MTV Networks have operated a major attitude change from recent years as far as copyrighted content is concerned. Up until now whenever a user posted copyrighted material on a video site such as YouTube or MySpace the material’s respective owner would, upon discovery of the infringing material, bellow out takedown notices and legal threats.

Overall this is a costly tactic, not to mention an inefficient one. So MTV Networks had a better idea. They announced a partnership Monday with MySpace and video ad technology company Auditude, through which the latter places ads on the clips in the website of the former when it detects that said clips are copyrighted content owned by MTV Networks. This includes Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report” and MTV’s reality show “The Hills.”

MySpace has a policy of co-operating with copyright owners on the matter, and will take down copyrighted clips at the request of the owner. YouTube does much of the same; although interestingly enough Viacom, which owns MTV Networks, is currently in a $1 billion lawsuit with the Google-owned company over copyright disputes.

Auditude technology which detects and identifies the clips in question will place an ad overlay on it, and any revenue from the ads will be split between MySpace, Auditude and the copyright owners. Auditude will also add an “attribution overlay” to videos, a semitransparent under-bar which gives information about the episode’s original airing date and a link to buy it.

YouTube has similar measures in place. Its Video ID content identification system will automatically alert content owners to unauthorized posting. They then have the choice of filing for a block, leaving the videos alone, or running ads. Copyright owners almost invariably choose the latter.

The MySpace overlays and ads will start popping up over the next weeks, and other participants are expected to join.