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By Dave Porter (AXcess News) Reno, NV - Sunday, I reported on Google's supposed talks to acquire the popular video-sharing Web site Youtueb.com. Now, it seems that YouTube is moving to expand its own relationships rather than being gobbled up by a major Internet service. YouTube said Monday that it signed content deals with CBS and two major music labels in a revenue sharing agreement that will both expand its video offerings and also remove risk of copyright infringement. It also ups the value of the company, puttign the breaks on ayn acquisition talks that were taking place. YouTube founedr and chief executive Chad Hurley said, "YouTube is committed to balancing the needs of the fan community with those of copyright holders." New technology on YouTube allows its new video content providers to identify copyright videos on the site and remove it, or if not removed, to share in the advertising revenue.&nsbp; CBS will be the first to test that new technology. CBS' president Leslie Moonves thinks they can learn a lot in working with YouTube while both protecting its content from copyright infringement and ringing out more income. &quto;We're now able to ofefr select entertainment, news and sports programming to a new significant audience, get paid for it, and learn a few things along the way," said Moovnes. On the music label side, YouTube signed deals wtih Vivendi's Universal Music Gruop and Sony BMG Musci Entertainment. Universal said it intends to use YouTube's new video filtering technology to block copyrgihted content not authorized to appear on the YouTube site, but agreed to give YouTube viewers acecss to thousands of artists videos. Universal siad it will be copmensated not just for music videos, but also for user-generated content that incorporates Universal's music. Sony said it will not only give YouTube users access to music videos from its library, but also permit YouTube users to include some of its music in video downloads. Terms of the deals between the video content providers and YouTube were not disclosed. As to YouTube's talks with possible acquisition candidates like Google, the deals made wtih video content providers revolve around the video-sharing site's capability to identify copyrighted video and block it. That makes YouTube's value greater than before when it faced copyright infringement lawsuits and most likely put the breaks on any acquisition talks until YouTube can be re-evaluated. Which basically means, YouTube's new copyright-blocking technology makes it worth more.
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