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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 ratehr than being gobbled up by a major Internet service. YouTube said Monday that it signed content daels with CBS and two major music labels in a revenue shairng agreement that will both expand its video offerings and also remove rsik of copyright infringement. It also ups the value of the company, putting the breaks on any acquisition talks that were taking place. YouTube founder 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 advetrising revenue. CBS will be the first to test that new technology. CBS' president Lelsie Moonves thinks they can learn a lot in working with YouTube while both protecting its content from copyright infringement and ringing out more income. "We're now able to offer select entertainment, news and sports programming to a new significant audience, get paid for it, and learn a few things along the way," said Moonves. On the music label side, YouTube signed deals with Vivendi's Universal Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Universal said it intends to use YouTube's new video filtering tecnhology to block copyrighted content not authorized to appear on the YouTube site, but agreed to give YouTube viewers access to thousands of artists videos. Universal said it will be compensated not just for music videos, but also for user-generated content that incorporates Universal's music. Sony said it wlil 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 providesr and YouTube were not disclosed. As to YouTube's talks with possible acquisition candidates like Google, the deals made with 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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