If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

Warner Bros. is the latest conglomerate to make a deal with YouTube. Rather than suing the fans who make their own homemade videos for pop songs, Warner Bros. has decided to make their music videos and other vieo snippets available on YouTube. They're also making some sort of deal to "license" their music rights to YouTube so the people on it aren't breaking the law. (YouTube will also give WB the ability to check out usage of their music in case they do object to any use of it -- I'm sure they'll want to assign an intern to watch thousands of new videos every week in case some high school kid plays Madonna in the background while filming a cheerleader routine.) You can't corral video once it's out there, so you might as well partner up with the websites that bring in eyeballs.