14 DAY TRIAL // In the early years, YouTube was very much under the threat of copyright lawsuits. For a while it was doubted whether the site would even be able to survive. Survive it did and it's now putting more of its copyright infringement woes behind it, after reaching a deal with a couple of music publishing companies that sued the site.
YouTube has announced that it has reached a settlement with the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) and its subsidiary Harry Fox Agency (HFA) to license music from artists represented by them and share the ad revenue.
"We already have deals in place with a number of music publishers in the U.S. and around the world, and today’s deal offers more choice for rights holders in how they manage use of their songs," YouTube's Elizabeth Moody writes.
"Going forward, the 46,000 music publishers already affiliated with HFA will be able to license the musical compositions they represent for use by the YouTube community," she adds.
The way it works is simple. Several years ago, YouTube developed the Content ID system which can identify copies of music and videos that copyright owners have submitted to them.
These owners can set up the system in several ways. If an unauthorized copy is found on YouTube, they can opt to have it automatically deleted or have the possibility to enable ads to show up next to it, splitting the ad revenue with YouTube, though not necessarily with the original uploader, even if the video in question is a remix, mashup or so on.
Almost all music labels, movie studios, TV networks use YouTube's Content ID to protect their works.
With the agreement reached with the music publishers they get the chance to use Content ID as well. Which is, of course, what they could have always done, without filling a suit in the first place.