Publishing royalty collecting society types MCPS-PRS have reached an agreement with video sharing platform YouTube regarding the publishing royalties due on any music streamed via the website. The deal is the first between the Google owned service and a collecting society outside the US.
It will mean that songwriters and publishers affiliated to MCPS-PRS should now receive a royalty each time one of their songs is accessed via the video platform - assuming that the new fangled content tracking/filtering technology YouTube et al keep talking about actually works, that is.
Announcing the new agreement, YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley told reporters: "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".
MCPS-PRS chief Steve Porter added: "We are delighted to have concluded this deal with YouTube and to be the first collecting society outside the US to do so".
YouTube are, of course, facing various copyright infringement lawsuits with regards their hosting of copyright material without a relevant content owner's permission, but have generally managed to successfully negotiate licensing deals with the music sector - certainly on the recordings side, with the major record companies among the first content owners to enter into agreements with the video sharing service, albeit after the threat of legal action from Universal Music. The music publishing sector have been slower to enter into deals, although outside of Japan most publishing royalty organisations have been open to negotiations with YouTube execs - MCPS-PRS included.
The litigation is coming more from the TV sector, and in particular MTV/Viacom who, as previously reported, have launched probably the most high profile copyright infringement case against YouTube to date - what could be something of a big test case should it go to court (is it enough for YouTube to simply vow to remove copyright content once they are aware of it? They say it is, Viacom say it is not). Meanwhile Viacom are continuing to be hardline in demanding the removal of any of their content that they see surfacing on YouTube, though that approach has scored them some bad press in the US this week after they insisted on the removal of a segment of a VH1 show that they'd nicked off YouTube to start with!
Slashdot have reported on a recent posting from blogger Chris Knight which reports: "I ran for school board where I live this past fall and created some TV commercials including one with a 'Star Wars' theme. A few months ago VH1 grabbed the commercial from YouTube and featured it in a segment of its show 'Web Junk 2.0'. Neither VH1 or its parent company Viacom told me they were doing this or asked my permission to use it, but I didn't mind it if they did. I thought that [presenter] Aries Spears' commentary about it was pretty hilarious, so I posted a clip of VH1's segment on YouTube so that I could put it on my blog. I just got an e-mail from YouTube saying that the video has been pulled because Viacom is claiming that I'm violating its copyright. Viacom used my video without permission on their commercial television show, and now says that I am infringing on their copyright for showing the clip of the work that Viacom made in violation of my own copyright!"