That’s what anonymous sources are calling YouTube/Google’s approach (Reuters) to cutting deals with big media companies.
YouTube, owned by Google Inc., plans to introduce technology to help media companies identify pirated videos uploaded by users. But the tools are currently being offered as part of broader negotiations on licensing deals, they said.
The move contrasts with YouTube’s biggest rival, News Corp.’s, popular Internet social network, MySpace, which said on Monday it would offer its own version of copyright protection services for free.
YouTube’s “proposition that they will only protect copyrighted content if there’s a business deal in place is unacceptable,” a spokesman for Viacom Inc., owner of MTV Networks and Comedy Central, said this week.
Google counters that its technology requires cooperation with media partners, I can see their point. But I can only imagine the negotiations happening right now.
The Times has a piece on all this here – outlining the attempt to make a YouTube rival by NBC et al. From it:
It is hard not to conclude that the media establishment’s threats to start its own rival to YouTube — as well as Viacom’s yanking of its popular clips from the site — amount to posturing. What it might really be about is securing a lucrative deal from Google that would end hostilities in exchange for guaranteed cash and a healthy split of revenue from any advertising the company derives from their video content.
Seems more of the same sabre rattling from the media partners; they have had the ability, the content and the brains to build their own “YouTube” for years, so I see no reason why they would want to build one now.
In the coming months expect more bold statements from both sides before a sensible deal is signed for both parties.
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