Hey Doug; It's Edgar! Check Out My Numa Numa Lip-Sync!

A few days after Universal Music boss Doug Morris said that YouTube (and MySpace) were "copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars", Warner boss Edgar "The Copyright War is Over" Bronfman is announcing a deal with YouTube today to "transfer thousands of its music videos and interviews to YouTube", according to AP. 

It's an ad revenue sharing -- not an equity -- deal.  It had been rumored that Universal's saber rattling was in response to YouTube's refusal to give them an equity stake in return for a similar licensing/content deal as Warner's.

One of the more interesting aspects of this deal is (from AP)...

To make the deal happen, YouTube developed a royalty-tracking system that will detect when homemade videos are using copyrighted material. YouTube says the technology will enable Warner Music to review the video and decide whether it wants to approve or reject it.

This seems like an evolved solution to a complex issue.  But, right or wrong, we wonder what the reaction will be from users who submit a Green Day lip-synch and it gets held up for "approval" (if that is, indeed, the process).  Will they just go to another site for instant gratification?

And, perhaps even more importantly, if YouTube now is acknowledging that they have the ability to track the uploading of copyrighted content, couldn't the other labels simply demand that all their content be blocked from the site until they sign deals on their own terms? (Update:  See YouTube press release for bullet points on "Content Identification and Reporting Infrastructure).

Links to others on these issues after the jump...

Mark Cuban knows a little about broadcast streaming and the entertainment business.  He thinks YouTube is doomed.

He has fair points, but also disregards the site's ease of use and marketing opportunities for companies that it affords.  (See Warner).  But, if you are a betting man and look at the odds of whether the entertainment industry might go nuclear with lawyers to enact control and leverage, he's making the safe call.  YouTube is hoping that their Warner and NBC deals signal a shift in thinking after too many long and self-defeating battles since Napster 1.0.

TechMeme, IP Democracy, Mashable, VentureBeat, PFF on the Warner deal.  Plus, TechCrunch dives a bit deeper into the copyright tracking tech:

We first covered technology capable of detecting copyrighted content in the case of video distributer Guba, who has developed a system code named “Johnny” that detects copyrighted video. We also wrote about online social network Faces (disclosure: now a sponsor) that counts all music played against an internet radio license. I hope that tomorrow’s Warner/YouTube announcement is a sign of times to come; when technology like this is used to protect rights holders’ baseline interests but in the context of widespread free use.