• Cnet News.com , Thursday, July 24, 2008 11 AM

Cnet's Greg Sandoval suggests that peace may be near for Google and Hollywood, who have long been at war over the amount of pirated videos that appear on Google's video-sharing site, YouTube. Indeed, if deals like the one announced last week with Lionsgate are any indication, YouTube could soon be the legal home to clips from popular movies and TV shows. Why? Now that Google has ramped up its content filtering efforts, major movie and TV studios are softening to the prospect of having their stuff passed around the video-sharing site, which has an unmistakable brand and an unmatchable reach in online video.

According to Sandoval, the Lionsgate deal is only the beginning, as Google is also in talks with other big media companies about similar deals. Insiders say that Google has become more flexible about revenue sharing and helping to protect films and TV shows against piracy. "We've been working with them on filtering and they're doing a pretty good job," said one unnamed big media exec. "We're pretty impressed with the results and their ability to identify our clips and allow us to automate the process."

According to Sandoval's sources, Google has also been making big strides in the fields of ad delivery and content filtering, two areas of enormous import to big media companies. One possibility: Google is working on a technology that would let content owners insert ads into unauthorized video clips. As YouTube spokesman Ricardo Reyes says, YouTube has "always been committed" to protecting big media firms' copyrights.

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