YouTube Misses Anti-Piracy Deadline But Parties On

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

03 January 2007

Video-sharing website YouTube held a New Year's Eve virtual 'party' featuring feeds of live performances, but missed a deadline it had set for deployment of a system to prevent piracy of copyrighted music. YouTube's offices were due to re-open yesterday.

When Warner agreed in September to allow YouTube to distribute its content library and to allow users to incorporate such content in their own works, YouTube promised to have an 'advanced content identification and royalty reporting system' in place by the end of the year, so that revenues could be shared between the partners.

Shortly after the Warner agreement, Google announced that it had agreed to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Google said:

"The combined companies will focus on providing a better, more comprehensive experience for users interested in uploading, watching and sharing videos, and will offer new opportunities for professional content owners to distribute their work to reach a vast new audience."

In addition to its agreement with Warner, YouTube has an agreement with Universal under which it shares advertising revenue to compensate for lost content royalties. Sony and CBS also have licensing agreements with Google.

Currently it's not clear to what extent the content majors are benefiting from these deals; and doubts have been expressed as to whether YouTube will easily be able to instal an anti-piracy system without damaging the accessibility and cheapness which have made it so successful.

YouTube has probably protected itself against the most worrying threats of legal action through its agreements with the majors; but up till now the only action it takes to observe copyright rules is to remove copyright-protected material when owners complain.

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