. I’m sure a lot of people showing work on YouTube are in it for that kind of crossover success, but I personally can think of a handful of video producers who’d probably rather take those nine days and that “$5,000 debit card” and make another ten films.

I’d be interested to hear what online video producers think about this: does this seem like the dream package, or is it misguided to assume that creators posting video on YouTube necessarily long for the traditional, film festival experience?

• With a total gross of $140,000, The Darjeeling Limited earned the highest per-screen average of the year this weekend, when it opened in two theaters on New York on Saturday after opening the New York Film Festival on Friday night. Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution opened almost as strong: the NC-17 rated, 158 minute film grossed almost $62,000 in its single New York engagement.
• Admittedly, there’s a lot riding on the success of Lions For Lambs (it’s the first production to be released by Tom Cruise’s revamped United Artists, and Cruise’s first starring role since the disappointing Mission Impossible 3), but is YouTube really the best place to sell an Oscar-bait drama about war and moral responsibility? Cruise and Co. think so: they’ve signed a deal with GooTube “in an effort to build buzz for the drama…to launch a competish for which individuals can produce a 90-second video discussing the social issue they’re most passionate about.”
• Amidst recent accusations that they’re just not very good at releasing films, First Look has announced two new acquisitions: Day Zero, a draft drama starring Elijah Wood which premiered at Tribeca earlier this year; and The Amateurs, a comedy about a crew of middle-aged suburbanites who hop into the world of DIY pornography.
• Wayne Wang’s A Thousand Years of Good Prayers took the top prize this weekend from Paul Auster’s jury at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

I’ve previously expressed concerns that Google’s renewed commitment to cracking down on copyright infringement will have a disastrous impact on YouTube and GoogleVideo potential as teaching tools/living media archives. Today, via CinemaTech, comes this Wall Street Journal article (if you’re not a subscriber, try this link) about people hired by companies like Viacom to seek out and request the removal of copyright content from YouTube.

The company profiled says they earn as much as $500,000 a month from each of the media companies that employ them. Most of their focus seems to be on removing music videos that have been illegally uploaded by MTV viewers, and comedy sketches illegally sourced from Comedy Central. Since many of these videos are available for legal streaming on MTV’s Overdrive and other sites, you have to wonder: since the average YouTube “pirate” surely doesn’t care enough about a company like Viacom to try to deliberately hurt them, why would they bother uploading these clips at all? Why would anyone want to watch a choppy YouTube clip of Same Girl when MTV.com has the same video, in a slicker player and at a higher resolution?

My guess is that a big part of it is the demand for embeddable clips — you can link to MTV.com’s videos, for example, but you can’t display them on your own blog or MySpace/Facebook page. A big part of the appeal of watching online videos is being able to share them. Teenagers especially seem drawn to the practice of using YouTube clips of their favorite music videos and funny scenes as building blocks in constructing their online identities. When you’re 16, your MySpace page is your personal portal, your social resume, the one-stop shop where friends and crushes can receive all your sanctioned information. If you were that 16-year-old, would you really want to have to “express yourself” by directing your friends to go check out all your favorite videos on Comedy Central’s website?

My big concern with the YouTube crackdown is that it will make it impossible to share hard-to-find media detritus: rare interviews and TV clips, scenes from films that aren’t on DVD, etc. It’s nice to see Delaney heavily imply that media companies are taking a hands-off approach to fan-altered clips containing copyrighted content, and just about anything else that could reasonably fit under Fair Use. There’s a sense that the big media conglomerates have had to pick their battles. While Viacom pays $100,000 a month to make sure that clips of Chappelle Show aren’t allowed to circulate, there seem to be an awful lot of four-month-old, camcorder-sourced clips from subsidiary Paramount’s Disturbia.

Another interesting tidbit from the story: employees at the company hired by Viacom blow off steam by sharing vintage oddities. “They combat the monotony by passing links to quirky clips around the office,” Kevin J. Delaney writes. “One recent oddball favorite was a video of a flamboyant German disco-era group performing in Genghis Khan-inspired outfits.” Surely, somebody somewhere owns the copyright to that, too.

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***The National Legal and Policy Center has released a report intended to “shame” Google for failing to block access to pirated films on Google Video. Among other things, the NLPC charges that Google gives preferential treatment to copyright holders “it makes business deals with.” In response, a Google spokesman implied that some companies don’t want their copyright material removed from the site. “Copyright status can only be determined by the copyright holder, and their preferences vary widely.”

***Michael Tolkin, the author of The Player, has been hired to adapt the Fellini-inspired Broadway musical Nine for the screen. The Weinstein Company is producing the film; Chicago helmer Rob Marshall will direct.

***September’s Toronto Film Festival will host a Gala screening of David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises. The thriller re-teams the director with his History of Violence star, Viggo Mortensen.