More media consolidation: Warner owns YouTube

YouTube, Warner Music Group sign on the dotted line.  Internet video phenom YouTube Inc. has scored a landmark deal to distribute music videos from the vaults of Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG).

The deal gives Warner the right to review posted videos to determine if they violate Warner's copyright.  Couldn't be that blackmail helped make this deal go down, could it?

The timing of the agreement is of particular interest. Last week, reports circulated that Universal Music was prepared to drop the legal hammer on the wildly popular service, which allows users to upload and share videos, if a deal wasn't reached by month's end.

WMG marks the first "media company" to do a deal with YouTube. Under the deal, YouTube users will be allowed to incorporate music from WMG's recorded music catalog and into the videos they create and share on the YouTube service.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but YouTube said it will support the agreement by implementing a new content identification and royalty reporting system by year-end.

http://www.cedmagazine.com/...
And look at the positive spin this gets.  It's just great (for consolidation): Warner gets to know about and approve the contents of every video before it's posted:

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.

http://hosted.ap.org/...
What do you think might happen if you wanted to post a video that said something negative about Warner?

Or something negative about a candidate for political office?

This seems to me to be a symptom of a huge issue that is going to affect freedom of the Internet.

Anyone here with a big server want to create a YouTube alternative?

-- Emily