Google has kicked-off its wholly expected deal-making charm offensive with media owners to avert legal action against YouTube over copyrighted material. The question is what price to satisfy potentially lawsuit-filing media partners?
The FT reports today that Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has gone into talks with the likes of CBS, Viacom, Time Warner, NBC Universal and MySpace-parent News Corporation offering "tens of millions of dollars" in upfront payments for the right to broadcast their video content legally on YouTube.
This, of course, is no surprise. The main topic of conversation since the $1.65bn GooTube mega-deal has been about the 'legal timebomb' that YouTube could turn out to be.
Time Warner chief executive Dick Parsons, has already previously said that he was "kicking the negotiations" up to "Google level" over copyright infringement.
YouTube is riddled with material that belongs to media companies and with 100m clips viewed per day Google could face huge bills if major lawsuits were successful.
Last month, Universal Music filed lawsuits against video-sharing websites Grouper and Bolt.com reportedly seeking as much as $150,000 per infringement.
Blogger Mark Cuban has some interesting theories about, among other points in the GooTube deal, a $500m pot set aside to handle lawsuits.
Music labels like Warner Music, Universal Music and Sony BMG already have small stakes in YouTube estimated to be worth around $50m each and have revenue-share deals for advertising delivered around copyrighted content.
The problem is that YouTube has such vast global popularity that lawsuits could come from almost anywhere.
Last month, a body representing 23 Japanese TV stations, movie and music companies ordered YouTube to remove 30,000 clips on YouTube that featured content without its permission.
Also last month an online rights protection agency representing the likes of the FA Premier League and Formula One ordered 1,000 clips to be removed for similar reasons - and thought that at least 10,000 more were circulating.
Perhaps the big question is can Google possibly plug all the copyright holes with media deals?
