One wonders whether French TV channel TF1‘s $57 million lawsuit against Dailymotion is actually designed to win such an equity stake - Zaleski says the companies talked a couple of years back but the case is more about an old guard beast “playing to the markets”. “I’m not worried about it because we’ve always complied with every takedown request, we’ve done nothing wrong, we’ve tried to help them fingerprint.” The site got stung by a small copyright damages payout last year but takes rights relatively seriously, using AudibleMagic and INA fingerprinting.

—UK: Meanwhile, Dailymotion won’t hire anyone to replace Kate Burns, the UK MD who recently left for Bebo after only about five months. UK creative director Digby Lewis is already handling the content side and, whilst hiring a separate UK MD was logical at the time, it’s now better to keep UK ops closer to the main French HQ, Zaleski said.

—Internationalisation and competition: A leader with 10 million monthly uniques at home, Dailymotion gets 27 million overseas, including seven million US, after having localised the homepage in 18 countries. “Hiring me was part of ‘we’re not a French company, we’re an international company’. But the strategy abroad, finding professional media partners, is the same as at home - and, let’s face it, the same as YouTube.

—Quality: One of Dailymotion’s advantages, Zaleski says, is 1280x720 HD quality videos - part of the site’s effort to woo independent film makers, which also includes partnerships like the Raindance festival. The site also says its human-programmed editorial section pages aide discoverability, going back to that YouTube complaint.