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YouTube Partners With Warner

  • Reuters, Monday, September 18, 2006 11:03 AM
YouTube has now signed a definitive agreement with Warner Music Group that will make music from its artists' catalogue available legally on the site. The commercial partnership will result in artist channels like the one YouTube established with Paris Hilton a few months ago. The pact will help Warner distribute videos, behind-the-scenes footage, artist interviews, and original programming. But it will also enable YouTube users to incorporate music from Warner artists into the videos they upload. Music videos are regularly uploaded to YouTube, usually without permission from the copyright holders. The pact was signed over the weekend, and comes just days after Vivendi's Universal Music Group, one of the big four recording studios along with Warner, described YouTube and News Corp.'s MySpace of being "copyright infringers" that owe the music industry "tens of millions of dollars." That statement suggested UMG may seek legal action against the popular viral video site, which has more than 100 million worldwide users. Under the new deal with Warner, YouTube and its partner will share revenue from advertising, which will be placed around the music videos and other brand-controlled content. To help identify "safe" content from recording studios and other partners, the company is deploying a new content-identification and royalty-reporting system. Partners have the right to revenue generated from ads sold on its artists' music videos, as well as user-uploaded videos that incorporate content owned by Warner. What will UMG and the rest do? Learn how to work with YouTube and turn online video sharing into an opportunity (it won't disappear regardless of legal action), or take YouTube to court, like they've done in the past?

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