YouTube videos are about to get longer.
On Thursday, YouTube said that was lifting the 15-minute limit on uploaded videos, beginning with a subset of users.
The change comes as more companies, like Hulu and Netflix, are offering people full-length television shows and movies over the Web, and as YouTube tries to get people to watch its videos on bigger screens via Google TV.
The change will allow YouTube to host longer videos, like lectures by college professors, talks at conferences and films by independent filmmakers, said Joshua Siegel, a product manager at YouTube.
It could also mean more opportunities for people to upload longer copyrighted material, like full-length movies recorded with a video camera in a theater. But YouTube says it is changing its limit now because it has copyright violations under control.
For three years, YouTube has used a system called Content ID to recognize copyrighted material and give the copyright owners the right to block it, track it or make money from ads shown alongside it.
The lift on time limits for videos “has primarily been made possible by advances in Content ID,” Mr. Siegel said.
More than 1,000 copyright owners, like film producers or television studios, do this, and YouTube scans more than 100 years worth of uploaded video every day, according to YouTube.
The new feature will be available only to a subset of users who have never violated copyright rules and who have followed YouTube’s community guidelines. Some content owners that partner with YouTube, like National Geographic and Lonelygirl15, have already been able to upload longer videos.
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