EMI And YouTube Reach Agreement

by Glen Shapiro, LawAndTax-News.com, New York

04 June 2007

It emerged last week that EMI Music, Google and its subsidiary, online video sharing service YouTube have announced a landmark agreement which will give YouTube users unprecedented access to authorized videos and recordings from EMI Music artists, including those featured in user generated content.

“With this deal, all four of the world’s major music companies are now official YouTube partners,” announced Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-founder of YouTube.

Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, added:

“Working with YouTube under this agreement meets EMI’s objectives to offer consumers the best possible entertainment experiences, to create new ways to connect our artists to fans and to enter into innovative business models that will generate revenues for our business and our creators. Through this agreement EMI Music and its artists will be fairly compensated for their work.”

EMI Music has agreed to work with YouTube and Google to develop business models in which the YouTube community will be able to access user generated content featuring EMI-owned and copyrighted audio and video works.

EMI Music will use YouTube’s content management tools, which feature a content identification and reporting system that will help EMI track and monetize its content and compensate its artists. YouTube’s content management tools also give EMI Music the ability to request the removal of EMI’s copyrighted content from YouTube.

This represents the conclusion of another of YouTube's copyright-related battles with the music and film industries. However, it is still facing a lawsuit from Viacom, which has claimed that its shows are illegally uploaded to the website by YouTube users.

The media giant filed suit against Google and YouTube in March of this year, seeking more than US$1bn in damages for alleged copyright infringement.

The suit was filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and also requested an injunction to prevent further copyright infringement by Google and YouTube.

Viacom issued a statement at the time which ran partially as follows:

"Defendants know and intend that a substantial amount of the content on the YouTube site consists of unlicensed infringing copies of copyrighted works and have done little or nothing to prevent this massive infringement. To the contrary, the availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of Plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of Defendants' business plan. YouTube deliberately built up a library of infringing works to draw traffic to the YouTube site, enabling it to gain a commanding market share, earn significant revenues, and increase its enterprise value."

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