Yahoo, Sony BMG Team Up For User-Generated Content

Yahoo on Tuesday said Sony BMG has agreed to allow users of the portal to upload videos that include music from the record company's artists.

The agreement is part of an extension of the current licensing deal between the two companies. The new agreement also gives Yahoo access to more music videos, and the right to distribute Sony BMG recordings to more territories around the world.

Yahoo's licensing deals typically involve sharing of ad revenues. Financial terms of the Sony BMG deal were not disclosed. Sony BMG is a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG.

The latest agreement also allows Yahoo to distribute Sony BMG content through applications and widgets that the portal's users can embed in their own Web sites. The content can only be played through Yahoo's branded player, which provides copyright protection.

The Sony BMG agreement is the first time Yahoo has licensed content for use within user-generated video, a reflection of the growing popularity of the practice on the Web. Sony BMG, home to such artists as Britney Spears and Bruce Springsteen, have licensing deals with other Internet companies, including Google and its subsidiary YouTube.

The unauthorized use of video or music on social networks and other Web sites have led to tension, and sometimes lawsuits, between media and Internet companies. In an attempt to find a solution, several media, technology and Internet companies last month announced a pact for copyright protection. Those companies included Fox, CBS, NBC Universal, Walt Disney, MySpace, Viacom, and Microsoft.

Absent from the agreement was Google, which owns the most popular online video site YouTube. Viacom has filed a $1 billion copyright infringement suit against the two companies, accusing them of "brazen disregard" for intellectual property.