Warner Music and YouTube choose to make love, not war

Filed in archive Internet TV on September 18, 2006

YouTube might be facing the threat of litigation from Universal, but another record label, Warner Music, has forged an agreement with the video sharing site. With the agreement, the companies appear to have forestalled a thorny copyright battle; the deal allows both YouTube and Warner to profit from the videos, while not depriving fans of access.

The agreement, to take effect before the end of the year, illustrates YouTube's push to tackle the copyright issues facing it when users upload video that does not belong to them. YouTube is developing an automated system to digitally identify copyrighted music and video uploaded by its users. It will then give a percentage of revenue from any ads that appear alongside those videos on YouTube's Web site, if their owners have agreements with YouTube and opt for that rather than having the videos removed.

The way I read that is this: Warner Music may presently be the only content owner willing to test a way to benefit from piracy but YouTube wants to export that model to other owners. For that reason alone, we should keep one eye open to the idea.

Of course, so far Warner has been a major brand supporter of YouTube, so it makes sense that Warner's invested in seeing the video sharing site succeed. Warner earlier this summer promoted "pirates of the caribbean" on YouTube, becoming the first major brand advertiser to run display ads on the site.

Another thing that this sets YouTube up for is sharing revenue with amateur video enthusiasts. For example, if you uploaded video that appealed to your peers, it may draw an audience and produce ad revenue for YouTube. They could then share a part of that with you.