Continuing its effort to solve the copyright problems, the
Google’s owned YouTube has signed a license agreement with the MCPS-PRS
Alliance, the UK
group that collects royalties for more than 50,000 composers, songwriters and
publishers.
Under the terms of agreement YouTube users will be able to incorporate
any of the 10 million copyrighted British songs in their amateur or professional
videos.
“We‘re pleased to be working in cooperation with the
MCPS-PRS Alliance to provide the YouTube community in the UK with the
best possible user experience. This agreement is another great example of how
we are working with the music industry to explore new and creative ways to
compensate music creators.” said Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube.
YouTube will pay a flat fee, and the MCPS-PRS will be
responsible to split the money between its members.
According to MCPS-PRS Alliance the revenues will be distributed
through a scheme based on an estimate of how often the content provided by UK group is
played or use
“Whether it is music videos, user uploads or other audio
visual content, our agreement will allow our 50,000 songwriter, composer and
music publisher members to be paid when their creative talents are being
enjoyed on YouTube’s service across the UK.” said Steve Porter, Chief Executive
of the MCPS-PRS Alliance.
In June, YouTube has launched www.youtube.co.uk , the
British version of its website, which allows for country-specific video
rankings and comments, as well as Video, Channel, Categories and Community
sections.
Since acquiring YouTube for $1.65bn in October 2006, Google
and Eric Schmidt, its CEO, have made important efforts to forge relationships
with traditional media companies.
Last month there were reports that YouTube is working
"very intensely and cooperating" with major content providers on a
video recognition technology as sophisticated as fingerprint technology the FBI
uses.
The technology, which was developed by Google, was mentioned
for the first time in April. Speaking at National Association of Broadcasters
conference in Las Vegas, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO said the new technology,
which he called "Claim Your Content," any legitimate copyright holder
can register videos they made. Then any copies uploaded onto YouTube will be
filtered out.
YouTube has also signed deals with music companies including
Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment that
will allow consumers to use some of their music in the creation of videos.