The SMH has an interesting article covering the first interview with YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen for a while. Here are the key points:

• They say a video advertising platform for YouTube could be ready within the next couple of months, although may be delayed by Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick.
• They are also close to deploying tools that will provide great copyright protection to content owners, a key issues they are facing with various large companies (Viacom, English Premier League, to name but a few) trying to take them to task for copyright infringement.
• One of these is in the area of unauthorised music tracks included in video clips. They are working with Los Gatos-based Audible Magic who have a technology that can flag unauthorised music.
• YouTube made US$15 million in revenue for Google last year.

US$1.6 billion for US$15 million in revenue. That is an impressive multiple! However, they did take Google stock rather than cash for most of it I believe.

In a related article, they are taking the the US Department of Defense to task for blocking access to YouTube. They have also blocked a host of others sites including MySpace, claiming they can’t handle the bandwidth across their network. As the YouTube guys point out, errr didn’t the DoD invent the Internet? The implication is that they are really concerned about video footage from the front getting uploaded without any controls in place.