YouTube.com announced today that they would soon start hosting feature length films — possibly as soon as next month. The service is expected to launch in a month’s to three months’ time. This move will see YouTube lock horns with U.S. TV show and movie streaming giant Hulu, which holds the blueprint to the new YouTube service. YouTube movies will be supported by advert breaks that occasionally interrupt the movie. Parent company Google has negotiated with the major film companies and the service is expected to cater mainly for Hollywood films. Currently, Hulu is only offered to users in the United States, so we’ll be eager to see whether YouTube can go one better and offer free, add supported movies to a worldwide audience.

The real question we are asking is can YouTube’s infrastructure even handle the real-time streaming of full-length movies? Since YouTube videos aren’t actually streamed, but are downloaded to the user’s computer – meaning they can easily be copied. Will it make sense to freely exhibit all this content for free without raising copyright issues?
Via